TWar

All wins are insignificant and all losses are an excuse to wet the bed. Hate to break this to you, but we aren't going to see many trophies. If you care about such things may I suggest becoming a city fan?

No you don't understand. Ralph lost two games 9-0! That means if he ever has a run of bad games he is completely incompetent and any other achievements and overall performance should be discounted immediately. We must keep this thread open even if we win the FA Cup so we have somewhere to cry next time we have a few bad injuries and it effects performance. Having faith in the manager is the work of hipsters or cults or something.

Odds are 25/2 before we won that. Not sure 100/1 is super likely... Great result for the lads, glad we don't have to listen to the "Ralph out" melts for an evening, I'm sure they will be back in full force next time we stumble though

In what way, do you know anything about the guy?

Haha, guess I walked into that

Weird stereotype. Sounds like a convenient way to discount someone elses argument. Pretty much a garden variety ad hominem, "You don't agree with me, well you smell, and don't have much sex", that sort of schoolyard nonsense. Also is posting about football on twitter inherently less cool than posting about it on a forum? We all seem pretty dorky when it comes to football for me. Also the swipe at xG gives the impression you don't appreciate statistics as a concept, which really would explain a lot.

Is someone going to explain what "hipsters choice" means in the context of football at some point? Seems like a meaningless buzzword still. People like Ralph because he has improved us, arguably more than any manager we've had has individually since rejoining the prem, see my lovely plot. 10 crap games in 12 doesn't change that (arguably not all crap, some dreadful luck in there too and injury but lets not split hairs).

Is it really a benefit to inherit a team with 0 confidence who have been completely miss-managed for two years and have no idea what they are doing? Got to be honest, I think I'd prefer a team that just made the top 6 and had just been whipped into shape by the current managers of Barca and PSG. Given that as well as the disparity in squad quality, the fact Ralph has basically exactly the same stats as Puel is both a massive credit to him and a vindication of showing Puel the door, shame it took us so long to replace him properly. And thanks, the graph isn't leading, it is data, its up to you how you analyse it. I promise I didn't omit anything!

50m over two seasons is nothing. Sheffield united spent basically that on Brewster and Ramsdale this summer and they are rooted to the bottom of the table. Not accounting for the fact that we lost a key player in that time and had to replace him (Hojbjerg).

The real test of a manager is how much he can improve a side. Ralph has had next to no money invested but has had the single biggest increase in form of any manager since we have rejoined the premier league. Puel has nominally the same stats as Ralph but as shown here, really decreased the quality of the team quite heavily. This is why people weren't satisfied with Puel but are with Ralph, its all about context.

You are right, we do want the same thing. I will say though, Yoshida was a quality player and Ings only started banging in goals after Ralph did his work on him. When we signed him he was a pretty uninspiring move. Austin was a much more exciting signing at the time, given his great season with QPR a couple of seasons previous. For me the quality season Ings had is massively down to Ralph.

What if neither are blips and are instead natural variation and you shouldn't discount either and just look at his overall PPG? Something you seem completely unwilling to do. Also, if you were to refer to something as a "blip" it would be this period where we have gotten 0.33 PPG in the last 12. Our average discounting 2020 (which you seem to love to do) is still 1.16 so it is still an outlier with respect to that period, and is a dramatic outlier compared to his total PPG.

I have exclusively referred to his PPG over all 90 league games. Feels like you are projecting at this point, as you are desperate to find reasons to discount the entirety of 2020 whereas I discuss the whole set. What you are trying to do is very silly.

1.16 PPG still corresponds to 44 points a season, 1.16 isn't "very poor" it is actually pretty reasonable for our squad quality, only 2 pts less than Puel managed if maintained over a season. Why do you feel the need to split the points up arbitrarily? Why not just take his points per game in general and observe that on average he is doing perfectly well given investment. And I don't know why you keep comparing to Puel, Puel had a better team, it's not comparable. Also the idea of splitting the data into two pools and noting one is longer hence is the one that should be taken into account is hilariously bad statistical analysis. Just deal with the full set and take total PPG. Any other use of statistics is just massaging the numbers and doesn't hold up to any logical rigour.

His style is working for us. He has done great for most of his tenure. It hasn't worked in the last two months, but the fixture congestion is broken now and won't be back next season so why sack him now? I feel like we are going in circles. You are judging him and his quality based off 12 games where he has had 14 major first team injuries and has been playing an abnormal number of games, I am judging him based off all 90 of his league games. Whos to say which is better? Saying he "knew the deal" isn't an excuse, just because he signed up for the challenge of being wildly underfunded doesn't mean it isn't a challenge. He is doing well given this challenge whether he knew about it or not.

It very much is ownerships fault. Ralph has a style that works great and has us way overperforming the quality of our side. If he had proper investment we could rotate the squad and keep playing this great football, but we don't so we can't. When he is forced not to play the way we want to then we drop to the actual quality of the squad and are suddenly in trouble.

