Frank Lampard - he's not a waiter !

Tonteau wrote:

hairy cataract wrote:

Tonteau wrote:Having said all this, Lampard may be well out of his depth as a manager and we may well ship a tonne of goals and go down. But at some point, and I'm not saying that point is now, we need to get in a manager and just stick with them for at least two or three years (furtive glance at the forest manager). Everton twitter really is full on the most reactionary, histrionic types who lose the plot as soon as we lose a few games. Club needs to communicate with the fans and say this is our manager, this is our plan, and we're going to stick to it. Stop getting all pissy and get on board.

Absolutely, but which of our last six managers would you have given more time?  

I tend to agree with Rotts, above, that Lampard is out of his depth in this situation and is panicking.  I would imagine he's not sleeping too well at the moment, and is in constant meetings with the rest of the coaching staff trying to think of things they haven't tried yet.  The players are hiding on the pitch because they really don't want to be the one to miss a chance, or give it away, or look useless.  Which is why I was so shocked at Iwobi's goal against Newcastle.  It was the opposite of everything we've been doing this season - the tackle from Coleman was brave and decisive, Iwobi's initial run was positive, the lay off from DCL tricky, and the fact that Iwobi had kept running to offer himself for the pass was unusual.  But above all, the finish was cool as a fucking cucumber.  And even Iwobi's celebration was surprising - Gordon did what every fan did, leapt up in the air like Superman and went fucking nuts. Iwobi did some kind of half-arsed pre-planned hand gesture celebration which you'd expect from a RS after they'd scored their fifth goal against Watford or something.

So, I think we build the team around Iwobi for the rest of the season.  Make him player-manager.  Make him captain.  Put him in the number 10 role playing just off DCL.  Let him shag Frank Lampard's missus.  His time has come.  Here's my set-up

Everton
Owner: The UK Government
Manager: Iwobi
Assistant Manager: Ferguson
Tea Lady: Lampard

Begovic
Patterson, Mina on a crutch, Godfrey, Baines
Gordon, Allan, some 12 year old from the U23s, Richarlison
Iwobi
DCL

Martinez, probably. Does he count? I can't remmember how far back he was. He 'got' the club, bought into it and I think that's important because you do really have to buy into everton to deal with the shite you have to put up with.

Yeah probably the best of the bunch, apart from Carlo who was never going to last long anyway. Also he's just been twatted 4-0 at home by Barca, leading me to believe that we dodged a bullet when he moved back to Madrid. If he'd have stayed for this season then we might be in some trouble by now.

My attitude in the late Moyes era was that he's probably taken us as far as he could, and that he'll go soon but it should be him leaving for a "better" job, not because we sack him. Careful what you wish for and all that. I'm now of the opinion that it wasn't Moyes, it was us, and the predicament we find ourselves in of being financially light years behind the money clubs even when we have a decent manager. I don't think Carlo or anyone could have done a better job than Moyes at that time, with the resources he had available. I just wish he'd won a pot or two.

So I've never been a "sack the fucker" sort of bloke if we hit a bad run of form. Yet I distinctly remember wanting Martinez out because of his stubbornness. I can't remember if it was his second or third season but that was the last time, before this season, that I thought we might go down. March time and we had 28 points but we were getting routinely whacked by shit teams and I didn't know where the next win was coming from. He turned it around eventually and we finished mid-table. But his tactical stubbornness worried me, something he's shown with Belgium as well.

But here's the thing Tonts - if we were to go back in time and someone said "get rid of Martinez now and you'll be down within 6 years" then we would all say "fuck that, let's keep him then." But we'd just come off of several years of Top 6/7 Moyes stability, followed by Bobby's brilliant first season, and we were looking up, not down. Within 18 months of that brilliant first season, I wanted him gone.

With hindsight, and especially with where we are now, I was wrong. His first season alone should have brought him more time. I totally agree with the need to "get" the club (or clooob) and I think Bobby did. Also, while I always gave Moyes due credit for how close he came to cracking the top 6, I probably didn't give Martinez the same credit for that first season, a season I would describe as phenomenal. That season really was a blast.

Thinking back, it was Palace who fucked us over that season as well.

