BennytheBigBear

This is a fucking rough pub.

Maybe it's not the time for it but I'm being realistic. You know what I'm saying. One swallae disnae make a gangbang and all that.

Paranoia man. I'm not wrong but. It's the same players with the same deficincies, fuck all's changed. We need a big summer, don't want to see the board let off the hook after one win.

I'm the strong, silent type.

Pleased with the result today obviously but what I don't want to see is complacency creep in with regards to the scale of the rebuild needed in the summer. They rotated about half their team today, they were arrogant and looked complacent, played like a team whose season is already over. We can't judge where we're at from a dead rubber, we still need heavy investment. Btw, how good was Cantwell? Some player we've got there, justifying the wage already.

My biggest problem with the gap is that it's being put down to the squad quality, which is only part of the story. The real issue is why their squad is better. Pound for pound, they're signing far better players and have done for some time. With equal resources, their squad would still be better because of savvier spending. And our resources aren't equal, but that's also on us. We've assembled unnecessarily large squads and held onto players that should have been cashed in on. They tried that in the 55 year and learnt their lesson, now they just buy one season and sell as soon as a profitable offer comes in, they're not holding out for megabucks or begging disinterested players to re-sign. Also, they don't keep guys who aren't performing in their squad for years on end just because they paid the money for them. They stuck fairly pricey signings like Barkas and Ajeti out on loan, their starting XI functions like a meritocracy. We have guys that don't perform adequately in and around the first team for years. Bottom line, how the board/manager manages the squad and transfers isn't up to snuff and that's why we're behind. And I've no confidence in it changing. It wouldn't surprise you to see them spunk a load of money in the summer and for us to stay more or less at the same level, as that's how it's felt for ages now.

Beale can talk about how close the game is but bar a couple opportunities, we barely pushed them. It was an easier game for them than our last league game, they were in autopilot defending for the last 15 minutes of the game. I just think he's kidding himself of if he reckons we're close to them, if we were we'd beat them at some point as the season went on.

I hate Sutton but he's not wrong about Morelos is he. Should have been pulled earlier, not half the player he was for us. Time for a change.

Today's been coming for weeks. Too many times we've pulled it out the fire and the narrative becomes we're grafting for hard-earned points rather than failing to put easy teams to the sword early doors. Aberdeen have been on form, they're the best of the rest by a country mile atm, and you could see it happening before a ball was kicked the day. I can only echo that I've been sceptical about Beale but I'm also sceptical about replacing him. We get another manager in who inherits the same squad with the same deficiencies. My gripe with him is I don't think he's the man to do the rebuild. They're picking up the best players in East Asia for buttons while we're looking to pay over the odds for middle-of-the-road players from south of the border. It's a strategy that just amplifies the resource gap rather than closing it. And that comes back to the board at the end of the day.

Despite the scoreline, games like this never feel comfortable at the minute. I appreciate them working hard to get the win in the end but we're making life harder for ourselves than it need be. On the upside, it's more exciting to watch at least. Not bored by halftime as used to often be the case.

I'm far from sold on the guy but willing to give him more time given the results we've had since he came in. Half the job of winning the league is keeping the squad motivated and if he can keep the same vein of form now there's nought left to play for, that's a big positive. Same goes for the semi-final, needs to ensure we're forcing errors and capitalising on them. Too many looking gunshy last weekend when there's absolutely no need to be.

I'm not convinced by him and he feels like a stopgap solution to me. He's definitely steadied the ship but we need more than hard-fought wins against the teams in this league if we're going to routinely win trophies. I can't see what he's doing to transform our squad or the way we play to achieve that. I understand his gripes about budgets but that doesn't stop him from changing how we approach things on the pitch. We give diddy teams too much respect when we should be set up to Blitzkrieg them. The way he talks at times isn't encouraging either. Someone above said he displays a defeatist attitude at times and I've noticed that. The budget thing is true but never send out that message, tell your players they're every bit as good as the other mob, because the gap in quality isn't actually as big as the gulf in funds imply. I don't like those excuses, if you lose, take it on yourself and approach the next match differently.

Yes with a caveat. If they go on a free this summer, there are presumably few funds available to replace them. If they re-sign with us and are sold in the Summer of 2024 then we can replace with far better than we could now. If we were in the habit of managing contracts/transfers correctly, we'd have shipped half the squad over the summer as their stock will never be higher than after the Euros run. But alas.