Ralphs still in a job because he did very well for a long period of time and has been doing badly for a comparatively much shorter period of time and people who know what they are doing don't assume someone has lost all ability every time they have a couple of months of poor form. That is a fan mentality, and not a clever fan mentality at that.

Pellegrino and Puel were both bad to watch, it's not mutually exclusive. And Ralph wanted a small quality squad, we have about 12-13 prem quality players, he is probably hoping for closer to 20. There is "small" and there is this, small but also the back ups are just straight bad. Finally, we live in unprecedented times, when he said he wanted a smaller squad he probably wasn't thinking "oh but what if there is a global pandemic which shortens the season, thus massively increasing fixture congestion and removing our access to our recover chambers, I'd need a bigger squad if that happened". Kinda a hard one to predict.

Honestly I think the whole thing will be pretty irrelevant. We aren't going down this summer and I think there is a very good chance we get bought this summer. It is a good idea to keep consistency during such a handover and, fingers crossed, if our new owners want to pump some money in Ralph has already shown he can take a smaller team who suddenly has a lot of money to the big leagues with RB Leipzig so hopefully that will be the case. If our new owners are tight I personally think Ralph has also shown he can secure safety and good football on a shoestring budget so i think he'd be valued for that too.

I know you keep wanting to focus on this specific 12 games to an almost comical degree, but you know there was football before that right? If we sacked a manager every time their form dropped for a couple of months we'd be like Watford, grabbing a manager every 6 months or so. I don't want that, I want stability and Ralph has earned stability with 12 straight months of great form. So its not ok to call two results freak results but 12 whole months and 38 games of football in 2020 is a freak run. Madness, and a complete misunderstanding of the concept of sample size. And Puel was sacked because we still had a good team at that point with VvD, Tadic, Forster, Fonte all starting the season and big money signings of Boufal, Gabbiadini, Hojbjerg and Redmond all being added. All of these players went backwards and flopped under Puel or left. Ralph had a much worse team with much less spent on it. Standards are lower. Also Puel didn't really improve anyone or galvanise the team. Ralph has worked wonders with JWP, Vestergaard, Armstrong, Bednarek, ect. who all looked absolutely rubbish under previous management. Got to be honest, I don't know what "the hipsters choice" means in the context of football. It just sounds like meaningless buzzwords.

I'd sack him if he performed worse than another manager could give us. I personally think taking this squad to consistent mid table finishes after we fought relegation before he arrived and invested the least in the league is a very good result. If we perform at the level of our investment then I think we are in serious trouble, I believe Mark Hughes is an average manager and had us performing about the quality of the squad. We would need someone much much better than average to top Ralph, considering the backing he's had. I don't think we will get that. Klopp was much much better than Rodgers so the sacking made sense, he was one of the biggest names in world football at the time. If we have Ancelotti, Rose, Touchel waiting in the wings then yeah, consider Ralph out. But at the moment Ralph is massively exceeding the backing he's had and it would take someone pretty special to do better with this lot. And someone pretty special isn't coming. If Ralph's points per game drop to relegation form over a long long period (say 6 months, not two) and we can get someone actually quality in who we believe can exceed the squad quality, then we fire him. But not when he is still getting mid table with these funds, and not for the sort of managers we could attract to replace him. No way.

Lack of backing has always been a problem. No one has ever said we are doing better because we spend less money. What are you on about? It wasn't an issue 5-6 months ago because Ralph was overperforming. If that got your standards up, lower them. We will not always be performing at a top 6 level with a bottom three investment, don't expect it. And certainly don't throw your toys out the pram at the very person who's success lead you to have this spoiled attitude.

Puel was no where near the quality of Ralph, inherited a much better team, and bought two players that season who were above our previous transfer record and got 46 points. Ralph inherited a team that nearly got relegated, brought in Che Adams and Djenepo, and secured 52 points. It's not even comparable. The fact the league was stronger last year than in 17/18 is really eclipsing how much better we are under Ralph and the points reflect that. 1 win in 12 is a bad run of 12 games. Fortunately not everyone judges people on their most recent 2 months and conveniently forgets the preceding 12 months where we had the 5th most points in the league.

The team that is 100% his team only has 5 permanent signings since he joined? With two of them being young players clearly signed for the future. Seems weird to call it 100% his team when he has had next to no backing to build a team. And I didn't say the two 9-0's have nothing to do with the manager. I said that two freak results don't dismiss 90 league games where we have been markedly better than the proceeding 3 years.

The absolute hysteria in this thread, and the desperation not to judge someone on their entire tenure rather than just a couple of freak results and a 12 game bad spell (before which we beat the champions mind you). Ralph inherited a squad that spent two seasons fighting for survival and since then has had the least investment of any team in the league and has that team fighting at a mid table standard. I'm sorry if that's not good enough for some of you but fortunately the board are sufficiently intelligent and not myopic to not sack someone based off that. Puel took a team that just finished 6th and made 8th by virtue of an easy league with only 46 points. It's not about a "good 11th" and a "bad 8th", Ralph got more points than Puel with a much worse team.