Rayvin

Gloves really coming off now

I enjoy each win in the 30 mins immediately after it and then return to stressing about the next game the joys of an anxious disposition.

Yeah fair I guess. I did love that season.

So I can see that argument if you had to call it at the start of both seasons - but from where we are right now, and the ridiculous run of form he's had to pull together to even get us back into the conversation, I think the margins are just finer this season. Maybe I'm remembering the last time a little too generously but I sort of feel we were in the conversation all season for that one, so the odd game going astray here and there didn't derail us - moreover everyone was still turning up thinking they'd play us off the park. This season feels much more like every win has been hard earned. To me at least. It's probably just bias towards what is immediately in front of me I suppose. I just feel like Howe and the team have had to be even better this year than they were that year.

Imagine Gemmill on the day Everton finally go down

I'm concerned about CL tbh, we're on an amazing run of form and wins but we're still only just 4th. If we can stretch the winning run to another 4 or 5 games then I think we may earn daylight but that's a really tall order (though the games look winnable). I think there'll be some questions asked if we don't get CL this season though, and that is the scenario under which I suppose we can see us losing a few of our top tier players. That in turn would necessitate a rebuild which just delays everything further. I think getting top 4 this season will be Howe's greatest achievement to date tbh in terms of what it will do for the club/how difficult it will be.

Was wondering this actually, who would be the cover for Murphy?

Forgot all that. Lunatic.

How does that PSR spending thing work again, if we sold him for £11m what would that 'become' in terms of immediately accessible funds? A £55m player on a 5 year deal? If we could replace him now and bring in that £55m player, I'd say go for it. Otherwise I think Gemmill is right.

It's probably just Mourinho reminding our board he exists in case they want to trade in an 8 game win streak for chaos, drama and PSR breaches

Aye fair wouldn't wish that on anyone at this point.

I said exactly the same like It's not even that they're that good, it's that teams just keep sleepwalking into the same situation as each other when playing them.

Forest are gonna win the league ffs. Not sure I can live with that like.

Fragrant...

I feel like the actual clubs know this, it's just the fans who haven't quite caught up. Have any of the actual clubs properly tested us yet on this front? Not sure they have. Clearly they don't fancy their chances.

Aye, agreed on this. I also wonder if there's a wider thing at work here in terms of how the rest of the league perceives us too. If you look at our first full season under Howe, we did well because we exploited an arrogance in other teams who felt that we were still fairly shit based on the players we had - or that they fancied their chances against us. Forest are benefitting from that this season. Once we are title contenders and people take us seriously as a dangerous team, they're going to sit deeper, take fewer risks, try to react to us more. That allows us to dictate terms for how the game will be, same as the City/Arsenal/Liverpool teams. And I do wonder if that might actually be an overall positive in a lot of ways. We have to build into it for sure, get the right players to unlock low block defenses, but as much as our mentality around the club needs to evolve to seeing us as winners - I also wonder if everyone else's has to do the same. In other words, would Liverpool be so successful this season if everyone else believed they could get something off them and really went for it?

Sunderland voted for Brexit over concerns about immigration despite being 97% white at the time. Says it all.

I guess more than anything I'm just thinking that even if we had a second eleven with the same ability as the first eleven, would we be confident that we can beat Liverpool/City over a season or earn out the results we need consistently? The whole squad depth argument I do get, but is the first eleven good enough even so.

Some suggestion we've had an offer for Kelly from Fenerbahce?

Squad depth isn't something we're realistically going to address properly in the timeframe we're talking about for this current iteration of the side I don't think - so that suggests to me that the best this version of the side can reach is CL level, and then we need to go through an evolution to a new generation that may in time challenge for the title. That being the case then, maybe we should be open to selling some of our top tier players at 'the right prices' to support that overall transitional process - and that means we're relying on recruitment to be as good as it was under Ashworth (I do think the guy is a bit of a snake but you just can't argue with his success for us on this front), and that Howe can develop them into equivalent standards to the current team levels.

I know this is tongue in cheek but I do wonder what is really stopping us from doing this. Surely it would be more legit than selling hotels.

So first off, no I don't mean this season. I mean over the next 2-3 years which I think is probably roughly the runtime of this side while most players remain at their peak. I was thinking to myself yesterday that we talk about bringing in a right winger as a current main focus of transfer policy - so let's assume we manage that, and we bring in someone vaguely equivalent to Gordon. Does that alone turn us into title contenders? I'm not sure personally. I think it's a big step, probably the biggest single step we could take, but I'm not sure that this on its own is enough to put us into the conversation with Liverpool, Arsenal and City. So what would it take, what do they have that we don't? Is it even all playing staff, maybe some of it is structural. Other than the mental solidity that I can only assume we have to build up on the go, where else are we going to need to strengthen? It feels like a huge ask atm to take a side that we already think is very good, but which is really just on the edge of CL as far as wider rankings in the division and turn them into a side which could challenge for the title. But then again, where might we be if we hadn't shipped easy points to weaker teams earlier in the season? Just curious on people's thoughts for the next few years really - how we get from where we are, to where we want to be.

Sorry but I just clocked the relative attendances for the FA Cup games They have no business saying a damn thing atm.

Gemmill is a weeb huh. Written in the stars, that one.

Shame they didn't suspend their 'two term' rule for him tbh. He was the best President they had in living memory.