DE.

United have had some low moments since Ferguson left, but this must be the lowest. They are utterly abysmal.

Cantwell has talent for sure - enough to at times be a standout player in this division. I just don't think he has the consistency in his game to regularly bring that talent to the forefront and really drive the rest of the team. It's early days yet and I hope he proves me wrong, but I haven't seen that from him yet. Just occasional flashes of excellence which lets you know there is a real player there, but the fact it isn't consistent is why he's here rather than plying his trade in the league above. I do think having a sub-par group of attacking players surrounding him does hamper his chances of regaining that level of consistency from his earlier days though. You're right to say it isn't enough of an excuse on its own, but I think it's a factor in why we only see glimpses of what he's capable of at the moment.

There's a difference between a stellar cast and what we have. Do you consider Hedges, Dolan, Gueye, Ohashi, Weimann, Siggy and Buckley even an adequate supporting cast, let alone stellar? Most are occasionally useful at best. Cantwell isn't good enough to shine amongst what we have. If he was then he wouldn't be here in the first place. If you want to have higher expectations of him then okay, but I think you'll end up disappointed. As far as his wage is concerned, that would be something to take up with the recruitment department. From my perspective it's a flawed strategy to pay Cantwell to be our talisman when he doesn't have the level of ability to regularly rise above being surrounded by mediocre players.

It's a nice idea but he would need much better players around him to be a proper talisman. Even if he was setting up chance after chance we have nobody reliable to convert them, and he's not a Dack-type player who chips in with a lot of goals. According to wikipedia he scored 13 in 120 apps at Norwich, and that was at the peak of his career. Scored a decent amount for Rangers, but look at the opposition. Nowhere near even Championship level most weeks. Cantwell as talisman is a worthwhile idea if the club is going to invest in decent attacking options to surround him. A pointless endeavour if not, and it appears the latter is going to be the case.

Indeed so - but I'd say that's a reasonable expectation, that he's a Championship level midfielder with occasional flashes of PL quality. Based on that I think he's doing alright, no worse than I anticipated when he arrived anyway, and I'd say in terms of work ethic he's better than I was expecting. Fact is even when we did have genuine PL quality players in the team - the likes of Josh King, Tom Cairney, Harvey Elliot - we still didn't get anywhere because other areas of the team (and usually the manager) weren't right. I don't think Cantwell will come close to showing his true potential here because he doesn't have enough support, and his ability isn't so high that he can literally win games for a team regularly, like Amad was doing at Sunderland a couple of seasons back. The club would need significant investment in the attacking areas to really make use of a player like Cantwell, and we all know that ain't coming.

Can't say I have much sympathy - I had a gander on their forums and the usual toxic wastelands of social media when he was appointed. I was expecting largely negative reactions, but I'd say it was bafflingly 90% positive, get behind the Roon and the lads ffs energy. Anyone pointing out that it probably wasn't a good idea just getting shot down by the positivity patrol. I appreciate wanting to be optimistic but there was no reason to assume Rooney would work out there, and when stupid decisions like that are made the fans need to hold the board accountable, not bury their heads in the sand.

The Cantwell expectations are interesting. I always expected an inconsistent player who occasionally shows talent but only in fleeting bursts because... well, if he was consistent we wouldn't have been able to sign him for a bargain basement price at an age where he should be at his peak as a player. If it was just an attitude problem someone other than us would have taken a chance on him for the peanuts he was being sold for. Not too dissimilar situation to Siggy tbh. A lot of expectation, but the reality is that he wouldn't have come here on a free transfer if he was that good. Granted I would say Siggy just doesn't have the work ethic, whereas Cantwell does, but I also don't think he's a consistently good player either.

Unfortunately maintaining good form relied on us keeping clean sheets and that was never going to continue for long. Without investment in January we'll fall away to mid table by season's end - although admittedly that'll still be better than I was expecting when the session started.

Yep, the good old second half of the season collapse. As timely as our fax machine breaking on deadline day.

Certainly a strange situation at Stoke. They've had some decent squads, on paper, and decent managers... but it never works out for them. Am sure I read they haven't finished higher than 14th since being relegated. Have to admit I can't imagine too many self-respecting managers coming in to work under Walters.

Happy to take a point from that.

We're a team crying out for some fresh blood and reinforcements in January. Unfortunately we all know that won't happen.

I think we all knew we wouldn't keep continually winning by slim margins. Sometimes it'll go the other way. We need a proper striker to push things in our favour more often, but I highly doubt Venky's will give us what's needed to get a decent one.

True, and my memory is clearly a bit hazy, as we actually didn't start the season off well. From 19th August - October 4th we actually lost 6 out of 8 games. We had a mini-revival between October 7th - 29th November before it totally fell apart. JDT's tenure here really was bizarre from a results perspective.

