HanoiVillan

Do I dare to ask the question if maybe, Con, just maybe, you're writing all this as a result of Bannan dropping out of fashion under Pulis? I know it's uncharitable, but the mind does wander in that direction. To be honest, it's no more uncharitable really than addressing your argument at face value. We're to believe that Mariappa and Delaney are better than Vlaar, for example? You say they're 'experienced', other people could just as easily say 'past it'. Speroni better than Guzan? Moxey better than Bertrand? He took a very, very average team and transformed them. Your argument about Keith Millen is fair, but it hardly reflects badly on Pulis that he took that success and continued it. Does anyone hold Adkins doing well against Pochettino? He's a better manager than Lambert, if what you want is good results. Sorry, but there it is.

Can people really see Lescott coming back to the west midlands? If you're referring to his supposed troubles with gangsta's, I have to say that sounds like nonsense to me. Have these bad dudes been unable to locate Alderley Edge for the last half-decade, or have they just not been able to fit a trip there into their busy schedules? Barry and Lescott won't be coming for a more prosaic reason - money. Barry has spent a year being an instrumental part of a midfield that finished fifth in the table, and will have much better teams after him. Lescott wants more money than Vlaar is paid. They won't be joining, I feel fairly confident saying that.

It would comfortably put him in the top 5 paid players at the club, and almost certainly more money than Vlaar is on. It ain't gonna happen.

Okay, in that case I will add this thread to my ignore list.

Is there actually anything solid linking us to him this window?

mammoth.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm guessing that he wasn't overachieving at stoke even looking at wage bill in the last couple seasons. It may have been true for the last season he was there. But he was there for quite a few seasons, and if you include this season as well, his record is overwhelmingly positive in that regard.

Did he say how much exactly? You can't go making assumptions based on something as vague as that. I don't think anyone believes that there'll be loads to spend but saying that we won't buy anyone or will only get 1 or 2 players in seems a bit like an overreaction. The figure I saw - though I have to admit I can't remember where - was £15 million. I'm sure that was educated guesswork, but it fits with about what you would expect.

Sorry, should have been clearer, I really meant wage bill, which is the single most accurate predictor of league placement by far. On transfers, his record is considerably weaker, but they generally don't predict league placings very well at all.

Lambert in his interview on the BBC the other day.

Well, it depends what you mean by a great manager, doesn't it? Getting teams to regularly finish higher in the table than their financial outgoings would suggest is a real achievement. We, on the other hand, have finished lower in the table than our wage bill would suggest for the last 4 years consecutively. If you're only interested in the style of the football, and not in the results, then Pulis indeed isn't a great manager.

Because other teams will improve, as Big John said, we won't. We've already been told that there's less money available than the last 2 seasons. Also - no Benteke. We will start next season with basically the same team that gained 4 points from the last 27 available at the end of last season. I should make clear that obviously a takeover would change things completely. How do you know? Because we've been told we have very little money to spend? And even good players on Bosmans cost tons in wages and signing on fees?

Because other teams will improve, as Big John said, we won't. We've already been told that there's less money available than the last 2 seasons. Also - no Benteke. We will start next season with basically the same team that gained 4 points from the last 27 available at the end of last season. I should make clear that obviously a takeover would change things completely.

He is owned by West Brom - doubt they'd be keen to sell to us! He also doesn't play the same position. Hoolahan would be an improvement on what he have at AM, ie. nothing, so on that basis, yes. Obviously would be nice to be able to sign someone younger and more talented, but that obviously isn't going to happen. Can't see Norwich selling him to us anyway though, so it's all academic.

In what he achieves relative to budget, Pulis is one of the best managers in the division, so undoubtedly yes. The football might not be exciting, but the points would be on the board.

