Billy the Kidd

Booooo Tom Barclay.

Why be bothered about people being bothered by rumours?

Yep and i can too, but there weren’t loads. I can see both sides of this with Ralph, but I can accept that Ralph didnt have some pretty damning flaws, which hopefully he looks like changing. Some of those were to do with squad depth, but many weren’t, and I still dont understand why he couldnt adapt last season to use what he had. It is literally what any manager in any industry would have done.

Yep I thought he stepped to his right to make contact with the GK. Never a penalty

There are very very few posters who said Ralph was shit. Of course you are correct that Ralph has more options, but he refused really to change the way we played in our shit spell to fit the players he did have at his disposal. I like Ralph buy he made things far harder for himself than he needed to. It doesn't make me a bed wetter to say that or a f**king genius to see it either. People were rightly able to Q wtf he did at times last season.

"If we listened to your lot." I stopped reading at that point, as I've never wanted Ralph out, but did think he needed to change stuff. Which he did, for numerous reasons.

I think it is a bit of both tbh. Although Ralph has been hamstrung by our keepers, imo (respect others see it not the same) FF is a bit better than AM, and that cost us more points. Also, RH did make some daft decisions as LDH says above, but he seems like he has changed this, hope it continues. Just a note to @SaintsFan86 - I know we spoke on here before about Ralph, id be interested to hear if you think RH could have carried on exactly as he did on our awful run without changing anything - just asking as you seem confused by one of the posts above which recognise the transition he has been through, and made me Q how you see it. Im not digging you out as you suggested before, but more that if RH recognises he wasnt perhaps blameless and saw things he had to change, what is wrong with people who have seen his transition?

Yeah I agree with what you say @S-Clarke above, and yeah the cult thing does get said. For me though, the main issue isn’t losing 3 on the bounce as you say, it was some of the strange stuff that RH was doing on our terrible run, he just didnt seem to want to learn. This season, he has changed tactics and formations and it works miles better, just didnt understand why that couldnt have been done last season. I get the injuries and players we shouldn’t have had to reply on, we did absolutely have it tougher than anyone has had before or since I think, just thought playing the same way last season was suicide. That said, he has learned, has some of those poor players not here now, and is a good manager for us. Still wouldn’t put it past him to go weird again though 😅

See, I cant stand the ‘where are the Ralph outers now’ rhetoric. At the time people wanted to change the manager, almost every club in the EPL would have sacked him. He was pointlessly stubborn and RH made some horrendous decisions. It was binary - he can be a good manager for us, but went through an incredibly lengthy shit run of form where he should have been sacked. That he hasn’t, and it has worked out, doesn’t make anyone who wanted him gone look like a dick or anything, as much as it doesnt make anyone who wanted to keep him look like they deity they want to be seen as. If RH goes through another really shit spell, id be amazed if he kept his job next time, although hopefully he has learned from some pretty obvious mistakes. But please can anyone doing the whole Where are the RH outers now go a boil their heads in their own piss. It isn’t just on here, exactly the same on the ‘Not’ forum, and boils me piss i tells ya.

McCarthy could.

Yep agree re the Liverpool bit, and they have Harvey Elliott nd the young lad who has just started playing, and Curtis Jones. Dont see that one at all, would be crazy to go there.

Done. I now feel heard whereas before I was just a mere whisper in the wind.

Not sure about agent money, running his contract down money likely to be same whoever buys him.

Ypp. for me there is no issue with the buy back. We spent £15m on AA, who may come good, but currently is no where near what Broja is doing right now. So in that sense, we would be getting a player proven with us, that we know we are able to turn a tidy profit on. Call it a development fee for Chelsea or whatever, if we get a couple more years of him and a profit to boot, gotta be good.

Dunno, i find all this talk mainly bollocks, and people who write some of this stuff say so many versions one of them will be true at some point.

Yeah pretty much, just thought is stick on what I saw!

Haven't Newcastle now got lots of top sides in the next month? I can't see Rafa lasting think he will be gone in a few days (or hours). I still can't understand why our game v Newcastle hasn't been rearranged yet, I hope they have to play 3 games in 6 days, bloody cheats.

Well he sure did a great job doing that today. Maybe he was asked to play like AA.

Fuck me

Come on, still 30 mins left, we can still get a couple at least.

Maybe that’s what he was thinking about for half time, when the ball sailed over his noggin’.

Heads will roll after that performance.

Lloyd James 😂 for sure. JWP - £50m to anyone else, not to Toon, they can pay £70m. Not that I think we will sell JWP.

To be fair - the first thing you did hearing this news was to post about you also.