JDT had a strange time here. I think a lot of sympathy towards him came from Venky's consistently pulling the rug out from under him, and it was understandable for that to be used as mitigation. With that said, we generally seemed to get worse as JDT's ideas became further implemented. He had a fairly strong start but we weren't immediately playing his style of football. We had a weirdly disjointed way of playing which was far from pleasing on the eye, but somehow propelled us to the very top of the division. You have to give him credit for that, as odd as it was. However, once our football started looking nicer, results stopped coming. We collapsed in the second half of his first season - there was a lot of insistence it would get better as the football looked nicer to watch, but it never did. In the summer Venky's continued to torpedo any chances of JDT succeeding with the style he wanted to play - so he offered to resign. Our idiot owners declined this, and decided keeping an unhappy manager in situ whose style clearly didn't suit the majority of the players he had to work with was the better option. Stupidity as usual. With that said, we somehow started off the season in quite good form and it wasn't really until November that the wheels totally came off. It was obvious JDT was not going to change his style (one assumes he was quite happy to get the sack, considering he wanted out in the summer), which seemed like it was being done in spite but perhaps it was just that JDT didn't know how to adapt or genuinely believed he could turn things around with his methods. We'll never know, but it was obvious at that point that a change needed to be made. As always with Venky's, it took them far too long to realise this and if not for the deadline day disaster and JDT's brutal and cutting assessment afterwards, who knows if he actually would have been removed? We were very lucky that Birmingham had sacked exactly the type of manager we needed, that he was still out of work, and that Waggott was seemingly a fan. A rare moment of good fortune for us. Ultimately I liked JDT for his honesty, he did well within the chaotic sphere that is Venkyworld, and I appreciated how he wanted to play football. It was never going to work in the long-term, though, and the end was an inevitability. It's a shame as I think with some backing we could and should have at least got a playoff finish, for the first time since we were relegated from the PL, during JDT's first season. The second season was never going to be a success, though, and JDT should have been let go the moment he made it clear he (understandably) no longer wanted to be the manager of the club.

Eustace came into a difficult situation. We were a divided club in free fall, lacking confidence and momentum. His remit was to keep us in the division and he did it - so whilst it was underwhelming at points and there were disappointing performances, we got over the line and Eustace then had pre-season to try and implement his ideas over a period of time without distraction (beyond the usual Venky's nonsense). So far this season, he's done an incredible job. We're overachieving and highly unlikely at this point to go down - a scenario I was genuinely fearful of before the season started and even during this season. He's the type of manager we've needed for a long time - pragmatic, defensive-minded and a great man manager. He deserves a lot more than he'll get from our owners.

We had a similar situation in L1 with Shrewsbury having an unexpectedly good season and they pushed us until near the end. They didn't go up via the playoffs and since then they've mostly finished between 15th and 19th, with their highest finish since that season being 12th.

Good to see somebody telling the brutal and honest truth, rather than pretending Martin is some kind of footballing visionary ahead of his time. A lot of people said Ipswich would get wrecked this season, but Kieran McKenna has made changes to his philosophy whilst trying to keep the core principles in place. Granted they've only won two games this season, but they haven't been a pushover and haven't had many resounding defeats - other than Man City early in the season, and West Ham away, the majority of their defeats have been by only one or two goals. There's still a good chance they go down, but they're competing and putting up a fight. Southampton are basically already down.

I rarely watch MOTD these days, but I watched it on Oct 26 and was left baffled as the pundits lavished praise upon Russell Martin after bottom of the table, winless Southampton lost again. You'd have thought they were top of the league and winning every match. It was like some kind of cult broadcast. Utterly bizarre and I'm clearly out of touch with the modern game. I thought the point of football was to win matches.

Big Mak is your typical 'cult hero' player. Not the most talented, some obvious flaws in his game, but works hard, charismatic and does genuinely contribute on some level. People often compare him to SG, but we didn't pay £5m for Gueye and he presumably isn't one of our top earners, so expectations between the two will clearly be different. Not saying the fee or wages are SG's fault, for the record - that was solely down to the stupidity of those in charge of recruitment at the time - but nonetheless it does make a difference how how the two are judged, whether fair or not.

Moyes has worked at some wonky clubs structure wise so I'm sure he could handle it, but he might be at a point where he doesn't want to deal with that nonsense anymore. I'd imagine he doesn't have to work if he doesn't want to. If Wolves are serious about wanting to stay up, though, then they'd do what's needed to get him in. Not too many candidates out there otherwise who I look at and think yeah, that would give them a proper chance. You never know though. Sometimes it clicks unexpectedly for certain managers and clubs. Really hoping Russell Martin keeps his job if he survives the season to relegate Southampton. They'll be much less of a threat in the Championship if he's still at the helm.

They obviously needed to remove O'Neil, the recent indiscipline suggests he'd totally lost control of the dressing room and their calender year performance has been awful. Backing him would have been the equivalent of accepting relegation at this point. Moyes would probably be their best bet of pulling themselves out of danger. Apparently OGS is the favourite in the betting, and he was at the Ipswich game... so either 2+2 being out together and getting 5, or the board were already planning to pull the trigger on O'Neil. Would be very classless to have the replacement manager there with the current manager in situ, but nothing would surprise me. If it is OGS, I'm not sure that would end well. No track record of being able to fix the kind of situation Wolves are in.

Certainly wasn't an intentional assist, but I suppose the distinction isn't made between intentional and unintentional! On the other hand he would have been credited with the goal if it'd bounced into the goal off his arse unintentionally, so... it is what it is.

BBC credited him with the assist.

I think you mean his sublime combo dummy-backheel assist 😎