Pezo

I found it funny when the unenthusiastic participation in the EE (I think it was the Bournemouth game) was about 25% and they booed themselves.

I bet there is something that would link it to fluid dynamics especially turbulent flow, that's essentially what it is, a melting pot of songs where some drown out others. I've stood just behind the S82 lads quite a bit so far, they start a lot of songs that don't get outside there "group". If you think about it it's very democratic, if you can hear more than 1 song sing the one you want, if everyone agrees by singing the same song then it gets loud/popular. It's messy and has its worts but works eventually. Just keep going.

As someone relatively new to the "new" EE having moved there this season it's quite an interesting place and not what it seems from the outside. There's no shouting down of others chants, you can't hear any of them TBH - there seems to be about 5 different places songs start from in the corner and at any one time the EE might have 3 different songs going at the same time, it's really only the drum or megaphone that brings it all together. If your outside you would only hear the ones that get to 3 or more of these smaller groups. I don't think anyone in there thinks of themselves as superfan, that would be something others project on to them because they are the noisy singers, from what I have seen they mostly like having fun, want to create/enjoy the atmosphere and want to enjoy the football (mostly in that order). Booing other parts of the ground is stupid but it's very much part of the type of humour I think - tongue in cheek, self depreciation, gallows humour much like the "how shit must you be" song but in the context of the order of preference of fun, atmosphere then football it kind of makes sense if a bit counter productive, same as the same Joey Barton songs 5 mins into the game. Having moved there from the middle of the SS I certainly prefer it to having some obnoxious moaning old bloke sat behind me that thought he was the next next Andy Gray but knew **** all about football. Despite the results this season I have always walked away having enjoyed myself more if also a little horse.

Forget 2 up, if they had gone in at half time at 0-1 the place would have erupted. Let's face facts for at least 35 mins of the first half we weren't in a game against the worse side in the league. We actually seemed to give them the belief they could win the game on a platter, they are a league 1 side and we looked non league for a lot of that game.

I feel like I've seen the club release this one before.

Do they really? When it comes to using taxes paid by people on minimum wage that maybe don't even like football to support a club owned by billionaires as a play thing I think that's somewhere I would draw the line.

After a bit of reflection I'm actually surprised this hasn't happened before safe standing, there are commercial interests at play and money to be made so I'm genuinely surprised it hasn't happened sooner.

Start by doing it in the upper tier, see how it goes.

In reality the only player you list there that's worth more to another team than to us would be HNM. Bentley might go to the prem but GK don't trade for much so is worth more to us than selling him. Kalas is 28 clearly never going to step up to the prem so we might get £8m max from a club with parachute payments but all the yo-yo clubs seem to have a decent defence at the moment so unlikely, everyone else can only afford 2 bags of crisps an curly wurly so we will get more value out of him staying. Wells at 31 isn't going to the prem and isn't breaking into a parachute payment club either so likewise not likely to get any money. The other challenge with with selling players is the likely lower contract offer they will get elsewhere so we will have to fund the difference, not sure about anyone else but the idea of paying Wells to score against us for QPR doesn't seem appealing.

He does seem to have a lot of strange interactions with the club outside of what we see through press conferences ect.

A derby? Isn't Wolves closer to us?

I think if they came up this season they would have more money.

It's going to take time to put the correct people in the correct place on and off the pitch.

I would be really interested to know what his plan is and what are the things he is look for that will actually make a difference on the pitch. What does he mean by giving the players more responsibility? What's the biggest problem he is working on in the squad, what actions is he actually taking? Does he have a framework that he is trying to implement and/or refine or is it more ad-hoc than that?

Yes in hindsight we made a mistake by spending money on trying to get promoted a couple years ago and fell short, now we don't have the money to challenge at the opportune moment. For those economic experts I guess this is standard fiscal policy and as we don't have a money tree can't do counter fiscal policy.

It is a joke, it's basically 3 premier league teams and one basket case of a premier league side (that will still make the playoffs) playing against a mix of 4 traditionally average championship sides, 5 plucky underdogs doing well (I've had to stretch that definition quite a bit) and all the rest are championship basket cases to different degrees.

If we don't win things will start to get very ugly. Can the players handle the pressure.

Ole's, at the wheel

Does that highlight when we "went for it" and we all thought that it was natural progression?

Yes it's quite a dilemma, the clear problem is we don't have enough good enough players. If we're thinking of sacking the manager the conclusion we need to have come to is that this isn't ever going to work, the next question is who to replace him with, for me I can see this working but not this or next season, I don't like it but I can see it. As the known problem is the players and we can't just sack them all what else can we do other than bide our time and hope not to get relegated. A different manager might get a short term bounce but that's far from guaranteed with this group of players. For those that want to see us win every week and watch entertaining football, I just can't see anything other than "come back in 2 years and see how we're doing".

While I don't disagree I always wonder what the unintended consequences are, wouldn't that just encourage these clubs to spend even more money, it would basically give all prem teams a blank cheque. Before parachute payments we had the same teams going up and down but the argument was that the prem was uncompetitive. What parachute payments have done is push that uncompetitive situation down on the championship.

I just don't know what to do with Vyner. Too weak to play central defender, stands off and doesn't read the game well enough out wide, center midfield and the game passes him by due to poor positioning. From where he was in 2018 and playing for Plymouth on loan and getting rave reviews he seems to have not progressed, always being just under our required standards.

We have been completely overwhelmed by both Bournemouth and West brom sides putting in 3rd gear performances within a week of each other with Fulham looking considerably better than us and us only looking competitive through maximum effort. Are parachute payments making more of a gap than ever before, are they now a guarantee of finishing in the top 6 rather than a very big helping hand?

This. When CEO's ruin things they ruin things for a long time. Players can ruin a games, Managers can ruin a season, C level execs ruin things for years, owners can ruin things for decades.

I feel like I have failed to live up to being a good OTIBer.