How long should Ron get to turn things around?

Total over reaction reaction imo. Look at today's results any team csn win or lose 3 or 4 matches on tne bounce. Ron deserves our support not calls for his head.

 

I suspect that RK knows that Gaston is leaving in January or end of season at best. As a result he's trying to play Juanmi into form/getting used to the league as, for the club, he's the longer term prospect (and he's an RK signing).

That would feel logical enough, though it's not necessarily helping us right now.

 

I understand you wanting to see Ramirez more than Reed. In the sense he can make an impact in terms of attacking end product from the bench, or as a starter. But Reed's positive energy and commitment might rub off on the entire side. It's just a big shame that both are completely out the reckoning..

 

I just think Ramirez offers something we're short on (creativity and chance creation), whereas I don't see Reed as necessarily an upgrade on Clasie.

 

I get your point, but we need a little short termism, Gaston may get 4 goals, win us 7 points and push us up. jJuanmi can wait

 

Agreed. In their defence they stood somewhat firm on Schneiderlin. Frankly though, a lot of the current talk from the board reminds me of Rupert Lowe.

 

I wouldn't say it is that bad. It's just seems we have tried to do it too quickly. Instead of getting good sponsors etc in before we cut back spending by the owner. We have started already. This makes it so the only way we can really buy players is to sell players. It then ends up us never getting a settled team.

 

Yep, from my position I'm with you on that.

 

I agree with you. Ramirez might be going soon now. But Koeman's played him twice in the league since taking over as manager in June 2014. There's no excuse for that at all in my opinion. In such a dire situation I'd like the manager to swallow his pride, stop being so stubborn and to pick the strongest side available to him and ignore the fact Ramirez will now be leaving in the summer. We need points!!

 

Some pretty interesting quotes being reported by Simon Peach right now...

 

Ron is pissed.

 

He knows he's under massive pressure after today's performance.

 

Oh no, it's not as bad as Lowe but their talk around sustainability reminds me of the way he talked and some of this summer's transfers remind of what we did in the early-mid 2000s.

 

From you perhaps, and a bit from Tom. I doubt he is internally (though I may be wrong).

 

Ronald speaking to the club's media team.

 

And unless all of our sponsorship deals for next year are settled (they might well be for all I know), this was a bad time to suddenly cut back and drift toward the lower-middle of the table. We're a less appealing prospect for attracting commercial deals now than when we were the darlings of last season.

 

Yup absolutely agree on this point and have thought it was this way for some time now but didn't want to say it because I didn't want to start a great big arguey thread on the Forum.

I also think that in today's current climate that this self-sustainability is utter BS, the idea behind it is fine and makes 'economic' sense but in the Premier League it is invalid. It would work well in the maybe the Championship and League One but getting in untested and untried 'maybe good' players in the top division in the long-run does not work.

 

As I said last week, I have issues with Ron - his choice of substitutions probably being my biggest (how can Ron have been that stupid to think that Juanmi for Tadic would actually help us today?) - but I'm still not even contemplating us sacking him. I'm not blaming him for us having a paper thin squad. I'm not blaming him for us failing to adequately replace the players we have lost. And I'm not blaming him today for losing to a Spurs side who I'd still be expecting us to lose to even if we were on form (in fact, of this whole run, only the two points dropped vs Villa are virtually unexplainable when considering the opposition).

He absolutely should get the January transfer window to try and turn things around. But even then, if he's not provided with the funds to do so - leaving him with his hands tied - then it still wont be his fault.

Much more important than the January window though, for me, is the summer window at the end of the season. Pelle, Fonte, Davis, we can't have these guys being first team regulars if we want to be a regular top ten team. But we can't expect to be able to replace them in January.

 

I disagree that self-sustainability is BS; most teams in the PL are pretty sustainable at this point, and certainly will be next year when the TV deal increases dramatically.

However, I'm also dubious that sustainability is the long-term goal of our current board. I think getting as much of Kat's money back before selling is more likely the aim.