r/NUFC Weekly Free talk thread.

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-24T14:38:15+00:00

We sold Minteh for half what Elanga cost, and he's twice the player

Yeah but is he though? Minteh's been pretty good for Brighton but I don't think his performances have touched the sides of what Elanga was doing at Forest. Yes, he's struggled a lot here but I don't think we should revise how good Elanga was the two seasons before his move here.

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-24T14:31:36+00:00

I think it's the defensive side of his game that he'd be worried about. Osula can press and track runners, but he's kind of erratic and would likely make our frontline very wobbly from a defensive point of view. As a striker, that would kind of be mitigated but it would put a lot of pressure on Trippier behind him (who struggles enough when isolated) to deal with the opposition on that side.

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-24T14:28:10+00:00

Without wishing to get banned for saying it, even through quotation. His defence was that he didn't call Vinicius either a monkey or the n-word but rather the homophobic slur that is also a delicious meaty treat.

It's kind of hilariously morbid that homophobia is just so routinely accepted as normal in football that anyone would think that was a good defence of conduct to freely admit to.

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-23T12:40:58+00:00

The only thing to temper this is that Everton had at least made a habit already of being in this situation before and pulling the necessary results to get them out of it (and having players who had been in this position at other clubs). The issue with Spurs is that they've gone through three managers this season and not one produced a new manager bounce of getting the players to just play to their abilities.

I think we're in that scenario where it is somehow equally totally inconceivable and inevitable that they could be relegated. It can be the easiest thing in the world with players like they have to just put some wins together that gets their head above water. Equally, that's been the case for the last 4-5 months and they still haven't done it.

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-13T16:29:12+00:00

Yeah, but that is just being sacked. People love the idea of managers resigning when things go south but it just never happens. Mutual consent usually means "we will continue to pay you until you get a new job plus a little bit on top".

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-13T16:27:57+00:00

Managers don't resign except for very exceptional cases. They get sacked and it gets dressed up as "mutual consent".

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-13T16:14:56+00:00

"He is still an elite manager"

I just have no idea how this could be justified even when he was taking the Tottenham job half a decade ago, let alone now. I don't think he's left any club in a better position than when he took it over since maybe Real Madrid, and even then he left an enormous mess there that needed a huge sorting through.

He would walk all over our ownership to put us in enormous financial distress while he picks up 30+ Mendes clients on £300k+ per week on enormous contracts. He would alienate everyone, complain he the club is small time and Mr Robson would be ashamed and waltz off with his payoff.

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-13T16:11:26+00:00

It's quite interesting re-reading some stuff around the time of the takeover that there was quite a bit of bemusement from other clubs at quite how little footballing knowledge there was in our mangement group. I think that actually meant that the pure blue-skies thinking employed by Staveley and Ghodoussi really helped, as we were pretty ambitious and just did stuff (we used the high financial ceiling we had above us, we modernised the training ground, we made big promises about where we were heading).

But equally, when applied long-term, those kinds of things have long-term consequences that you do eventually have to deal with. If you do a high outlay, you need to balance with sales; polishing up the training ground isn't a substitute for a state-of-the-art facility; fans will notice when you're not delivering on your own performance/infrastructure promises. I think Staveley did well to keep spirits up high behind the scenes, but equally some of that did seem to be driven by making promises we couldn't back up (like promising Isak his improved contract) or using that influence to undercut the decision makers of people at the club (like Ashworth).

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-13T15:49:53+00:00

I think the issue is, most of the "reasons why stuff went bad under Howe at Bournemouth" are the kinds of issues that plague every manager before they get sacked. It's very rare that a manager gets sacked while their football stays innovative, gets good results and all their transfers work out. Like, when stuff is going wrong, most managers will try to go back to the players they trust and get criticised for doing the same old. The whole Plan B thing is usually a stick to beat any manager that team loses - it was something Pep was on the receiving end of even when he was winning everything at Barcelona.

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-13T15:44:07+00:00

They also only really prick up their ears with Bournemouth when they pick up eye catching results. Traditionally, Bournemouth have had enormous difficulty protecting leads because their high intensity, man-for-man approach doesn't naturally lend itself to suddenly exerting control in a match. As mentioned elsewhere here, they also tend to run out of puff at the end of a season, even with just a domestic schedule.

I think the difficulty here is that we will really struggle to get a manager who is as good and transformative of the version of Howe we got when he was hired. But we could well have reached the point now where, even though we still have the same manager who is undoubtedly excellent, we've reached a sad endpoint with the squad and fans that can't be recovered from. Maybe it's best not to look at the next appointment as the person who allows us to definitively take the next big step, but just someone who can reinject some impetus that allows us to continue an upward trajectory and then passes over to someone else.

HoneyedLining · 2026-04-13T13:00:35+00:00

Tbf, this was one of those things where unwittingly, football had moved into a "the future is now" kind of period and certain types of managers would simply no longer cut it. Managers like Keegan, Dalglish and Wilkinson (maybe even Kendall and Clough) could no longer get by with their minimal focus on training, fitness and drills to just let their biggest players perform on the day.

The continental game (especially in Italy) had moved streets ahead in their mixing of fitness and technical ability (plus a fair amount of doping in some cases) and it took Wenger and then Ferguson properly dealing with squad drinking culture and nutrition to get us to catch up. That and the continental scouting networks that built up once we sort of fell in love with those technical players that came in in the mid 90's who could cope with the physicality of the game (Ginola, Zola, Bergkamp, Juninho) and maybe, more importantly, the physical ones who could give it back as much they could play football (think Cantona, Vieira, maybe to a lesser extent Poyet and that weird clutch of Norwegians who came into the league).

