OTHER FOOTBALL

ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
What I meant was that not so long ago Brendan was being touted as a real prospect for the next Big Six club that came calling. Now he's the odds-on favourite to be the first sacking. Not his fault imo. There seems to be problems at the club which are hampering his efforts, Hope he overcomes them.
 
CroJack

CroJack

Key Player
Potter has become a real deal. His stats have been excellent year after year but he doesn't have a real backing from the owner to take the club to another level.
 
ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Yankee_Jack said:
Now available ... Martin's replacement are starting to materialize.
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Parker won't come here. He was moaning about the club not supplying funds for new players to enable him to compete and was sacked for this not the 9-0 hammering at Liverpool. If he's bitching at the Muff board for lack of backing, imagine what he'd have to say about our lot!! :rolleyes:
 
Yankee_Jack

Yankee_Jack

Key Player
It comes down to mission and priorities. The mission is to develop and sell talent as a Factory Club and thereby achieve sustainability. The priority has to be to stay in the Championship; otherwise the business model suffers degradation. The Club needs a full house through the door every home game to float the Club until the big pay checks arrive from the talent monetization. Attractive football at a high level will keep the masses coming, if lower level football arrives there are those that will prefer to watch rugby or to play themselves on a Saturday.

Mission is long term, priority is short term.

Conundrum: is Martin's Madness going to achieve the priority - it's looking risky and grim. There's an open debate as to whether it will ever support and realize the mission, and definitely no guarantee.

We know historically that Potter and Andy Pandy both drove the club to excel and towards promotion and in the process developed and showcased talent.

The Club ownership is going to have to wrestle with the conundrum while looking up from the bottom of the table, a degrading and relegation guaranteeing goal difference, and escalating murmurs of WTF on the stands. Not a pleasant cocktail.
 
ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Seems there are three managers of interest to us amongst those being touted as Brighton's next manager. Steve Cooper we know; Welshman Nathan Jones at Luton and....... Russell Martin. Please God let it be him!!!! 🙏🤞:LOL:
 
ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
KVetch said:
Why Russel? What has he accomplished? Potter and Cooper at least reached the playoffs.
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Potter didn't with us. I think it was 10th? But we did play some lovely football at times. Maybe Brighton watchers were at the game on the rare occasions we did get it right under Martin, eg Cardiff x 2. If they've been assessing him for the whole time he's been with us, I doubt their interest will go any further.
 
CroJack

CroJack

Key Player
Yankee_Jack said:
But this sequence is truly smooth and polished pass and move …

Click to expand...


Some of the football shown in the video is idiotic and suicidal football from the back that succeded from time to time because we had better and more skillful players than we have now under Martin. It looks fantastic when you score from such moves but more often than not the ball ends in your own goal. I am strongly against this type of football no matter if it's Cooper, Martin or Pep.

I rate Potter, but let's not forget that we conceded 62 goals in 2018/19 season (1.35 goals per game) and many of these goals were conceded from set-pieces. Not good at all when you think we had much better defenders than we have now. Mike Van der Hoorn, Joe Rodon, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Martin Olsson (Swedish international), Kyle Naughton and Connor Roberts. Kristopher Nordfelt (Swedish international) and Erwin Mulder as goalkeepers. Not to mention Leroy Fer and Bersant Celina together with Grimes and Fulton in the midfield and McBurnie, Dan James, Nathan Dyer and Wayne Routledge up front. Potter even had Wilfried Bony for 6 months. With a much, much better squad Potter finished 10th and earned only 4 points more than Martin's Swansea in 2021/22, which is disappointing if you ask me.
 
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ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Been watching a fascinating documentary Football Dreams: The Academy. Anyone else been following this? It's about the academy at Crystal Palace and tracks the progress of various would-be footballers at the different age groups. First thing I noticed was the preponderance of young Black and Asian lads compared to white ones. It was almost a case of spot the white face at times - and I mean no disrespect to the ethnic minorities who appear well in the majority here. I'm just stating a fact.

The sacrifice in time and money made by the parents, so their sons can hopefully gain a contract at each age stage, is astounding. Of course they are all chasing the dream of eventually netting the 'pot of gold' contract for the first team. There are some excellent clips of these young lads in action showing off their respective skills and it produced smiles of pleasure from me when their efforts earned a new contract. Of course, it's cut-throat competition for places and I felt really disappointed for the lads that didn't make it. Dreams torn asunder and you can only hope that they'll succeed at another club.

Some of these boys are really talented and it would be nice if they could all go on to achieve their dreams. It won't happen unfortunately but I wish every one of them the best. The programme begs another question. There are so many Black players coming through the system that I have to wonder when the first time will be when an all Black team runs onto the pitch in an English league game. It's a far cry from the days of the seventies when it was rare for teams to field even one black player. Nowadays they grace our game in numbers which is all the better for it.
 
ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Brighton have appointed former Shacktar boss De Zerbi as their new manager. That means Russell won't be leaving us yet but maybe not a bad thing as we seem to be getting better. The next few games against some tough opposition will tell us more about our 'revival'.

And Cardiff have sacked Steve Morison. Wonder who'll end up there?
 
ivoralljack

ivoralljack

Grizzled Veteran
Staff member
Wales playing Belgium tonight and it's on S4C. We will be missing several key players so, despite Pages's claim that we're going for the win, I think we'll probably lose by three goals or more. We just don't have the depth at this level but it's also fair to say that, with a fully fit and firing team, we can give anyone a game. Not tonight though.
 
JackBarSteward

JackBarSteward

Key Player
I'm not expecting much here either. We simply don't have the strikers of old. Still give them my full support though. They'll give them a game.
 
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