Ian M

That was only the target for Nige to be allowed to continue in role. Every chance since then they have dialled back expectations.

Whether it was the more relaxed setting or the comparison with those alongside him on the top table, I thought he displayed a quality that hadn’t been at the forefront to this point, charisma. As good as someone can be from a technical aspect, personal skills are also key in a leader and I feel more confident in him than I did already before tonight.

I was wondering at the time if the players had worked out they could create a little space in that pocket that TGH received the ball as Knight had had similar time and space a couple of minutes earlier in near enough the same spot.

Not with my eye-sight.

Actually, only Cardiff and Millwall better our 7 goals from set pieces this season. Unfortunately, only Sheffield Wednesday have fewer open play goals than our 9.

Wasn't that more a case of Zak's touch being heavy when intercepting rather than overplaying?

Anis grew in confidence the longer he was on today. Hopefully Manning is the man to get him firing as he has the raw ingredients to be a superstar for us.

Price is agreed already.

Speaking as one of the "SL was wrong to sack NP" posters, can I just say that of all the candidates we could have thereafter appointed, Manning was my number 1 pick. No back-tracking for me, it will be here, quotable, probably by MRR, whenever anyone chooses to in the future The problem with pigeon-holing people is there are vastly different opinions within each group you (general you, not you you downendcity) create. It's why I pay no heed to people accusing us of being a fickle bunch, we often are not, it's just different people being vocal at different times depending on circumstances.

No idea. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer though.

FA Cup: Barnsley expelled for fielding ineligible player in first-round replay - BBC Sport Easy for the FA to kick Barnsley out for breaking this rule. I note they weren't so keen to act vs West Ham.

I made the same observation, finishing ahead of Iceland and Bosnia. Seems they are no longer the automatic whipping boys they once were.

.....and whoever thought winning "matches" was too ambiguous and decided to introduce "games of football" to the football manager's lexicon.

But other than all that, what else does he even do? Unconvinced I dunno, I saw someone refer to @Marina's Rolls Royce as the "Matt Smith is Awful" guy last week

Does that take us off the bottom of the group now?

Am I the only one who thinks he bears more than a passing resemblance to Neil Patrick Harris?

Suddenly the sacking of Pearson makes more sense. As a regular reader of OTIB, Jon immediately thought "if Robbored thinks we need to keep Nige then we'd better get rid ASAP!"

Cutting their heads off to spite their face?

If they played in UEFA competitions they’d have to adhere to FFP regulations. That includes sponsorship deals rated at market rate. So good luck squaring off Ronaldo’s £173m a year wages on crowds of 20k.

Whilst I won’t think this was fair on Nige, I don’t plan to give the club shit for it as having made the decision to switch and lacking players to adapt to the desired style, it would be insane not to back him in January!

I fully expect the board to back Manning in January, sorry I do of course mean “bring forward Summer business”, if nothing else to try and prove themselves right with the change of hierarchy. With that in mind I think the central midfield is the area that potentially limits us the most from what @Harry described as how Manning has had his previous teams playing, I’ll call it Manningball. This area also sees a few contracts expiring in the Summer I believe, so would also make sense in a “bringing forward Summer business” point of view. That would also give us the remainder of the season to see how the rest of the positions adjust to Manningball once we have midfielders able to cope with that style and can potentially provide clarity to our actual Summer business. I am thinking a CM and a CAM, possibly a second CM too if they don’t feel they have any midfielders within the club able to fulfil the CM roles.

The like button has always bothered me as it doesn't fit with the theme of OTIB so I changed it the other day now we don't have Tom around to fix everything for us PS - If the forum breaks at any stage, you ain't seen me, right?

Yep, you cannot get much more ITK on that topic than PSR.

I believe in the Summer TC will only have 12 months remaining on his contract? If this is the case we will probably be looking to sell him.

I think it was me