1. Remember when we all said it’s alright to get paggered by Arsenal and Liverpool because we have a sequence of eminently winnable games coming up? Oh! 2. Diabolical, the performance at Dean Court, and that’s being kind. The players who turned out for Hull City at Bournemouth over the weekend should hang their heads in shame over the way they performed. This is serious stuff, it’s the Premier League, it’s Hull City. No messing about, a proper competition and a proper club expecting you to give your all. Nobody minds a lack of success, they do mind a lack of effort. The players’ effort is rarely something we feel compelled to question after abject defeat, but we do now. They just didn’t look like they cared. 3. Welcome to the top job, Mr Phelan. We feel for the new gaffer that his successes will be listed under the word ‘caretaker’ and his first match with an actual mandate (albeit the flimisiest mandate ever, which we’ll come to) should be one that equals City’s worst defeat in the Premier League. It takes no prisoners, this standard of football and this level of responsibility, and even cuddly upstart clubs in picturesque towns can give you a shoeing if you prepare wrongly. Bad performances, even when the effort of the players seems to be more the reason for them, have to stop at the manager’s door. 4. Or, if you prefer, the head coach’s door. These terms that have finally taken the asterisk away from Phelan’s name are peculiar, aren’t they? He’s not a manager, and only has a contract to the end of the season. Heavens, the Allams really don’t rate him, do they? It’s an easy conclusion to make and for all Phelan’s bonhomie of late, he must feel that too. Though there is permanence to the situation now, the short-termism of it means he has somehow managed to remain a caretaker while relinquishing the title of manager. There has to be a question mark about who is charged with recruiting new players, and maybe even who is picking the team. And who on earth has any interest, long term, in the wellbeing of the club. 5. And, just as his feet finally go under the table, the doubts about his suitability begin to creep in. Maybe Phelan is head coach because that’s all he can do. He’s never been a manager, even though he witnessed at first hand the best in the business for many a year. His appointment is safe and, from the way the players’ blew smoke up his rear in August, popular; but it comes, with abysmal timing, just as City’s season begins to sink into oblivion. Four of the last five games were against giants of the game and cannot be used to decipher anyone’s potential in the job, but if you ship six against Bournemouth while being fully aware of their flowing, multi-directional, attacking football, then you will immediately be queried. 6. Stoke at home next week. We’ve beaten them in the League Cup and they remain below us in the table but they’ve taken four from six now. They’re likely to start as favourites at the Circle and we cannot let them exploit that. Seven games lie ahead which already feel definitive, with teams around and just above similarly putting ticks next to our name. Phelan might only have one big test this season and he’s already begun it. 7. Everyone’s place is under threat, from a very leaky new keeper (though blame for any of the goals is hard to pin on him) to whoever passed as a striker at Dean Court. Nobody should feel their place is secure, while Michael Dawson’s return to the bench yesterday was mercifully timely. 8. There’s nothing like a 6-1 paggering to colour opinions on a new kit, and the colour has been a source of fierce debate, as some see pink and others see purple, which is what Umbro say it is, ‘cactus purple’ to be precise. First of all, let’s note that third kits don’t get used much, last season’s was worn just twice (can you even remember what the colourway was?*). The new third kit will have to be used at Watford as neither of the other two kits will suitably distinguish us from the home side, but that might be the last sighting of it. A kit that’s used just twice really does not warrant some of the arse leaking, artery hardening rage that was expended upon it the weekend just gone, though perhaps most of that stems from the performance, and no kit causes players to not mark opponents closely. Sure, it’s a somewhat fruity looking and quite challenging tone, but vivid and garish colours are very on trend right now, such as the Premier League’s recent hi-vis makeover, Scotland’s actually pink away shirt and Nike’s range of third kits for their bigger teams such as Inter’s luminous blue and electric green and Manchester City’s violet and orange. Our third kit is at least unique, every year there’s lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth about templates and several teams having the same kit, well that can’t be said of cactus purple. 9. Congratulations to Steve Bruce on getting a truly big job in football. We rarely find ourselves wishing the graceless basket case that is Aston Villa well, but we do now. After all, with our most successful manager and one of our best ever defenders there, what’s not to like? Well, apart from the rest of their players and their classless supporters, obviously. It took 82 days for Bruce to get a new gig. It took 83 days for the Allams to decide that the geezer who looked after things after they forced Bruce out should be allowed to do it officially. There’s a part of us that thinks, cynically and worryingly, that the Allams picked Phelan now because they looked stupid for not replacing Bruce, with anyone, earlier. We wouldn’t put anything past that family. 10. Apropos of which: City’s debt now stands at £100m. That’s one hundred million pounds. It’s sobering to think that City almost went bust several times over sums fractionally smaller than this figure in years gone by, but this debt feels increasingly unmanageable for a club that doesn’t own its own stadium and whose long-term access to the Premier League’s tacky excesses is hardly guaranteed. Next time anyone tells you the Allams are brilliant businessmen, remind them of this vast debt. 10a. It was also fascinating to note that the official average attendance for 2015/16 – a season City spent in the upper reaches of the division – didn’t even reach 15,000. That’s ten thousand empty seats, every week. That figure is a damning indictment of the ineptitude of that wretched family and its accomplices into driving away support. The long term cost of this deliberate policy of alienation is unknowable, but is surely immense http://www.ambernectar.org/blog/2016/10/things-we-think-we-think-230-2/?
I wouldn't say we all said it was ok to get thrashed in the earlier games. And I was expecting to get beaten yesterday, but also thought we could compete more. We did question the effort sometimes under Bruce, so I wouldn't say it's entirely new, though we didn't ship this amount of goals in. Last season we were obviously playing much weaker teams and maybe some players, like Elmo who wasn't good last season, are more likely to be found out more. A test of a manager is how well they can get players back on track after bad defeats. We had a bad run last season but about now is the time to break out of it and for the players to look like they are up for it again. Phelan seemed to say he was just going for it rather than tightening up once the game had gone. Goal difference is unlikely to be the difference between keeping up or not, but you don't want the players to get into lazy habits either. Slow starts happened under Bruce and are still happening. We rarely score in the earlier part of the game. Different keepers will have different styles but Marshall can seems hesitant on some shots, he just needs to go for it if he's at all unsure whether the shot is dangerous or not.
Yes but amazingly there are still one or two daft turds on here with their noses still superglued between the Allams buttcheeks who have succumbed and got all squiffy through the lack of fresh air. You know who you are.
