Eddie

No, it isn't solid. It's pretty dumb, to be honest. He's had several years of being very successful at several clubs - a couple of whom play at a higher standard than we do. He had one very brief spell with a recently relegated side (who had just come off being arguably the worst side in Premier League history), had no input into their squad, and struggled slighty. Even then, it was mostly draws. What's more, he's shown himself to be very capable of getting smaller sides to compete at a higher level, something that we are in desperate need of. So, if you want to judge a manager because they have one failure on their resume, or because England is all that matters, then by all means go ahead. But as a club currently sitting towards the bottom of the Championship, I think you will quickly run out of suitable candidates if you apply that kind of filter. Jose Mourinho isn't turning up. Then again, Mourinha has had a couple of bad spells at clubs, including in England, so I guess we wouldn't want him anyway.

You're obsessed with this short spell. Why does that completely outweigh everything that he had done previously?

Seen a lot of him?

I would love Rooney, or any other type of really high profile appointment that would bring extra eyes and outside scrutiny. That's why I can't see it happening.

I'm not sure we have a group of players for any style. We need a manager who can get us to survive this season and then oversee a complete rebuild. We would benefit from a manager with a clear vision on how they want to play.

Will Still checks a lot of boxes. He speaks French and English, he's unemployed, and they could kind of argue that he fits the overall project of recruiting potential and trying to develop it - even in the managerial position. He did incredibly well in France, but the failure at Southampton is concerning. He might be the best of a bad lot when looking at the list of likely candidates. We can likely eliminate names like Duff and Rooney.

Except they do. For various reasons, I feel very confident in all of the statements that I made.

In fairness, all reports point to the fact that Mowbray was allowed to spend, but decided not to. When and why aren't things that you can figure out at this club. The reality is that Gestede and Pasha probably hold good sway with the owners. If they wanted to spend more, they probably could. The project that they have presented is one of a 'financially sensible run football club'. They don't talk about success on the pitch. Now, it's possible that this is a directive from the owners, but that would imply that they are seriously invested in anything to do with this football club. The more likely scenario is that P&G have pitched the idea and are justifying everything else by claiming success on the financial front. They're probably also using some Trumpian economics to present those incredible savings and improved revenues.

You know what, that's OK. If they actually start accumulating talent and spending money, then I'm not going to be critical. We're not 1 or 2 pieces away; we are 7 or 8 pieces away. Get talent in the door and work from there.

There are drugs for that.

He's part of one of our problems. Our biggest problem is the owners and the incompetence of our senior leadership. Until that problem is solved, we have no chance of being a properly run football club. However, we now have a second problem, which is a lack of quality in our manager and our playing squad. Both of those have been caused by problem number one, but we saw under Eustace and JDT that a good manager can reduce the impact of the bad ownership and senior management. Any good manager will eventually leave, but we don't have to be totally resigned to the fact that we will have awful managers until our owners change. Ismael is an awful manager. The tactics he sets us up with never work. Our players don't seem to be on the same page. He also never makes substitutions or changes during a match that positively impact the outcome. In fact, most matches he just stands on the touchline and watches matches drift by. He shouldn't get a pass just because our owners and various 'heads of' are sinking the ship. He is watching the ship go down, and, instead of throwing lifevests into the water, he is standing at the helm steering us directly towards an iceberg.

If Ismael isn't sacked after this, then we will have to accept the fact that he is unfireable.

A lot of our players sign reasonable contracts. 2-3 year deals with an option are pretty standard these days, but we just can't get them to renew. We seem to be operating with a mindset that players will routinely renew within the final 6 months of their deal on similar terms (if not worse terms). That just doesn't happen these days.

Except you should be. That's just kicking the can down the road and completely goes against the approach that our leadership claims to have. We should be using every window to sign young players, especially in a period with an ever-closing P&S window. Based on everything Gestede says, we have the same budget for every window. That means that we can never expect a future window where we will realistically be able to sign 6 or 7 players. In order to build a good squad, we have to sign 2 or 3 players every window. Each time we don't we set ourselves back 12 to 18 months. Not only that, but if the focus is on signing young players then we have to accept 2 things. The first? It takes time for them to develop. The second? Some of them will be misses (as is the case with any signing, but the risk is exponentially greater with younger players). So, what you're endorsing is a pragmatic approach for a club that is sensibly run. But we aren't sensibly run and we can't be pragmatic. We will lose more players this summer on free transfers. We will be faced with having to sign 5 or 6 players JUST to get our squad back to the numbers that we started this season with. If the club had any sense about them, they would know that every window requires 4/5 signings and they would plan that out weeks and months ahead of time. But we can't be giving them an out by saying 'the sensible thing to do is to bring in a couple of players to get us out of a relegation scrap'. To be perfectly honest, if the commitment is to implement some kind of quasi-Bournemouth/Brentford/Brighton model, then we shouldn't even be that concerned about relegation. The focus should be on squad building, amassing young talent, and knowing that, in the long run, that will deliver results on and off the pitch. I would actually find that messaging somewhat refreshing. The problem is, we don't have a strong enough commitment to anything. Our strategy is determined by whichever way the wind blows based on a bit of public pressure, the right agents making calls, and whichever side of the bed a couple of key people wake up on. But signing a couple of quick-fixes to a relegation scrap this season guarantees problems next year.

This is the problem, and it is why the situation in which we find ourselves is so dangerous. I can see how the model can be sold to the owners. I can even see how it leaves them confused as to why the supporters are so unhappy. Reduce the wage bill. Invest in young players. Make a profit off of those players. Reinvest. Build a good squad. We've done the first bit. We've kind of done the second bit. We've definitely done the third bit. We've never done the fourth bit. And we've never been further from the 5th bit. What worries me is that our current senior management will spin our current predicament and leave our owners feeling as if they are on the right path. They'll call the fans ungrateful. They'll say the players who have wanted out are ungrateful. But they're here to steady the ship and guide us on our path. If you didn't follow football much, knew nothing about the sports, and had minimal to no interest in a relatively small investment within your portfolio...well...you might just buy it.