The Premier League - 2021-2022

How can we score 5 great goals at Everton, yet fail to score in 7 of the other 10 games we've played ?

 

Everton are gash.

 

Ha! Some Norwich fan was bigging him up on SSN less/fewer than 2 hours ago. Seems a bit odd. Off to Rangers in a straight swap with Stevie G? You can never play them together...

 

I hope we come back from this break in better shape than we've done after previous international breaks, as in most cases in recent seasons far from it being a chance to recharge the batteries, we've played pretty much as badly as we've done before, or when we've got points it hasn't been convincing (as shown by the Derby, QPR and Sheffield Wednesday games last season). The last time (and only time in the last four seasons) the break seems to have made a real difference is when we won convincingly at Wolves after being battered by Bournemouth in the previous game and picking up one point in the last four matches.

Is this a recent phenomenon or are we usually crap after international breaks?

 

Yeah, I don't really care about international football and I can't see me giving much ***** about this one. Especially considering the human rights abuses in Qatar.

November/December is also my favourite time of year to go and watch Watford.

 

5 goals worse than WW, Saints, Brighton and Leeds against whom we couldn’t score a single goal and barely looked like scoring ?

 

Rumours are the Norwich sporting director leaked Lampard as the front runner to find leaks in their hierarchy. Not sure if there's any truth in that but did seem an odd appointment on the face of it.

 

Surely Delia provides the sauce for all the leeks at Norwich?

 

Why? Seems odder to me to appoint Dean Smith, who has just failed at another, richer, PL club.

 

Has he failed though? Or have the owners just panicked?

 

Dean Smith certainly sends a signal. Maybe not the signal they initially hoped for...

 

Personally, I don't think he's that good.

They stayed up because Hawkeye and VAR failed to award a legitimate goal to Sheff Utd. This season they're around the same position so it would suggest last year finishing 11th was an anomaly.

 

Yeah they have spent loads of money. Only stayed in the league because of the hawkeye fiasco, despite spending over 100 million and having Jack Grealish. They spent another 100 million in the summer and currently sit on the same points as us. The fact that their terrible defensive record councides with the departure of John Terry does look like Dean Smith was a bit reliant on Terry.

 

Dean Smith is an awful appointment for Norwich. I don’t think he’s a bad manager - I just think 7 days between being sacked and then taking your next job is begging for failure.

I think there is a certain amount of time a manager should need out of the spotlight after being sacked - to get rid of any scar tissue or ill-feeling etc.

Mind you, Lampard was also a poor candidate. They were interested in the Bodo/Glimt manager and that’s the route I’d have gone down if they were the other 2 alternatives.

 

And yet people were falling over themselves to get Craig Shakespeare back here - he who was part of all of the above.

 

Possibly, I also think Steven Gerrard isn't a great manager.

 

I just don’t think we know yet, do we? The Scottish league doesn’t tell us much.

 

No and in all fairness 1 trophy out of 9 up there with one of the old firm isn't exactly great going. Especially when you consider Celtic have been having a bit of a transition and were very poor last season, yet St Johnstone won both cups.

 

They annihilated the league and did well in Europe tbf, and those will have factored more in the thinking than performances in the cups

 

Well Gerrards first two seasons were poor domestically – no trophies, miles off Celtic. He had the worst record in domestic tournaments than any Rangers manager. I wouldn't say that Gerrard was a failure at Rangers but he wasn't great. One trophy of 9 with a budget of £35M isn’t really good enough up there. Callum Davidson at St Johnstone won more silverware with a budget of 10p and a packet of chewing gum. They may have done okay in last years Europa but they were knocked out of the Champions League Qualifiers by 10 man Malmo this season.

 

Young, English and used to play for Liverpool. Gerrard is going to get an incredibly easy ride from the media.

 

The Dean Smith appointment is utterly bizarre, what exactly are Norwich looking at and expecting to be translated over to them? He’s had vast sums of money to spend, and managed one good season out of three. He’ll be lucky to get a third of Villa’s budget as and when Norwich are in the PL, so he’ll basically have to do a significantly better job at Norwich on a pound for pound basis for them to ever survive. Short version of that is Norwich are like an absolute extreme budget version of Villa squad wise, so I’m not sure what they’re hoping for.

As for Gerrard, Rangers only made it back to the SPL in 2016-2017, you can’t really judge his first couple of seasons, at the same time you can’t judge his success either because winning the league in Scotland and doing relatively ok in Europe proves precisely nothing.

 

It'll all start like a dream for the chief Canary, Delia. Why not? Me and Dean, Dean and me, the Dean and I!


"It was no infatuation, just a gradual graduation...", but as the season progresses she'll be humming a rather different, "humdrum days and a humdrum ways."


And by the end of the season it'll be a full-on disaster for the Smiths, for Delia and especially for Dean...

"I was looking for a job, and then I found a job and heaven knows I'm miserable now... "

 

Top draw old chap.

Works on so many levels.

 

drawer

 

Drawer.

 

Ouch.

 

PL Chairman Gary Hoffman is set to resign over the backlash for rubber stamping the Saudi takeover of Newcastle...athough he might not...who knows.

https://news.sky.com/story/premier-...-amid-clubs-fury-over-newcastle-deal-12470160

 

Geordies reckon that it's more to do with the ability of the Saudi-owned NUFC to pick up sponsorship deals... although the majority of them are pleased he's going - though sticking to form (ie deluded) they're also calling for the head resignation of the PL's Richard Masters...

EDIT: Incidently, it looks like some very sour grapes from Milan...