Delphouneso

Emery's odds coming in fast, is it just VTers betting on it?

Amorim doesn't really play with wingers, but that doesn't mean he doesn't play with width. One thing that I keep seeing being mentioned in relation to Amorim is his infectious personality, charisma, and approachability, and watching Sporting last night it was interesting to see his players run straight over to him after they scored. What was evident today - as well as during most of Deano's reign - is that we've got a bunch of players that would probably be described as the type who 'need an arm round the shoulder', players that respond to encouragement and need to feel loved, rather than the more disciplinarian approach we're led to believe Gerrard had. Amorim might be just what we need to bring back the feel good factor at Bodymoor. Or he might not be. Who knows.

scenes when the players reveal Deano gave the team talk via Skype.

I actually thought he might fluke a decent performance or a win tonight and manage to keep himself in a job for another week, but **** me this is awful.

People in here now saying we shouldn't have sold Trez and El Ghazi is just as mental as people defending Gerrard. It was stupid to get rid of Bertie and not replace him but we might be able to recall him anyway if a new coach wants him in the squad. And in the unlikely scenario it does end up being Poch this squad probably suits him anyway. At Spurs he mostly played either a 3-4-2-1 (with two 10s) or a narrow 4-2-3-1 with non-traditional wide players like Eriksen and Alli. Difference is he still knows how to use all of the pitch.

Won't profess to be an expert on either but Poch quite often played a 3-4-2-1 with Spurs which I think would really suit our current squad, Emery's favoured 4-4-2 doesn't exactly fit with what we have and we could do without another squad overhaul. One thing that does worry me is a lot of our current problems seem to stem from abandoning our plan, our idealogy, transfer policy etc and handing the keys to the kingdom to Steven Gerrard. @OutByEaster? recently made the point that our next head coach should be a part of an ongoing plan, top cog in a well-oiled cog machine, rather than having free reign over all things AVFC. 'Moving heaven and earth' for Poch doesn't sound like we're about to tell him to stick to our plan. But then it's Poch, so.. you'd be mad not to right?

Might have something to do with the no.10 in that video spending most of those 10 months on the bench.

edit: nvm, you're right.

So you're saying we need to deal with their manager?

This is OT but I think Ginny is suffering from Mason Mount sydrome at the moment. He's a good player, but he should've been dropped a while ago and the consequence of him not being dropped is fans reactions becoming unnecessarily toxic. Southgate did the same with Mount, both managers probably think they're protecting the player but the reality is you end up just hanging them out to dry.

I think this is probably the shape that allows us the most round pegs in round holes with our current squad. Wouldn't mind seeing us try it post-Stevie.

A little OT but this for me is why I think Purslow either needs to go with Gerrard or be confined to non-footballing matters. He's shown he's prepared to completely tear up the long term plan to accommodate someone largely unproven, I don't think we can expect him to suddenly grow some conviction if/when we get an actual football manager in.

We had 15 clean sheets in the 20/21 season. Targett started every game, Konsa and Mings started 35 and 36 respectively, and Elmo even started 8. Third most clean sheets in the league. Gerrard has added Digne to that back four and Kamara in front of it and has achieved 7 clean sheets in 35 games. How long are we giving him just to sort the defence out?

Again, that's not the point he was making. The stats suggested Brighton were creating lots of chances but poor finishing meant they weren't converting those chances in to goals, hinting that if they improved their finishing the goals would come. I'm assuming @Pinebro's original point was that we're not creating many decent chances (we're 19th in the league for xG) hinting that no matter how good our finishing is we're still going to struggle for goals.

You're completely ignoring the point he was making though, the prediction has become reality.

It's the Gareth Southgate approach to coaching. 'I've seen so and so coach do this so I'll try and imitate it without really knowing how or why it works'. Though I think with Gerrard it's even more basic than that because he himself has said he just has the vision and it's his coaches that are tasked with implementing it.

We're also 19th for total xG, which would support the idea that aside from anything else the football is **** dull.

There's definitely an element of this, and it was certainly nice to see our CEO on tele defending the club and sticking it to the 'big 6' too but I think he's undoubtedly done some good, though it's always hard to decipher exactly what a football CEO is and isn't directly responsible for. Agree with that. The club seemed to get a lot of praise for keeping that deal quiet yet it always seemed obvious the reason for no one knowing anything about it was because it was a last minute panic buy to appease fans after Jack left. I still believe Buendia was signed to play alongside Jack rather than being a replacement too, but that's pure conjecture on my part.

Purslow seemed pretty shrewd when he first came in but it absolutely seems like he's lost his mind to go all gooey eyed over SG. It stings as a fan to see ticket prices increase, shirt prices increase, to decide not to subscribe to AVTV and watch our U21s this season because even that has jumped in price. And for all the price increases, are we more entertaining? Are we performing better? As a fan do I feel more engaged with the club than I did before? Am I optimistic about where we're heading? For me the answer to all of those questions is no. We used to have a policy of improving players and player value - and a coach who wanted to improve players - a policy that seemed a sensible approach to ensuring the future of the club, but now Purslow is seemingly happy to watch his coach bomb those same players out to Turkey or the U21s, pull his club captain's pants down in public, bench his record signing in favour of chucking fortunes at an over the hill has been, and we'll probably lose Doug on a free because he couldn't get a game over a guy massively out of form. All that disruption to be 14th (edit: 16th) in the league and dull as dishwater. Where's Purslow the shrewd business man gone? Where's the man that binned the last manager because we weren't making enough progress? I've questioned people calling for Purslow to go, he's shown he can be very effective, but thinking about it this morning it's actually pretty crazy the things we've sacrificed in the past 12 months for a guy who won the Scottish league.

I'd rather Bertie's inconsistent madness than Bailey and Coutinho's consistent non-performances. Crazy that this was ever signed off on, guy's only 27 proven to be effective at PL level and we'll be lucky to get a fee for him now because Stevie didn't fancy him. Not to mention it left us with one (injury prone) wide player in the squad. It's up there with Bruce loaning out Elphick.

Probably not the thread for it but there's zero pace in that team. At least one of Ollie or Bailey should be starting every game.

what the **** Dougie.

We're getting absolutely battered, and when the camera pans to the bench to show us the guys who are supposed to turn it around I have to watch Gary **** McCallister scratching his chin looking clueless. How did it get this bad?

Fair points. I think Craig Butler is more out of line than Gerrard in this particular situation though, and once (fingers crossed) Gerrard is gone Butler is still going to be here and allowing his (super unprofessional) behaviour to go uncriticised now because it suits the anti-Gerrard narrative won't bode well for us in the long run. And FWIW it would be utter madness for the club to sanction any sales of first teamers whilst the manager's position is this tenuous.