As far as it went, mostly fine I guess, but

1. I can't believe the dig at the fans about giving up. How is that helping? He's just got to stop riling the fan base, as telling people you're depending on they're s**t is just not a good way to go. I know he did say "it starts with us", but still, this is just really unwise and frankly unnecessary. Especially when the team has served up utter garbage for most of the season, after the fans were sold the big one about how great we were going to be from last summer and beyond. How is it remotely possible for the fans to keep singing like crazy when the team folds up like a house of cards under the faintest of pressure? We can all see with our own two eyes how f**king s**t we have been. And this was blindingly obvious from Watford at home, and then continuously as the season progressed. Just stop blaming and winding up the fans Stu. Can't you make the point a different way - "we're going try our best, we need the fans to stay with us".

2. His position on recruitment was just s**t. No, it wasn't "alright". I totally get that he can't say "yeah, I signed a load of old s**te for 60 mil, whoopsie" as he wants to preserve value. But he could have said there are lessons to be learned? It just felt like there was a lack of honesty with how he dealt with it, and that worries me as we go into another massive summer. We were told lessons were learned. But obviously they weren't. Has anything been learned this time? Surely he could have said that with hindsight maybe we didn't sign the kind of player that we most needed without harming value? Something - anything - to signal that he acknowledges that he signed 9 or so players and not one of them has worked, loads of them were in positions that were not a priority, and none of them brought the physicality that he himself said we needed - this was after all one of the key lessons we had supposedly learned from the time before. No, none of that, pretty much straight into f**king whining about limited resources and how hard it is, no mention of the fact that he lashed away 30m on two left wingers we didnt need and a striker who played as a defensive right midfielder because he's totally incapable of playing as a strike. There's 30m and three sets of wages I've freed up for you right there Stu, will that help sign a replacement for Skipp or Emi?

Other than that, mostly fine I suppose, despite some Brentian pronouncements. Or more accurately perhaps, what I would have expected him to say, or what else could he have conceivably said? As I've said before, I think we have little option but to let him have at it this summer, given how short the close season is. Then we just need to hope like hell its a Buendia + Pukki summer, not a Sarge + Tzolis summer.

Posted By: Under soil heating, May 26, 17:11:21