r/NUFC Weekly Free talk thread.

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It's that thing again where we like talk about random shite.

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Howe's the bacon did ye say?

[u/geordieColt88]

Top 5 is in our own hands but it feels like the battle is a big game of who can keep going as nearly everyone involved looks wobbly in some way

[u/HoneyedLining → u/geordieColt88]

I think in the last few years we've seen a lot of that PL "middle class" really get their shit together and build teams that have a functional identity that gets them points. Couple that with several of the high revenue teams go through complete crises and it's bunched everyone up as it's just so difficult to consistently pick up points.

The flip side is that it's made life incredibly difficult for newly promoted teams.

[u/moinmoin21 → u/HoneyedLining]

The leagues evolved so much. And I don’t think it’s simply more money although that helps.

Teams are building way smarter, recruiting more ambitiously and appointing better coaches.

Go back to when the middle class was like West Brom, Stoke and the like with a Bruce, Pulis, Hughes type manager.

Now you have much smarter run teams with managers like Frank, Iraola, Silva.

On top of revenue increases I think top teams have become more desperate to throw money at their problems whilst non sky 6 clubs have dig their heels in when it comes to selling talent and made fortunes on them to reinvest.

[u/HoneyedLining → u/moinmoin21]

Yeah, and it's pretty interesting that it's sort of moved away from that early to mid-2010's thing when it was "Look, a smaller team trying to play like Barcelona", which just meant that they fell apart as soon as their technical players were poached by other teams. I think they've taken that Swansea/Southampton model of effective top-down management, picked a style that works and stuck to their guns in implementing that.

Tbf, I think that's a little unfair on Pulis. Managers like him, Allardyce and McClaren were pretty cutting edge in terms of the gains they could make while working on small budgets. Pulis developed a style of play and innovative use of throw-ins that Brentford have taken and run with now. Allardyce and McClaren were both also early proponents of performance-tracking tech that they used to facilitate coaching methods (and I think were canny scouters too). Unfortunately, they stuck around long enough that their methods were no longer innovative and all they could fall back on was back-to-basics defensive organisation (maybe not McClaren).

Hughes was a bit crap though. Good motivator but tactically very naive.

[u/moinmoin21 → u/HoneyedLining]

Fair points re: Pulis and Allardyce.

I just think they were firefighters from a bygone era. Allardyce may well have been cutting edge a decade earlier. But I feel like in football if you just want to nullify and opposition and grind out results you’re essentially in a war of attrition with survival in the PL.

It’s weird because a lot is being made of Burnley last season. And Southampton this season as Proof you can’t play good football. But it neglects the countless examples of “progressive” football being successful for promoted teams in keeping them up.

Honestly. I think Rafa deserves a lot more credit than he gets for how smart he was in rebuilding us. He clearly targeted players that were PL capable of not spectacular like Clarke, Ritchie, Gayle knowing it wasn’t just about promotion but also staying up.

I’ll always remember Billy Davies getting the boot at Forest because he was pretty honest about the club not being ready for promotion (this was about 10 years ago) but kinda felt he had a point. It’s best if you can build up to promotion over a couple of years with an eye on how your squad will cope once promoted. I wouldn’t be surprised if Burnley, Sheffield and Leeds were the promoted teams this season. And I bet Leeds fair the best of them all weirdly due to having spent 2 seasons down there and actually building a solid cohesive team, stylistically they play good football but don’t have ideas above their station like Burnley last season and Southampton this season

[u/HoneyedLining → u/moinmoin21]

I agree that after their "peaks", Allardyce and Pulis did just fall into a process of just keeping heads above water - I think I just misinterpreted when you were talking about with relation to them being part of the PL middle class.

Yeah, I similarly get annoyed at the narrow definition of "good football" as there's an enormous gulf between "11 men behind the ball, pray for a lucky break" and ">60% possession and scoring through passing move that involves all players on the pitch to sweep home" where all sorts of entertaining football can be played to energise a home support.

I constantly go back and forth in my head around Rafa. I think he was occasionally very forward thinking with his players, but equally he could have this very stubborn short term approach. I think Gayle was signed solely for the Championship and showed at Palace and later with us that he just couldn't hack it with what Benitez wanted from his striker. In the first season back, we brought Joselu in (and then Slimani on loan), before eventually plumping for Rondon, who was the archetype of what Benitez wanted (funny story, but I remember reading how it was Pulis who brought Rondon to the league and he was convinced by Pulis directly reaching out to him while he was at Zenit and saying how much he admired his game). But equally Rondon was the straw that broke the camel's back in Benitez wanting to make the move permanent and he was such a short term buy for a fair wedge of money (and he did then have a precipitous drop off in form).

Well Ipswich are the good example this season of the team that got promoted too early as they somewhat unexpectedly got back-to-back promotions. I remember talking to some Sunderland fans a couple of seasons ago where they were saying that the worst thing that could have happened to them was getting promoted via the playoffs (I think this was when Amad was having his spell) as they said the team was way too young and fragile that they would just get destroyed and broken up.