It depends on how the summer goes. It's certainly not as simple as takeover = we stay up, no take over = we go down. True. There could be a takeover and we still go down like Fulham did. And there could be no takeover yet we could still stay up and do ok. It's quite unlikely though, IMO. We're likely to have a very weak team to start the season, and our best player by far misses most of the first half of the season and might not come back as good again. I expect us to be at or near the bottom of the table when Benteke does come back, and then it's a long hard battle to safety.

absolutely spot on. I'm tying to say we settle too easily for second best and don't search for a Diego Simone of our own like we did with Saunders and Barton. Sorry TRO totally disagree. I cannot see how you can claim we settle "for second best" Martinez turned us down and Lambert was the fans choice. As regards the distant past; as much as I respect Tony Barton's memory, it is ludicrous to use him as an example, he inherited Saunders team. He will always be a legend but few will claim he was an exceptional manager. As for Saunders. He was a relatively unknown quantity. At the time of his appointment, most fans were unimpressed and he was not perceived as "the best". Sorry but your argument doesn't make sense. Sorry Mike but your response doesn't make sense to me either ...... I'm not explaining myself very well or you havn't got the gist of my point. Firstly the "second best" I am referring to is the current performance of our team, not the initial appointment,some seem to think some kind of divine intervention is going to happen and it will all come good under this manager. It didn't take the Man U fans long to say " no more mr Moyes"......we the fans are still pontificating whether we have got a good one or not as for the second point the reason Ron Saunders and Tony Barton was mentioned in Tandem was the very fact that they were unknowns which was my very point and Tony Barton was instrumental in spotting ALL the talent that Ron Saunders and Roy Mclaren so aptly Managed.....Ron won the League and Tony won the Euro cup, so inspite of the competition at that time I think it is a fair comparison.... and no they wasn't world class and neither necessarily is Simone. When I said " We settle for second best"" I meant the club staff and whilst we are on the subject does it take the fans to select a manager? I guess the fans never chose Arsene Wenger or Ron Saunders for that matter. so just in case I have still failed to get my point over......Unknowns can be a big success as Jose Mourinho was at Porto all those years ago. ps albeit,a bit of research, good interviewing techniques and a good offer is very helpful. Moyes spent north of £55 million on players, and took over a team that won the PL at a canter the previous season. It's not a very realistic comparison. Every club wants to find a manager who can get a team to consistently finish higher than their outlay would suggest, but we can't all have them. Simeone came out of nowhere - sometimes the rare manager who actually makes a difference by their own skill does appear. If you're lucky enough to land one, great. We haven't. But the relevant question isn't 'is Paul Lambert one of the best managers in the world'? or 'could somebody do better than Lambert?', it's 'would sacking the manager in the midst of a summer of complete turmoil be obviously counterproductive?'. The answer to that question is yes, sadly.

I don't hate QPR, never have and probably never will. It's Harry I hate.

Except he played 11 games for Fulham and he only joined them in January, he was excellent at villa park, he ran the game, I think he's an superb player It's a shame that we couldn't get him in January He only played eleven times because he was dropped towards the end of the season. Maybe he's amazing, but he certainly hasn't shown that in English football yet. Why would you sell Delph for a punt? If Levy were offering this move, it would be because he thinks Delph is far better. I concur. People get so smitten with youngsters with big reputations that they can't see how average they are. Remember how many people were gutted we didn't get Guidetti? Where are they now?

Yes, it's a difficult decision to make - our player of the season, or a guy who couldn't get into the Fulham team when they were bottom of the table? Hmm, what to do, what to do . . .

Well, I'm happy for him. Can't lie, think it's a sign of the problems we have, ie. he doesn't really deserve it on merit, but I'm sure he's a good guy so congratulations. If we actually want to make it work he needs to spend a season on loan somewhere.

I can't lie, the same thoughts had occurred to me as well. We could struggle to keep both him and Vlaar this summer, unless this contract business is sorted out quickly. I read in the paper that there's no current bidder for the team, so why do we have a ban on contract extensions?

Measured statistically, Tony Pulis is one of the most effective managers in PL history, and if you measure by finishes compared to wage bill, which seems the best way of measuring achievement, he's really in an elite group with Ferguson, Wenger, and Moyes over the last 20 years. The knock on him is pretty much never underachievement (last year at Stoke aside), it's always style of play. Bottom line is he's in a different league to Lambert. In hindsight, we'd probably have done better sacking Lambert and appointing Pulis last summer, but it would hardly have been a popular appointment.

I think it will be more than a change of manager that Kendrick needs. Whether he should have written what he did or not, we shouldn't be turning ourselves into the Democratic People's Republic of Newcastle United Mark II. Clubs that freeze out the local press are lame, and it never works in the long run.

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