No, no, no, no - I can't agree about Martinez. He was bequeathed a powerful, superfit, unified squad by David Moyes, added a bit of flair and had us all believing. Slowly but surely however, the legacy of Moyes was squandered and we ended up with a team that was gasping for a fag break, able to do nothing but pass sideways for days on end, with no cutting edge. Martinez was a shiny thing but caught up in his own myopic, unbendable concept of how football teams should play. And the bollocks he talked fucking killed me.

Sure, you could say he was better than Koeman, Rafa, Allardyce, Ferguson and Silva - who all took the reigns and were either so shit or so loathed by the fanbase that the owner had no choice other than to sack the bastards. But not much better than that. After all, the fanbase hated him in the and and he was shit, so he got sacked.

And now we have Lampard. I, like many, was right behind this appointment and - again - he was a very shiny thing. We were singing his name after his first game at Goodison, how about that? But now he looks like a man who's been at an all-night rave and the drugs are wearing off. He looks confused. He looks angry. He looks tired and miserable. He looks like he wants to go home to his lovely wife and children, in his £10m Chelsea townhouse, around the corner from the gastro-pub he owns, and forget this nightmare ever happened.

He's already coming undone, ranting about the players, like a kid who's struggling with his homework and won't admit that the questions are a bit harder than he expected, that he needs to come up with the answers himself, not rely on his classmates to help him. That it takes more than just a blue chip CV and some medals to turn a pile of dogshit into gold.

So, fuck Martinez. Fuck Koeman, Rafa, Allardyce, Ferguson, Silva and Lampard. Perhaps we should have stuck with one of them, but which one? Toss a coin.

hairy cataract wrote:No, no, no, no - I can't agree about Martinez.  He was bequeathed a powerful, superfit, unified squad by David Moyes, added a bit of flair and had us all believing.  Slowly but surely however, the legacy of Moyes was squandered and we ended up with a team that was gasping for a fag break, able to do nothing but pass sideways for days on end, with no cutting edge.  Martinez was a shiny thing but caught up in his own myopic, unbendable concept of how football teams should play.  And the bollocks he talked fucking killed me.

Sure, you could say he was better than Koeman, Rafa, Allardyce, Ferguson and Silva - who all took the reigns and were either so shit or so loathed by the fanbase that the owner had no choice other than to sack the bastards.  But not much better than that.  After all, the fanbase hated him in the and and he was shit, so he got sacked.

And now we have Lampard.  I, like many, was right behind this appointment and - again - he was a very shiny thing.  We were singing his name after his first game at Goodison, how about that?  But now he looks like a man who's been at an all-night rave and the drugs are wearing off.  He looks confused.  He looks angry.  He looks tired and miserable.  He looks like he wants to go home to his lovely wife and children, in his £10m Chelsea townhouse, around the corner from the gastro-pub he owns, and forget this nightmare ever happened.  

He's already coming undone, ranting about the players, like a kid who's struggling with his homework and won't admit that the questions are a bit harder than he expected, that he needs to come up with the answers himself, not rely on his classmates to help him.  That it takes more than just a blue chip CV and some medals to turn a pile of dogshit into gold.

So, fuck Martinez.  Fuck Koeman, Rafa, Allardyce, Ferguson, Silva and Lampard.  Perhaps we should have stuck with one of them, but which one?  Toss a coin.

Fuck you're right. I forgot about the sideways passing. And Alcaraz, I completely forgot about Alcaraz. That's it, sack him, Bobby must go.

My short list to replace Lampard when he inevitably gets binned is a hologram of Brian Clough, and an animatronic puppet version of Zinedine Zidane (the real Zidane is way too rich, sensible and sane to ever want to manage us.)

That's all we need. We don't need an actual person - people make shit managers, as Evertonians are learning to our cost - but the Brian Clough hologram with an accompanying soundtrack just repeating his old favourites like "it only takes a seconnnnnnnd, young man, to score a goal" and "we'll have a chat and discuss it and agree that I was right" should do the job. Failing that, Mr Ed. Or Desert Orchid. Yeah, let's try a horse next.

Dessie at Finch Farm overseeing his first training session having taken over from the recently-sacked Bungle from Rainbow.

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

Dessie at Finch Farm overseeing his first training session having taken over from the recently-sacked Bungle from Rainbow.

Brilliant. If fanzines still existed, that should be on the front page of ours this week.

