DE.

The regression of our squad and style of play is scary. It's going from bad to worse. Bottom of the league in xG means it's more than just our strikers being bad, we barely create any decent chances either. What concerns me is that the way JDT wants to play might be beyond the reach of our club with the resources available - both in terms of money and staff.

Rotten... just sums everything up at the moment, from the boardroom to the manager to the players. So much for the players being galvanised by having useless idiots in the boardroom, lmao. Not so much. Thomas now realising he's getting fuck all assists for the next few months, aiming towards Vale and Gallagher.

They'll exhaust every legal option available to them. It'll become an absolute money pit for the PL and when certain people's bonuses start to come under threat there will be a settlement of some kind. As @DanLadsays, probably a massive record fine, but one that to City's owners is peanuts. The PL recoups legal losses and looks like they went in hard on City, City get to carry on as normal. Handshakes and smiles all around.

There were the same comments when UEFA tried to do this. City will be able to hire the most expensive lawyers available and drag this out for years, scrutinising every word to the finest of details. Much like with UEFA, my guess is that they burn through a ton of cash in legal fees but ultimately get off the hook, or with a slapped wrist.

Worth remembering that, according to GB, JDT fully endorsed Hirst as our number 1 target over the summer. So, he has some ground to make up in terms of his judgement.

We don't need another wide forward who rarely scores, so why add him to the wage bill when that money could be put towards an actual striker who scores goals? They don't tend to come cheap so any money not wasted on players we don't need should be going towards that.

Some really, really weird comments from Nathan Jones after another defeat today. Sounds like he's lost the plot. Judging from their forums, Southampton fans almost universally despise him.

Doesn't matter, I'm not talking about whether he'll be sacked or not, only how difficult it'll be for Klopp to reintegrate the players into his style now that they've lost confidence in it. This has happened at every club he's been at and he's never been able to recover from it. He should obviously be given the chance to do so, but don't be surprised if it simply doesn't turn around.

Don't think Klopp has lost the respect of his players, but does seem to have lost their confidence. Not sure how many times a Liverpool player can come out and say "it's not good enough" before their fans lose patience.

I admire your optimism!

Now out of the top six.

Tend to agree. Also GB referenced "internal" issues numerous times in his interview, so clearly this wasn't just a case of EFL pettiness. Just seems far too convenient for this all to be due to pedantry. Surely the EFL would be hammered with lawsuits if they were this silly over documentation. I refuse to believe no other club in this window alone hasn't sent across a document with a slight mispelling on a name. I don't believe that for a second.

Not exactly. We missed out on two players for two separate reasons, one being a missing document and the other, from memory, being an unsigned document plus something else. So, not quite as simple as a single document being missing, and this level of incompetence does fall within the remit of the CEO to be responsible for and address. As for Waggott being in Birmingham, not a problem if there are competent people in place. Unfortunately there clearly aren't.

This thread and indeed the site wouldn't be so active if we all thought it was a joke club that can barely function. What would be the point in following it? I would assume we all want to believe that, despite the nonsense, we mostly function normally. And based on recent league finishes there is some level of credibility to the idea, regardless of anything else that's going on. The fact you were hopeful that two employees, who are both in reality total novices at their jobs, could do enough to turn the club around, for example, suggests that you don't think it's that bad. I imagine we're all in that position where we really want to believe it isn't. But this kind of horrendous mistake suggests it probably is, and JDT/Broughton, with their very limited experience, are pushing a boulder that is far too heavy up a hill that is far too steep.

Honestly just think it's a consequence of hiring incompetent people. We've probably gotten away with it a few times over the years - largely helped by barely doing any business in January anyway - but the times we have been caught out have come with some severe consequences. We had to pay Kean over £1m, from memory, after he resigned. There was the Derek Shaw going rogue incident with Henning Berg that cost us another million plus. Incompetence led to us ending up under an embargo in 2014/15. We hired Owen fucking Coyle and that effectively got us relegated. We've let countless players now run their contracts down and leave on a free - and don't @ me with "the club can't do anything about players running down their contracts". Bullshit. Other clubs don't have 5-6 major assets all leaving for nothing, so why do we? Incompetence and ineptitude is ingrained into the club - we've just gotten used to it over time. We try to ignore it and pretend we're following a "normal club". It's when big things like this happen that it becomes too obvious for anyone to ignore.

It's such a weasely statement in general, genuinely embarrassing. If you aren't going to apologise then just state the facts and leave it there. Don't play the woe is us routine, because, as you say, we aren't thick. Well, not all of us anyway. Did see two comments on FB calling upset fans "pathetic", but as I've said in the past, some people are fans of being fans of the club, not fans of the club, and there is a difference.

A couple of nights off, and we won't be tolerating it going forward. People are wound up enough as it is.

Right, so you're taking our current spot with 18 games to go and comparing it with where we finished last season. Very sensible.

In what respect are we having a better season? This is where we were this time last season:

Agree, Gallagher has given nobody any reason to think he'll score regularly. Lad is not up to it at all. Put him up front at City and I doubt he'd even get into double figures. He just doesn't have that natural striker's instinct. Of the only two at the club that do, one is off on a free at the end of the season and the other is an attacking midfielder still recovering from two horror injuries. LOB would have been great, but unless he's able to bag 10-15 goals on top of running the midfield it would not have been enough.

Penny for JDT's thoughts. Anyone with a shred of pride in who they work with and who they work for would be making an exit plan right about now.

O'Brien alone wouldn't have been enough anyway, but yeah, what a fuck up. Much like when Derek Shaw "went rogue", though, I imagine the culprit will continue on free of consequence. Absolutely zero accountability at this club.

Managed a few assists in that time at least. Gallagher meanwhile... 🗿

Considering how long we've known we'll need striking reinforcements - a long time before this window opened - that's pretty sad to say the least.

I'm just confused really. We're told this week the aim this season isn't promotion. But we've signed two short-term loans, one of which has a £10m clause for if we go up. If the aim isn't promotion why even bother doing that? Why wouldn't you just focus on developing what we do have? And if the aim is promotion why come out and tell everyone it isn't? To take pressure off? We saw how that worked under Mowbray, these lads still fell apart when it mattered, so no need to bother with that nonsense. Yet, if the aim "secretly" is to try to get promoted, why would you sign Sorba and O'Brien and then not bother with a striker, lmao. Pointless. Just makes it seem like nobody has a clue what they're doing. I can only assume the plan was indeed to get a striker in but GB failed. In which case that's two loan wages likely being wasted on achieving a mid table finish, whilst giving our own players less time to gain experience. Hopefully I'm wrong on all of the above though.