KentVillan

Surely it’s time for an election, this is funny purely from the point of view of laughing at the Tories, but the country has been rudderless now for months

Just seen it described as The Quorn Ultimatum

Lolitics continues

My guess is that on a “per missile” basis the chance would be fairly high, but the chances of effectively stopping an attack would be low. Only a few need to get through to cause complete carnage. Also, I hope we never find out.

Amusing, but Tim Farron showing why he was such an unserious choice for Lib Dem leader. He was very much in the Truss mould tbh - someone who his own party members loved at party conferences, but completely useless on the national stage. Think we should just let MPs pick their own leaders.

“Winning is key” whilst defending Gerrard’s win rate. Okay. It’s just word salad at this point.

We’ve conceded 13 goals this season. Man City have conceded 10, Liverpool have conceded 12. Mings makes the odd howler, it’s annoying… but he is not, and never has been, the problem.

Yeah he just looks tired, could have one or two pints down him in that photo… I want Gerrard out but hate how nasty it gets. The football has been poor, but I don’t doubt his commitment.

Poch has been successful with 2 English clubs trying to break into European places. 8th place with Saints and four Champions League finishes with Spurs. He’s failed with one “Galactico” type club, which doesn’t really reflect what he’d be taking on at Villa. Emery took on PSG at an easier time, arguably, when it was a bit more of a coherent team. And besides winning Ligue 1, his league performances haven’t been stellar anywhere for some time. He’s also more experienced - maybe too experienced? I think Poch more likely to have a point to prove and more likely to build something for the long term. Downside is I think he genuinely loves Spurs, and wouldn’t want to go back on his word - plus would back himself to pick up a Champions League gig in the near future even if Spurs doesn’t materialise. Emery a perfectly decent manager, who knows what he’s doing, but would be a kind of Houllier appointment imo.

How many speak good English? I know it’s not absolutely essential… you’ve got the Poch / Bielsa / Conte types who probably relied on translators. But Klopp, Guardiola, Mourinho, Tuchel all benefited from arriving in the PL being able to speak good English from day one. I think there will be more options in Germany / Holland who would work at Villa than in France / Portugal / Spain / Italy. I’d ideally like to get someone on the way up in their career, rather than someone like Poch who is arguably trying to rescue his career. But the advantage of getting Poch is he has proven it at two PL clubs and I think it would be a massive statement of intent, and a massive motivation for the players. It would also raise our profile more than bringing Gerrard in… there are tons of players who’d love to player under Poch, and he’d be a great fit for the South Americans, while also playing well with the English players.

It's just very hard to imagine the process by which Football Insider get access to a scoop like this before someone like John Percy. What FI have seen is well-sourced stuff like this: Which then leads FI to take a punt on Gerrard being sacked this week, and try and get ahead of the news, despite having no more info than the rest of us. This then drives fans to their website and they collect the ad revenue. And because they don't have to actually invest in proper journalists or networks of sources or a professional web team + editors, or any of the usual shit, it's a pretty good business model for Wayne Veysey's Breaking Media Limited. If you check their accounts on Companies House, they managed to pile up £235k in their bank account, with only TWO employees! God knows how much he's taking out of the business, but sounds pretty lucrative if he's able to leave over 200 grand in there. (And not accusing him of doing this, but of course it would be possible if you were particularly unscrupulous, to cash in on the betting markets, knowing that your "scoops" are going to dramatically swing the odds.)

Just loads of people ploughing money in on the rumour, means nothing

Have Football Insider ever had an exclusive scoop in their entire history

I think Coutinho (and McGinn) could be a big part the problem. Coutinho is a luxury player, whereas Buendia is a modern 10 who does the hard work. But what it really comes down to with Gerrard for me is that he doesn't reward good performances or punish bad performances. He picks like 5 or 6 players who are undroppable, and then the rest seem to be chosen at random. That's always going to be bad for team morale and leads players to feel they don't have anything to prove because it'll make no difference anyway. We look like a team who are frustrated. I don't think it's that the players dislike Gerrard particularly, just that they don't feel like they're going into each game with a clear plan and in-form side. He's not enabling partnerships to develop. If you think back to the Smith days, we'd have Mings, Targett and Grealish linking up down the left every single week. It starts to become second nature. I don't really see any of that in the Gerrard era.

I can think of a few factors: This was an FA Cup 3rd round game against an underperforming Utd side We lost 1-0 McGinn's form hadn't completely dropped off a cliff We only played one "10" (Buendia) who covers a lot of ground, rather than a lazy 10 who doesn't (Coutinho) or two 10s which we know just doesn't work Edited highlight reels make everyone look world class - some of these touches were a bit lucky Michael Beale (QPR currently 1 point off top in Championship, and he's being linked with a Premier League job already) What is clear, though, is that everyone was playing with confidence here, and that that has now disappeared from the squad. It's probably a combination of factors. Gerrard wasn't getting the results he wanted so has regressed to more and more direct, "moments of magic" football, rather than trusting a system (this is why the Arteta comparisons are flat wrong btw). He's also made unforced errors in terms of team morale... dropping players when they perform... the Mings/McGinn captaincy debacle... calling players out publicly, and just the relentless tinkering with the team which means they don't really know what they're doing from week to week. I think we're probably too far down the road now to fix it, especially with Kamara and Carlos out.

Fair enough!

I think @JAMAICAN-VILLANis probably right, though, I'd be surprised if they haven't drawn up a shortlist of replacements, but it's hard to get the timing right mid-season. That's part of the reason we ended up with Gerrard in the first place, and they don't want to repeat the mistake. The World Cup break could be a more natural time to line someone up.

Apologies if others have already said this, but could be arsed to read through the whole thread. YES IT'S GERRARD'S ****ING FAULT, MCGINN SHOULDN'T BE ON THE PITCH

I think we have been patient with him. The negativity has built up over time, with bad decisions he’s made. The Forest game (among many others!) was more of a nail in the coffin than the Chelsea game. If he was called Carlos Managerio and we’d poached him from a second tier side in Spain, he’d have been sacked by now. I’m fine with hanging on to him until the WC if that gives us the best shot at finding a replacement, but can’t see him surviving beyond that tbh.

Didn’t watch Villa today

I think people are only laughing because the whole thing is so sickening, and what else do we have to be cheerful about

This is more like Gerrard sacking Austin MacPhee for crashing our position in the league

Hahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahaha aaaaaahahhahahabahabababababahababahhhhhhaaaaaa Lmfao lol

I think they did have a plan, that might have “worked” (ie boosted GDP growth, whether or not you agree with the redistributive / social consequences) in different circumstances, but it was a crazy time to try it, and a really poor execution, especially without any popular mandate. I also think these IEA types are too influenced by the US, which has the enormous advantage of holding the world reserve currency, and so has much more leeway to do stuff like this without getting annihilated by the markets. The UK is too small to copy the US, and too big to copy Singapore. Pragmatists get this and ideologues don’t. A positive consequence may be that it rolls the ground for Starmer to rethink Brexit, as more and more people will be desperate for anything that helps get the economy under control.

This is great, because this is an IEA guy and one of Truss’s biggest cheerleaders. If she loses the support of these guys then what does she have left?