As I was typing Bobby’s name, the Alcaraz thing was lurking in the back of my mind, and Kone as well. I’d completely erased the memory of all that pointless possession and sideways passing from my memory. Thanks for the reminder. The one man I’d back to actually sort us out would be Diego Simeone. What he’s done with Atleti is supremely impressive. Whether his particular brand of bollock-grabbing shithousing would translate from Spanish to English, I don’t know. But I’d like to find out.

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

Dessie at Finch Farm overseeing his first training session having taken over from the recently-sacked Bungle from Rainbow.

Brilliant. If fanzines still existed, that should be on the front page of ours this week.

I miss WSAG. As a teenager I went to enough games to always pick the latest edition up when it first started. As I got older and went to less games I'd get it mailed to me. It was very hit-and-miss and sometimes up its own arse but it was also occasionally inspired, and the combo of Everton and music was right up my street. It also served as a sort of cultural link with the city while I lived in Home Counties suburbia.

Funny how we miss things even when they've been replaced by something way more convenient. I don't have to wait three months for an Everton internet site to update, for instance. Just nostalgia for our youth, I suppose. Maybe it's the fact that an internet site can update by the minute, whereas the publication of a fanzine - or any magazine for that matter - is/was an event, to look forward to.

Cassette tapes, there's another one. I really miss cassette tapes even though Spotify is obviously miles better.

Tonteau wrote:As I was typing Bobby’s name, the Alcaraz thing was lurking in the back of my mind, and Kone as well. I’d completely erased the memory of all that pointless possession and sideways passing from my memory. Thanks for the reminder. The one man I’d back to actually sort us out would be Diego Simeone. What he’s done with Atleti is supremely impressive. Whether his particular brand of bollock-grabbing shithousing would translate from Spanish to English, I don’t know. But I’d like to find out.

Kone. Jesus Christ. (Shudders)

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

Dessie at Finch Farm overseeing his first training session having taken over from the recently-sacked Bungle from Rainbow.

Brilliant. If fanzines still existed, that should be on the front page of ours this week.

I miss WSAG. As a teenager I went to enough games to always pick the latest edition up when it first started. As I got older and went to less games I'd get it mailed to me. It was very hit-and-miss and sometimes up its own arse but it was also occasionally inspired, and the combo of Everton and music was right up my street. It also served as a sort of cultural link with the city while I lived in Home Counties suburbia.

Funny how we miss things even when they've been replaced by something way more convenient. I don't have to wait three months for an Everton internet site to update, for instance. Just nostalgia for our youth, I suppose. Maybe it's the fact that an internet site can update by the minute, whereas the publication of a fanzine - or any magazine for that matter - is/was an event, to look forward to.

Cassette tapes, there's another one. I really miss cassette tapes even though Spotify is obviously miles better.

Aye, I went through a cassette phase when I first moved to London and left my record player in Liverpool.  Great, but fuck me all that backwards and forwards winding to try and skip the worst tracks on the new Nolan Sisters album was painful.  And then the fucking tape would get snagged and you'd spend a couple of weeks trying to reel it all back in with a pencil.  

But there is definitely something hollow about all the new technologies, no matter how convenient.  I got myself a Kindle reader a couple of years back, and it's brilliant - really handy to be able to download a book in seconds, and you can take the entire works of Dostoevsky on holiday (if you're that kind of weirdo) without having to book three 23kg bags on the plane.  But sometimes, when I'm reading something that's really grabbed me, I feel kind of sad that it isn't a proper printed book, it feels like it deserves something solid rather than the ephemeral words on a computer feel of a kindle. And it's a pain in the arse to flick back on a Kindle to remind yourself which character did what.  And no pictures.  That's a big one when you read the kind of stuff I do with lots of naked women and not many words.

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

Dessie at Finch Farm overseeing his first training session having taken over from the recently-sacked Bungle from Rainbow.

Brilliant. If fanzines still existed, that should be on the front page of ours this week.

I miss WSAG. As a teenager I went to enough games to always pick the latest edition up when it first started. As I got older and went to less games I'd get it mailed to me. It was very hit-and-miss and sometimes up its own arse but it was also occasionally inspired, and the combo of Everton and music was right up my street. It also served as a sort of cultural link with the city while I lived in Home Counties suburbia.

Funny how we miss things even when they've been replaced by something way more convenient. I don't have to wait three months for an Everton internet site to update, for instance. Just nostalgia for our youth, I suppose. Maybe it's the fact that an internet site can update by the minute, whereas the publication of a fanzine - or any magazine for that matter - is/was an event, to look forward to.

