DE.

With the ridiculousness of the Chile situation factored in as well I'm not sure there's ever been anything quite like this.

So it's not even December and he literally needs 4 goals to get to the mythical 20? Crazy.

Sometimes you can just tell from the opening minutes whether the opponents are up for it or not - Posh are 100% not. I feel sorry for the few hardy fans of theirs that attended - the Peterborough players are basically giving them the middle finger here and saying they can't be arsed. Great for us though. Could definitely bag another two or three in the second half as I can't see them suddenly getting motivated at this point, and even if we take our foot off the gas somewhat there are still goals to be had here.

Famous last words but I can't see Posh coming back into the game. They've had the appearance of a team wanting to get right back on the bus and go home since the opening minutes.

Like clockwork 😅

Posh don't look up for this at all. Think we could hit them for a few here if we keep it up.

Solskjaer overachieved relative to his experience and ability up until this season. Defeat in the Europa League final triggered a downward spiral he's been unable to halt. Ronaldo has provided some temporary relief but has also completely altered Solskjaer's original vision of how he wanted his team to play. He either wasn't strong enough to voice his opposition to the signing or simply never had enough power for his opinion to make a difference anyway. From Utd's point of view I don't think he should ever have been given the job permanently. A stronger boardroom would have ignored fan sentiment after the successful caretaker run, thanked Ole for his contribution and hired a manager that conformed to the club's vision of where they saw themselves going forward. I doubt United ever really had a clear vision, though, so appointing Ole was the easiest option

The MEN reporting Ole has finally been sacked. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/ole-gunnar-solskjaer-sacked-news-21962075 Shame, it's been a fun few weeks.

Always the way. One abysmal half, one decent half.

Brereton is going to end the season on about 40 goals at this rate

Enjoyed that. Always good to have no shots on goal for 45 minutes against the 18th placed team in the league,

More to the puzzle than just keeping the same lineup, it seems. Just shows how utterly poor Sheff Utd were a couple of weeks ago. Mowbray's luck always seems to come in just when he needs it.

I'm not sure AEW would be interested in going near Paige and her notoriously poor judgement, even if she was cleared. Nox would be a solid addition to their women's division, though.

I seriously think there is some credibility to the rumours WWE are shaping up to sell to Disney or another interested party. Everything they are doing at the moment points to that being the most likely scenario. Whoever buys the company will be purchasing an entity with some big names to build off, but not much insofar as roster bloat is concerned. They'll basically be able to shape the company in whatever way they desire. I guess that would make WWE an attractive proposition in many circles, particularly combined with record revenue and profits. Honestly though the WWE product just bores me at this point. Raw has been awful for a long time and Smackdown nowadays isn't much better, as they've played out the 'Tribal Chief' thing and there's no credible challengers left for Roman - except Drew McIntyre, who WWE have cooled off massively in the past few months. Now that they've nerfed NXT as well there's just nothing left in WWE that interests me.

Yeah Full Gear was pretty great. Sounds like Omega is done for a while now, though. Multiple surgeries required. Sounds like he's been working with significant pain, so credit to him for putting on some outstanding matches despite being injured. The good thing about AEW is that they are consistently building talent up, so even when big stars leave there are people ready and able to take those spots for themselves. Meanwhile in the hellscape that is WWE, a bunch more talent has been cut including the only recently called up to the main roster Hit Row, Tegan Nox, John Morrison & Drake Maverick. WWE have now released around 150 wrestlers over the course of the past two years - 80 this year so far - all whilst posting record profits. I've stopped watching Raw and Smackdown and am probably done with WWE at this point. The product doesn't interest me and the company as a whole is just so unethical and gross that I just don't want to support it anymore. It's AEW here on out for me!

Somebody posted meeting notes from one of their fans forums where a person from the club said directly that there were financial issues.

Really strange that they sacked Farke, after a win, without having a replacement lined up. Surely the whole reason you remove a manager before the international break is because you have somebody ready to take advantage of that time to come in and get to know the club, players, etc?

Just glad he's not our problem anymore.

Our form and performances don't really change whether Dack is there or not, which maybe says something.

Honestly I delegate pretty much everything to the assistant or coaches except for tactics, transfers, first team contract renewals and match day. I've never noticed any major issues as a result of doing that - only when I've changed an assistant or coach and the game didn't automatically reassign the new staff member to the previous tasks. Morale seems to mostly be affected by results, team selection and contract renewals - particularly if you piss off a team leader, but that can normally be mitigated by having a meeting with the disaffected players and picking the right options. It's not quite as straightforward as the past versions of the game, but there's no need to do any kind of deep diving into data, training, etc unless you really want to. Granted I am talking about FM18 here so it's possible that the newer versions have further complicated things!

Last FM I bought was FM18 and sadly don't have much time for it at the moment, but you can turn a lot of the more complicated stuff over to staff members and just focus on transfers, tactics and match days!

It was definitely a freak result. Part of the reason it was so shocking is because we so rarely lose by huge margins under this manager. The most aggrevating thing from my perspective was his inability to react to what was happening. Mowbray has been in the game long enough to know that when things are going that badly you move into damage limitation and see the game out at a respectable score. I can't understand why he let us get humiliated like that without even trying to shore up.

Thanks Rolo 🙂 I've probably been overly critical of Mowbray myself at times, particularly during certain match threads, and his interviews certainly don't help matters. Stripping away the emotion and attempting to look at it objectively, though, I find it hard to argue that he's been a bad manager for us. He's undoubtedly led us through some extremely poor runs of form, and matches like Wednesday are inexcusable, but in terms of the bigger picture he's just been a Bowyer-esque 'average' manager who has strengths and flaws, the latter of which don't improve over time but aren't so deep that they cause the club to completely nosedive like a certain couple of Scots who darkened our doors in 2010 and 2016. I'll hold my hands up and say I thought we'd be in a relegation fight this season. I genuinely expected us to struggle. Whilst I do think there is some merit to the suggestion the division is just full of poor teams, credit does still have to go to Mowbray for keeping us above the majority of those poor teams. We can talk about Mowbray getting lucky with BBD's form, but at the same time Mowbray was the one who took the gamble on spending £7m on the kid (still a ridiculous figure), so you can't really hand wave it away by calling it luck. He does need to consider the things he says to the media though. Lack of apology aside, some of his comments after Fulham - particularly inciting fans to argue with each other - were completely out of order. He's talked nonsense for most of the time he's been here so that just is what it is, but there's no excuse for some of the things he said on Friday.

I don't know enough about the situation at Villa to comment. It seems harsh from the outside but judging from the Villa forums they seem to accept it was the right decision, albeit they all seem to be pretty sad that it didn't work out. Not too dissimilar to how the reaction would probably have been to Mowbray's departure if it had been confirmed 18 months ago.

Just a reminder that insults aimed at posters are not acceptable - I'm not somebody who likes to hand out bans, so please consider this a fair warning that whilst debate is encouraged, personal attacks on fellow posters are not.