I got my info from three journo's [as you probably guessed] who instantly agreed about the way Conte sets his teams out to play. They all agreed will be ultra pragmatic and not at all pretty to watch.
Of course, i am not blaming him alone for the state of Italian football, but him and his type are part of the problem. Our league is now far, far more entertaining to watch and with global tv they can see it for themselves and see what they are watching is pretty tedious compared to our game.

I do agree that we have put ourselves into a corner and now the list of credible candidates is a pretty small one. However, there are others out there who like there teams to play attractive football. Eddie Howe would be a gamble but it would be one i'd be happy to see us take.

If Conte does take over, i think he'll probably do a similar job to Jose. Take the team to a certain level and back into the top four. But, after a season or two we will stagnate and start going backwards. That ultra pragmatic style of just keeping the back door shut and trying to knick a goal and hang on for dear life does not work for long in the Premiership. It's too mentally and physically draining on the players only looking to be a goal up and having to hang and play on the edge week in week out.
Furthermore, it kills any chance of bring along our youth players. We really might as well close down our youth system if we're forever going to carry on the way we our with our young players. Just look at the lift the young players at UTD are giving to the team and the fans. Meanwhile, we are stuck in mid table playing pretty meaningless games and still our youngsters can't get a look in. We continue with the likes of Mikel and let our most promising young player in a decade rot away on the subs bench or in the reserves.
We are just far too conservative!!!

I was as anti Rafa as anyone when he was appointed.
However, i have an open mind on all things and when i began to see he was doing a very good job under exceptionally difficult circumstances i changed my mind on him.
We bought the likes of Mata, Luiz, Hazard and Oscar to change the we were going to play for year ahead. After a difficult start, Rafa started getting the best out of them and Lamps was being used to perfection.
That was the way ahead for us, but unfortunately, we went for short term gain and now find ourselves in the worst position we've been in for 20 years.

Why not look into it yourself? Instead of forming your views by what other people tell you.


Its very easy to do nowadays with the access we have to all sorts of video and stat's regarding how teams play.

What are you basing the idea that he won't play certain players? Have these "journo's" told you this? He has not even taken the job yet as far as we know yet who he will or will not play is being picked by people with not a single clue or any actual real information to go on. Where is your data on who he will or will not pick?

Eddie Howie? Ok when I said i thought you would pick someone who is not good enough or has not available I did not think you was going to go so far down the ridiculous route, Jesus someone like him would not have got the job when we was in division two never mind a worldwide brand.

Glad to see your willing to gamble with billions of pounds that are not yours.

Worst position we have been in 20 years? Utter Nonsense. We was a game away from not having more then likely not having enough cash to play the next season unless we released the entire squad.

We have a very good squad of players who are either good enough to challenge for the title or would command very good prices to enable us to buy new players. We are finally starting work on a new ground something we should have needed to do from before Roman came to us. We have a worldwide fan base and some very good sponsorship deals in place (and can attract even better ones once the new ground is built). We are not even in the worse position we have been in the last 4 years.

I bet you thought Leicester were bonkers to give the job to Claudio who had flopped big time in his last job.
Sometimes in football you need to be brave and take chances, as we did many years ago under Ken Bates, when he started his long term plan to get us to the top. If someone like Howie did fail, then so what! We sacked a w World Cup winning manager after 6 months, so why not give a young manager a chance?

I was talking about our league position. Worst position for 20 years is factually correct!
I think there's a huge job ahead for whoever takes over!
Baba - not good enough by a long chalk!
Ivanovich - past it.
Cahill - Often dodgy without JT by his side.
Mikel - CHRIST. HOW MUCH LONGER IS HE GOING TO CLOG UP A PLACE
Matic - was his form just a 6 month golden patch?
Hazard, still looking a very long way off from the player he was.
Oscar - Frustratingly, still very hit and miss.
Courtouis - Hugely overrated keeper. Not even top six in the Prem, never mind one of the best in the world.

Btw. The bit about us building a new stadium before Roman arrived.
Have you forget the amount of rebuilding that was done before he came? The stadium was an embarrassing, disgusting slum until Harding came on board and got the job under way of transforming the club.

So now you are comparing appointing a manager to Leicester to appointing one for Chelsea? Then again you are comparing appointing a manager to Chelsea under Bates to Chelsea under Roman

Do you really think when the board are preparing a list of names to give to Roman that Eddie Howes name will be on it and he would consider it?

The difference considerations when recruiting for the jobs in all those situation are about as different as you can get. You would not use the recruitment polices when recruiting someone to run 10 mini-marts as you would someone to run Tesco's

And last season it was the best we had been in years and yet you was still complaining.