Cassette tapes, there's another one. I really miss cassette tapes even though Spotify is obviously miles better.

Aye, I went through a cassette phase when I first moved to London and left my record player in Liverpool.  Great, but fuck me all that backwards and forwards winding to try and skip the worst tracks on the new Nolan Sisters album was painful.  And then the fucking tape would get snagged and you'd spend a couple of weeks trying to reel it all back in with a pencil.  

But there is definitely something hollow about all the new technologies, no matter how convenient.  I got myself a Kindle reader a couple of years back, and it's brilliant - really handy to be able to download a book in seconds, and you can take the entire works of Dostoevsky on holiday (if you're that kind of weirdo) without having to book three 23kg bags on the plane.  But sometimes, when I'm reading something that's really grabbed me, I feel kind of sad that it isn't a proper printed book, it feels like it deserves something solid rather than the ephemeral words on a computer feel of a kindle. And it's a pain in the arse to flick back on a Kindle to remind yourself which character did what.  And no pictures.  That's a big one when you read the kind of stuff I do with lots of naked women and not many words.

Lol. There was a moment while I was reading "Notes", as us "Dosto" fanboys refer to it, when I glanced up at the gritty drama on the telly to see some bloke being choked or dismembered or something or other, and I asked the missus how she finds it relaxing after a long working day watching such stuff. I then went back to my book to read further just how fucked off our anti-hero was with the world. It made me think. Specifically it made me think "I need Su Pollard's autobiography as an antidote to this."

One of my prized teenage possessions was a TDK metal C90 cassette that was actually made of metal. Cost about the same price on its own as a decent 5-pack of normal TDKs (weighed about the same as well) but the sound quality was far better. TDK had discontinued it by the time I tried to buy some more. Anyway, that tape contained my prize playlist. If you got "Treason" or "Thief of Baghdad" onto that tape hairy, you knew you'd made it. I think Su Pollard was on there.

I have a Kindle but I've never really come to terms with it. I don't want to stare at a screen to have a read before I go to bed. So I'm still a proper book devotee. Spotify is a different matter, if only the'd pay the artists properly, but it's fucking brilliant.

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

Dessie at Finch Farm overseeing his first training session having taken over from the recently-sacked Bungle from Rainbow.

Brilliant. If fanzines still existed, that should be on the front page of ours this week.

I miss WSAG. As a teenager I went to enough games to always pick the latest edition up when it first started. As I got older and went to less games I'd get it mailed to me. It was very hit-and-miss and sometimes up its own arse but it was also occasionally inspired, and the combo of Everton and music was right up my street. It also served as a sort of cultural link with the city while I lived in Home Counties suburbia.

Funny how we miss things even when they've been replaced by something way more convenient. I don't have to wait three months for an Everton internet site to update, for instance. Just nostalgia for our youth, I suppose. Maybe it's the fact that an internet site can update by the minute, whereas the publication of a fanzine - or any magazine for that matter - is/was an event, to look forward to.

Cassette tapes, there's another one. I really miss cassette tapes even though Spotify is obviously miles better.

Aye, I went through a cassette phase when I first moved to London and left my record player in Liverpool.  Great, but fuck me all that backwards and forwards winding to try and skip the worst tracks on the new Nolan Sisters album was painful.  And then the fucking tape would get snagged and you'd spend a couple of weeks trying to reel it all back in with a pencil.  

But there is definitely something hollow about all the new technologies, no matter how convenient.  I got myself a Kindle reader a couple of years back, and it's brilliant - really handy to be able to download a book in seconds, and you can take the entire works of Dostoevsky on holiday (if you're that kind of weirdo) without having to book three 23kg bags on the plane.  But sometimes, when I'm reading something that's really grabbed me, I feel kind of sad that it isn't a proper printed book, it feels like it deserves something solid rather than the ephemeral words on a computer feel of a kindle. And it's a pain in the arse to flick back on a Kindle to remind yourself which character did what.  And no pictures.  That's a big one when you read the kind of stuff I do with lots of naked women and not many words.

Lol. There was a moment while I was reading "Notes", as us "Dosto" fanboys refer to it, when I glanced up at the gritty drama on the telly to see some bloke being choked or dismembered or something or other, and I asked the missus how she finds it relaxing after a long working day watching such stuff. I then went back to my book to read further just how fucked off our anti-hero was with the world. It made me think. Specifically it made me think "I need Su Pollard's autobiography as an antidote to this."

