Polarboy

In fairness there are at least several spellings of the term, but none of them are spelled the way fish spelt it. I'm also assuming that he's not Jamaican, so maybe some of the Labour lads in the politics section can get on to him for cultural appropriation 😉

It's bambaclat ya fanny.

What's the bet that Jones plays the exact same team as the last two games on Saturday, given he'll very likely be in charge. The men in white coats should be called if he does, given he'll have qualified for insanity. Maybe Howe will be in place before then, but I can't see him making major changes given how little time he'll have with the players, so he'll likely let Jones take the lead more or less and be on a watching brief.

You beat me to it.

And yet some terminally nostalgic numpty has written a piece for The Mag saying we should get the band back together with Keegan as manager. That would be bad enough but quite a lot of people were agreeing with him in the comments.

I've no idea what the exact state of their finances are, but surely they'd leave themselves enough wiggle room to make a managerial change should the worst occur. In any case as I was saying it's almost definitely wishful thinking from me, even if it's not beyond the realms of possibility that the Everton bosses will get very nervous should they get a hammering off Spurs.

At this point I think Staveley might be seriously considering waiting to see if Everton get a thumping off Spurs at the weekend, and then see if there's any movement from the Everton hierarchy in terms of getting shot of Rafa. I think it would be a very shortsighted move from Everton given the injuries they currently have to crucial players, but the pressure from losing, what 4, 5 on the bounce, may prove too much. And obviously the Everton fans didn't want him there in the first place, so their patience is going to be much thinner than usual in any case. Most likely wishful thinking on my part of course.

According to who, Jose Havengottaclucio of the No Marka sports pages?

I highly doubt Emery was feeding Sky Sports News info. So yes it does seem very amateurish from Staveley.

Downie reckons it's down to Howe and Martinez 😑 Martinez is probably the better choice out of the two given his greater experience. Players would probably be more likely to come as well given he's an internationally known name. Either way Jones is going to be happy given he's worked with both in the past.

I say this with little confidence, but surely they've done enough homework on the various candidates to quickly move to another option. You would hope they aren't literally starting from scratch, or what was all that shite about interviewing various candidates such as the Fonz.

Yeah I'd bite your hand off for Santo. His pragmatism and experience in the league is what we need at present. Mind you I'd imagine his ego is hurting at the minute, so he might think going from Spuds to us will hurt his profile even more, who knows.

If Graves is correct maybe we can get the Fonz back on the aul zoom call. Granted I really don't know enough about Fonseca to be advocating for him, but surely he's better than a bloke who seemingly gets anxiety from the thought of leaving Bournemouth.

Fair play to Gee Ballbag though, he was 100% correct.

What a fucking disaster. Regardless of who we get they're going to be massively undermined given how publicly and embarrassingly we missed out on our number one target. In a lot of cases teams can sort of play it off that it was just rumours and say whoever they got was who they wanted all along, but they can't really do that in this case unless they want to call most of the media liars, which they are in fairness, but in this case it seems pretty definite that it was the club leaking info.

We were never getting someone on Conte's level in any case. That's equivalent to people in the media saying we think we should be trying to sign Neymar straight away. As for Howe I wouldn't really give a fuck who the next manager was as along as I was confident he could keep us up. The person we bring in likely won't be here very long anyway. The problem is I'm in no way confident that Howe can keep us up. He did well to get Bournemouth up and keep them up for several seasons, but the way in which they got relegated, and his apparent inability to arrest their decline that season is more than troubling. It also has to be said that even in the seasons he kept them up, they seemed to go through some very tough spells before pulling it together and going on a run, and it's not as if we have much margin of error after our shocking no win start.

That's from football insider, but how reliable are they. Could be that they are just hedging their bets by writing this, assuming that Balague is right on the money and the only other choice is Howe. They might actually know fuck all, and have no actual source of their own. Clutching at straws here a bit, but I'm not aware of football insider being a highly respected source of news.

Howe is a lot better than Bruce, but he's still a bottling nonce. At least according to Celtic supporters, who I'm sure are in no way biased.

The lady doth protest too much. He sounds like his mum the way he was so adamant that it was nothing to do with money.

🤣 Hey I left it open ended with the question mark. I even knocked on the imitation wood table I was writing it on. With regard to this Emery situation, if Balague is correct then this is a major embarrassment for Staveley and co, there's no two ways around it. The club have acted like a lad who already had a girl coming home with them, who then scares her off by wittering on about how much he can dead-lift for an hour. Although I see Keith Downie is saying it could still happen and that the club still see Emery as their number one target, so maybe Ballbag got his wires crossed, or Emery and or Villarreal are just trying to get more money. Surely the club wouldn't make it be known that he was still their number one target if they didn't think they could get him through the door. It would just make the eventual rejection even more embarrassing, and make the second choice look like someone you took home with the beer goggles on. But maybe it is just a case of amateur hour at the club at present.

Obviously not 100% yet with Emery, but as good as it would seem unless something drastic happens. I just have to say thank fuck neither Howe or Martinez got the job.

Also from the Telegraph "Club Chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan is said to have casually lifted a saracen sword off the wall and started polishing it during the zoom call."

Balague is usually pretty accurate when it comes to his patch in Spain. At the end of the day it's entirely down to Emery on whether he leaves or not given he has a buy out clause.

The Villarreal president has spat the dummy out a bit on Emery being linked with us, and has said that he believes Emery's professionalism will prevent him from leaving Villarreal. Hopefully it's just sour grapes, and he's blowing out a bit of hot air, and or trying to get as much compo as possible. Newcastle: Unai Emery will not become Magpies new boss, says Villarreal president Fernando Roig | Daily Mail Online

I wouldn't say I moved on.