I rate Eddie Howe a lot for what he's done at Bournemouth, but he's nowhere near ready for a job like this. He's not even completed a season in top flight football yet. I also don't think he would want to walk away from Bournemouth at this point in time given his ties and affinity with the club and town, I think he will be aiming to establish them in the Premier League first before going anywhere else.

Harding of course did a great thing but it was no more then putting up some new wallpaper.

It was the best we could do at the time but we still needed to do more.

The Sky change was just coming in and clearly was going to be a game changer. As a club in Central London we was in prime place to take advantage. Of course we was unable to do so due to many factors

League position is a very small mentality to take (more so when you take into account how different the league is from 3 years ago nevermind 20). The bigger picture is always the view to take.

Yes we have some issues that need fixing, Yes we might (or might not) need some changes to the playing staff (and non playing staff) but on the whole we are not in bad shape and could be in a much worse one.

Tweeks here and there and we will be a side competing for the title again

UTD appointed Moyes, a manager who had never won a trophy. OK, it didn't work out but at least they had the balls to give him a go.
Arsenal appointed Wenger, who was hardly a household name.

"giving it a go" is not a way to run a multi million pound business.

You are just pulling out random comparisons.

Do you think "realistically" Eddie Howes name would get accepted by Roman?

I was very happy and pleasantly surprised by our football during the first half of last season, but i could see there were some real problems brewing during the second half of the season.
However, we had gone more than long enough without winning the title, so winning it again was by far the most important thing!

No! And that's because the people who make the decisions are too conservative.

How is naming choices of our two main contenders being random

That's not important.

You accuse me of dismissing the achievements of people like Bate's Harding and Cladio yet you are doing the same to Roman.

Its not being conservative, Its making business decisions based on logical and sensible choices and not emotive ones and likes and dislikes. Yes of course either are just as likely to come off but its still a pretty sensible route to go down

Because they are run in very different ways.

Arsenal at the time is very different to Arsenal today and so is the league.

Man Utd are run in different way and can afford to "gamble" more then we can due to the massive income revenues they generate (and still generate when mistakes are made). We don't have that luck

And that is what I mean by looking at where we are by league position only is a very narrow view.

Looking at our league position last season "only" as you are doing now would have said everything was going well but you was looking at the bigger picture now all of a sudden you are just looking at our league position.

You cannot flip flop on how you look at something or judge it just to suit your views.

Since you are saying the current players are not good enough are you saying that players like Oscar and Eden and Courtouis would not attract decent money to buy new players? Forget the nonsense about Eden being worth 100m last season etc but in the real world? They are either good enough which is good or they are not good enough but will still sell for quite a bit of cash which is still good.

Hold on, you say you have an open mind on all things yet you have already decided Conte is the wrong choice. So it's only an open mind with ex Liverpool managers.
Interesting.......

We can talk about who we would like to be manager until the end of time. Someone will say Eddie Howe someone else will say JT another person will say Jose and someone else might say Fergie and so on and so on every single one just as much nonsense as the other

But when you get right down to route of it all its about who is the best person from a list of people who Roman would realistically offer the job to and who would realistically accept the job. If it is Conte is he one of the names near the top of that list?

Just read that Conte plays negative football.

I'm pretty sure when Chelsea played Juventus and they outplayed Chelsea off the park Juve were not playing negative football.

The only issue with Conte is potential volatility(although it didn't seem to have any affect in Turin) and his lack of european prowess which could easily turn him into a Mancini type manager (who had a similar problem in his first spell at Inter). Will be interesting to see how he does in the euros as he's not really great in cup format.

The reason why earlier Conte was a bit more pragmatic and defensively minded was because he had vucinic and Matri as strikers so they obviously were not going to score as much.

Also the entire league is based on defence and pragmatism. Ancelotti used to be chastised in his early milan days for being pragmatic and changed his formation to the diamond in response to that from Berlusconi.

Yeah I said this exact same thing earlier on this thread.

What kind of crap is this?

Monaco went from promotion from ligue 2 to 2nd place in the space of a season under Ranieri.

I think I've spotted a troll.

His last job - He got the sack as manager of Greece after four months of terrible results.

I think i've spotted someone who doesn't know their facts.


I don't understand the reservations about taking a chance on someone like Howe.
It's not like Chelsea's world will come crashing down if he fails. If things don't work out, he'll get the sack, just like all the managers before him.
With the sacking of Jose months after signing a new contract and winning the title the previous season, it's now clearer than ever that every manager has to win, win, win and keep winning or else they get fired. It's not the ideal way to run a top club, but it has worked for us in the past so who can really complain about the sackings?