One of my prized teenage possessions was a TDK metal C90 cassette that was actually made of metal. Cost about the same price on its own as a decent 5-pack of normal TDKs (weighed about the same as well) but the sound quality was far better. TDK had discontinued it by the time I tried to buy some more. Anyway, that tape contained my prize playlist. If you got "Treason" or "Thief of Baghdad" onto that tape hairy, you knew you'd made it. I think Su Pollard was on there.

I have a Kindle but I've never really come to terms with it. I don't want to stare at a screen to have a read before I go to bed. So I'm still a proper book devotee. Spotify is a different matter, if only the'd pay the artists properly, but it's fucking brilliant.

Yes, I love Spotify. I know it's wrong, but fuck it. Anyway, how can you say the artists aren't paid properly - Ed Sheeran and a couple of his pals made £20m from The Shape Of You. Of course he's getting sued by some chancer who says it sounds exactly like a tune he once hummed to his mate down the pub, but I'm not crying for Ed. Mind you, all these law suits made me think; I used to imagine that the best result would be someone using a tune you'd written on an advert or soundtrack or, more recently, a video game. But now the best that can happen would be for Ed to put out a song with a line that sounds a little bit, if you're pissed or deaf, like a song you wrote for the Nolan Sisters concept album "The Insulted and Humiliated" in 1981. Ker-fucking-ching.

Made 4 Gwladys wrote:I love this  

Lampard: “Evertonians are easily the best fans I’ve played or managed in front of.  At Chelsea & City it almost felt like I was just trying to make someone enjoy their day out. Everton fans live & breathe their club, it’s important to their life not their Instagram.”

I really hope we do win something with him. I like him he is well educated (finished A levels at a Public School - that's a Private school for you Thor) - well spoken - can string compound sentences together. Compare him to his first cousin (Jamie Redknapp) and you see the different parental investment model.


But putting all that aside, given the zeitgeist of our age that statement especially the last bit will go down into Everton Lore along with Alan Ball's, Brian Labone and Dave Hickson

Made 4 Gwladys wrote:Wonderful from Frank

I have a sneaky idea this is a generational event. For Crystal Palace read Oxford Utd 1984. IF we can settle those who are staying as soon as possible and buy early those we need, and deal those that are leaving we cold be primed.


Interesting that he said an interesting thing I want the players to stop getting injured... changes in work ethic or methods?

Regardless, I think Frank gets"it". As somebody said elsewhere he will be grateful that we got the Chelsea hoodoo off his back and I think we may yet win something next year - and I have a sense he is Everton Blue now...remember he will be Hammer through his Dad

Frank Lampard jr is causing me a bit of a problem here. On the one hand he has united the fans like no other manager I’ve ever known. Even Moyes had people moan about him for most of his tenure. That in itself is a powerful. He gets the club, as uwie said. Your fans can really make or break you and too often ours turn on the team and the atmosphere goes to shit. Ben Foster wasn’t wrong when he said you could turn our fans against us. However when you really need us we’re there but we’ve not seen anything like this before. It’s immense. That for 38 games next season is going to be insane.

But then there’s the other side. The actual football coaching/tactical side. Now, I appreciate he’s been dropped into the furnace in these few months he’s been here. But some of our basic play has been shocking. Both palace goals last night were the most fundamental defensive errors imaginable. The Ayew one was an absolute calamity. is it nerves or the pressure, who knows, but a Moyes team just wouldn’t concede like that.

Anyways I hope he has a good preseason and proves me wrong on the tactics side, because any replacement is going be a let down in the fan-popularity stakes.

What I don't understand and honestly never even realised, is just how much most fans of other clubs (Chelsea not included) seem to dislike him. He attracts a lot of negative comments, i.e. Tory Frank, Fat Frank (very odd), etc.. and people seem desperate for it to all go wrong for him.

I get that he was a Chelsea legend as a player and most people don't like Chelsea, so probably some of it is jealousy, but I don't see the same vitriol aimed towards Stevie Me, for example, who could make a Margaret Thatcher-Ted Bundy love-child seem adorable. The fact he isn't Gerrard probably made me quite like him even during his playing days, but I'd like to think that I could also appreciate a world class footballer, who was also capable of stringing a sentence together.

