saintant

I guess if those currently running SR are the ones deciding who to spend money on and how much it matters not a jot whether that is done in January or the summer - the result will be the same and more money will be poured down the drain. This club needs a good Director of Football to preside over a reset not some watered down version in the shape of Mark fucking Bitcon.

I agree with your comments about VAR. The decisions that go against us always seem more impactful because we score so few goals so any perceived VAR mistakes will always cost us points - it mightn't seem so harsh if we were banging in goals meaning we could sometimes absorb the odd VAR cock-up.

I guess I was being slightly facetious and the comment about another financial disaster not making a lot of difference was made with tongue in cheek. So yes you are right and my remarks were borne out of sheer frustration at the way our football club is being run by what can only be described as a bunch of charlatans.

We need a competent Director of Football which Bitcon isn't. He may have a role to play but his expertise, as you point out, is in performance which has little to do with being a Director of Football. As in many things SR made a total balls up of replacing Jason Wilcox and I would like to see Dragan take a firm hand and involve himself, with outside advice, to appoint a DoF who knows what he's doing. The person appointed should be given extended powers and Bitcon and Rasmus should be told in no uncertain terms to keep their beaks out. Perhaps then the football club might be eased off the rocks and into calmer waters to give us the chance to reset and rebuild in a sensible manner. The current shit storm cannot be allowed to continue.

How long before football clubs are managed by AI? I think ours already is because any intelligence is almost certainly artificial.

Which bit is nonsense and why?

SR are used to presiding over financial disasters, mostly of their own making, so one more won't make a lot of difference.

The penny seems to be taking an awfully long time to drop. You'd think such a successful businessman would have wised up by now but Rasmus continues to pull the wool over Dragan's eyes.

Might stir Dragan into appointing a decent Director of Football to take charge of some of the important stuff because Rasmus and his crew clearly have no idea.

Good post with many excellent points.

Would Dragan continue to employ people in key positions at his telecom company if they showed the same levels of incompetence we've seen from those at SR? The answer is quite obviously he wouldn't so I don't understand why he isn't insisting a competent Director of Football is appointed and, if I was him, I'd be taking a hands on approach plus advice from someone outside of SR to get the right person.

A nice Freudian slip 🙂

Thought I'd bump this just ahead of the new transfer window. Clearly Ivan Juric is going to want to bring in new players and is likely to have some in mind who he knows from previous managerial stints. Are there any rumours the CoT can share at the moment along with the cryptic picture clues? I always look forward to trying to crack them.

The two sides relegated with us will both be stronger than us. Add the top four or five Championship sides who miss out on promotion and will be looking to put that right plus another couple of surprise packages and a swift return to the Premier League looks anything but straightforward. Will we be ready for another punishing stint in the Premier League anyway? Maybe it's time to take stock, regroup and build a team that is more ready and better equipped for our next battles in the top league.

Nope and nor would anyone else unless more chances are created.

They need to get out of our club. That's the only way this gets sorted because they are completely clueless.

There is little point being better funded if those spending the money have no clue what they are doing. Semmens due diligence should have included a deep dive into the competence of those running SR. I'm pretty sure he'd have found little to suggest they had the experience to run a Premier League football club or why are we in such a complete and utter shambles now?

Not sure why getting players forward means we have to use the first 20 minutes against Spurs as a blueprint. It's up to Ivan Juric to strike the right balance and I get he has to be careful because he's come to a team that was shipping goals for fun thanks to RM. Plenty of sides including all the decent ones get players forward to support attacks - if you don't all attacks will inevitably just peter out and you're back defending again. When we lose the ball we have to learn to win it back much quicker - you won't do that if there is always a huge gap between your attack and midfield which is one of our major problems. I know that our squad is not the best but we can do better with what we have. Early days for IJ and we've at least been close to getting something from his first two games in charge. I'm sure he's learning a lot and will continue fine tuning and hopefully get one or two additions in the January window to help.

Making us harder to score against is a good starting point but he's going to need to get us scoring goals and that can only happen if you get more players forward. It's a delicate balancing act but we must not get sucked into a team set up to defend at the expense of everything else.

If you sit back and invite the opposition on to you guess what - they'll say thank you very much for making our life easy and help themselves. Not to worry, let's just camp in our own half and expect to win football matches shall we. Doesn't work and never will.

Put him in a decent side and you'd see. As it is he is always one of our better players and most times he's our MotM. If we're criticising Fernandes it speaks volumes for the rest.

It doesn't have to be a hopeful ball down the channel - what I'm advocating is getting more players forward. The mindset of the majority seems to be to stay back in case the opponents win the ball and attack us. At some stage we are going to have to take a more risky approach because we seem afraid to cross the half way line.

They don't need to say it because it is blatantly obvious to everyone.

What has Charlie Taylor done? A left back with Premier League experience and yet he doesn't get a look in.

Yeah and I'm sure a certain person did very nicely when they bought our club.