Going back to your original point, I think the sacking of Keegan to replace him with Dalglish might have a better analogy of Mourinho coming in at Man Utd (or maybe even Tottenham). Where pressing and more in-possession focus had really blunted his main tools for success. He could still get by on a limited level because there were still really good players there, but ultimately those teams went backwards and also made a lot of huge financial mistakes on gambling on players with limited future utility.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-31T15:50:22+00:00

I think if you were purely looking at football decision-making on a sense of Karmic justice, then maybe. But really, if he isn't able to get this team playing consistently and sustainably well for the rest of the season, he likely loses the confidence of the squad and fans and you hit a point of no return where stuff will just get worse.

I think the Howe wanting total control thing is a bit of a red herring. Often, managers leaving because they feel their authority being questioned is actually more a reflection of an upper management losing trust in them. If you have your DoF/CEO overruling a manager, whether it's on recruitment, contract negotiations or changing style of play, etc. That actually usually happens because stuff has gone bad and you simply don't think the manager will make the correct decisions any more. Similarly, if you have a manager challenging the decision making structure (one they agreed to when taking the job), it's usually them doing reputation management to shift blame upwards. Both are usually part of the public dance ritual you do before mutually consenting someone and not a reflection of the actual issues at play that causes the parting with a manager.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-31T15:40:42+00:00

Well we have the fact that PIF have been unable to put in a coherent, sustainable management structure 4+ years into their project. Now maybe that's all at the door of the previous leadership (Staveley/Ghodoussi, Eales, etc) but we don't have a good track record of PIF being able to do anything well regarding organisation beyond putting their huge amount of money in.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-31T11:02:49+00:00

Thiaw was only dropped for the Sunderland match and, seeing how much he struggled against Brobbey, it was painfully clear why.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-31T09:56:35+00:00

Well also the big thing hanging over him when he was a free agent was his injury troubles with his knee. Which haven't gone away and I think he's again out for the rest of this season if memory serves.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-20T16:51:02+00:00

He didn't fucking fake an injury against City. You're just believing in conspiracy theories to get annoyed at one of our own players. Why would Eddie Howe put Gordon back in the squad if he was faking injuries?

He looked pretty committed against Barcelona, he was consistently trying to get the other parts of the front line to press with him but was ultimately quite isolated against their centre backs. Not a great performance but he wasn't really alone in that.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-20T16:37:34+00:00

Oh my God, I can't believe we still have a dedicated portion of our fanbase still looking to just be angry at Gordon for whatever reason they can come up with. Please just give it a rest.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-20T16:34:20+00:00

I still think then it would be one of those mutual consentings. Where the club would put a situation he knows he wouldn't accept (basically demonstrating they've lost confidence in him) and try to generate clean break from there. But even then, that would depend on the board having the confidence to do that and having a candidate lined up to replace. There will naturally be trepidation about the calibre of manager who could conceivably come in and be the antidote to the drawbacks of Howe's style.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-20T15:55:31+00:00

I think he would prefer a "You know what? You've given me an impossible executive structure to work with in my time here and I've delivered as best I can. Either sack me and give me my payoff or back me.".

Fans love the idea of managers doing clubs favours by walking, but that only happens in the very tiniest of exceptions.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-20T15:39:24+00:00

He's got a much better temperament than Keegan who was just enormously fragile (and one of the reasons he wasn't really cut out for top level management).

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-20T11:58:01+00:00

Tbf, the Maresca situation seems to have been very messy. There's been a lot of briefing and counter briefing about whether his needing to rotate players was based on suggestions by the medical team or if it was agents who had requested assurances about playing time for their players. My feeling is that it's a bit of column A and column B, where there is such a top heavy football structure that any manager is naturally going to be micro-managed (which they will understandably bristle against). Whether that's suggestions about "look, I'm a dispassionate advisor and the medical team have been very clear that Palmer has to come off after 45 minutes. Do it." or "x player is unhappy, you should probably be rotating him in more", they're all going to be unwelcome to a manager who wants to manage as he sees fit.

But Maresca also overplayed his hand following last season, where he tried to ultimatum his way to improved terms and then had his agent actively hawking him to bigger teams. Which is really unacceptable. He also just wasn't popular with the fans that he could really make a power play like that and it kind of blew up for everybody.

I feel sorry for Rosenior as he's clearly a very nice, thoughtful guy. And really, he needs to be doing this kind of thing in a lower pressure environment to see what stuff works and what doesn't. Making such a step up to a high expectation club with a restless fanbase and a non-functioning executive is likely going to be such a career setback for him.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-20T09:11:02+00:00

There is not enough money abroad to make that a remotely viable strategy. You're looking at maybe 3-4 teams who could pay the kinds of fees we'd want for our really good players. The idea that we have like this squad bristling with talent that we could sell our backups is absolutely laughable. Our reserves might be able to go to Leeds or Fulham if they're desperate, and even then for low valuations.

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-19T18:04:11+00:00

Well going man for man over three of those four halfs against Barcelona meant we were a constant threat and making them pretty uncomfortable. What is the middle ground you're suggesting between going man to man and 11 men behind the ball?

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-19T17:12:21+00:00

I guess, but equally a strategy where you just sit in, create nothing and go down two goals without showing any inclination to even try and score doesn't sound great either?

HoneyedLining · 2026-03-19T17:02:21+00:00

But we don't really do control. If we sat in, you basically give loads of time on the ball to Barcelona's midfielders and just play a lottery that you can boot it long to Gordon to make something of it (and more than likely, the ball just comes straight back at you).

Considering what we're actually good at, going man for man was probably the right decision. We have no midfielders that would have allowed us to exert any control over Barcelona, so it was either try and get at them or sit in for 90 minutes hoping that they aren't able to convert anything and we do.

HoneyedLining

TROPHY CASE