It's still early in his managerial career, but he seems like an articulate and humble bloke, so you'd think that, coupled along with his footballing pedigree, would place him well to succeed. Hopefully the club gives him the time and support he needs.

Goodison_Gringo wrote:What I don't understand and honestly never even realised, is just how much most fans of other clubs (Chelsea not included) seem to dislike him. He attracts a lot of negative comments, i.e. Tory Frank, Fat Frank (very odd), etc.. and people seem desperate for it to all go wrong for him.

I get that he was a Chelsea legend as a player and most people don't like Chelsea, so probably some of it is jealousy, but I don't see the same vitriol aimed towards Stevie Me, for example, who could make a Margaret Thatcher-Ted Bundy love-child seem adorable. The fact he isn't Gerrard probably made me quite like him even during his playing days, but I'd like to think that I could also appreciate a world class footballer, who was also capable of stringing a sentence together.

It's still early in his managerial career, but he seems like an articulate and humble bloke, so you'd think that, coupled along with his footballing pedigree, would place him well to succeed. Hopefully the club gives him the time and support he needs.

And that is the point… he actually wasn’t raised like any other footballer. His Mum and Dad looked wisely (in my view that he was a son and we have the means to get him a good education that would serve him well regardless of football. Frank went to a fee-paying (high) school. He was educated to A level  and had gifted talents that allowed him the career he had. You can make a direct comparison as to his development as a human with his cousin Jamie Redknapp. Chalk and cheese. Frank will be an immense manager because he knows a raw prawn when he sees one and has the humility and intellect to know he will never stop learning. I earnestly pray to whatever Gods we need that he stays with us. I think he gets us in a Kendall-esque way (remarkable because he never played for the club). I believe he is Moyes-on-steroids.

We as fans owe a duty to the club to have the intellect and brain-processing power to enable the ownership to understand that they got one key decision right, but the behaviour and performance elsewhere needs to change in so many fundamental ways.

This time next year we will be facing the last year of the Grand Old Lady herself 131 years on. In 2023-24 we will be in our new home a new dawn and new horizons. I would love our first season there to bo one in which we are successful in one of the European competitions and actually win it. Wha a way to christen the grand new princess.

Prune and develop over the summer Frank - Mosh spend and cash in as required… and we all come back roaring next year to make an indelible impression.

Forza Azzurri!

I was thinking earlier about what I want from next season. I'll settle for lower mid-table (sort of Villa this season) and some signs of progress in the right direction, hopefully while signing some younger, hungry, technically proficient players. No more freeloaders. I'd also like to see some signs that the board has learned some hard lessons about how the club should be run. I want to see an end to the chaos.

To that end, I would like to see Lampard be given a decent go. After this season we just want someone to keep us safe until we sort our money situation out and get into the new stadium. No more sacking managers for finishing 12th or 13th. Only consider making a change if it's clear he's out of his depth or if an obvious, imminent relegation justifies it. If they were to consider a change even in those circumstances, they need to ask themselves first, is this situation down to Lampard himself?

I would like him to be given a good few years to show us what he can do. Hopefully that will provide the time to create some settled continuity within the squad (our current squad has players signed by a total of 8 different managers - that's nuts.)

That's all I'll want between now and the new stadium to be honest. Something like that period between about 2006 and 2009 when Moyes quietly and sensibly built a competent team made up of players with complementary skills that was attractive to watch on a modest budget would be really nice. But just keeping our heads above water until then, that's the only thing that matters.

Lampard walked into a horrible situation. I thought he was mad to take the job, career suicide. He made some mistakes along the way, both in terms of what he said and the teams he picked. We had no luck with injuries, referees or VAR. Yet somehow he dealt with a mess that I genuinely thought we'd never get out of. To me, that means he has something about him. I think he deserves to be given a proper go at this.

Yes he needs a proper go at it. But this tweet says it all for me - he’s united a fan base that was in turmoil and that alone makes him a winner:

https://twitter.com/peterjmacca/status/1527977082835320833?s=21&t=y2XnNRQ2ROOFsmJC2hylUQ

Frank was won 1.24 points per game. So if he'd been in charge all season we'd have got 47 points and finished 13th.

Rafa was winning 1.00 points per game. So if he had been in charge all season, we'd have 38 points and been level with Leeds.


All hypothetical of course.