[drewks]

Tony Pulis:
"With Jonas and Gareth now signing we've got a good backbone going into next season. Now we need to go for younger, more athletic, talented players, to go straight into the first team."
Nice to see he's intending to look for this type of player to be in the starting line up, rather than on the fringes of the squad - or worse.
Time will obviously tell.

[Worldclassalbion]

Gnabry, Pritchard, El Ghanassey, Varela, all very talented and quick, all young apart from maybe Varela..........What happened there then??

Pulis is full of shit, as a lot of fans have said before, he wastes big money on below average players and when he gets young talent in (as above), he leaves them in the wasteland. He wastes the golden ticket of loan signings aswellas blowing good money on dross. The man is gutless when it comes to attacking. Yes he picked attackers Saturday but obviously told them not to break forwards at pace as we were that slow my 78 year old mother could have overlapped the side men.

Picking attackers is one thing but letting them attack is another. We are woeful and there's only one person to blame.....TONY PULIS. The whole country knows it, all the fans know, it all the TV Pundits know it, we are really bad and I cannot believe there are going to be 3 worse teams than us in the Premier this season, in fact there may not be.

This man is killing our club and our way of footballing DNA and its breaking my heart because he's just a temporary custodian of all things first team, this is my life long obsession. The sooner he goes the better.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Gnabry, Pritchard, El Ghanassey, Varela, all very talented and quick, all young apart from maybe Varela..........What happened there then?

Not sure I understand; are you using El Ghanassy as an argument against Pulis?  The kid came and went in the space of six months under Steve Clarke.  Also, though it was Pulis who let Varela leave, the chief culprit of not letting him play was Alan Irvine.  Surely if there's a conclusion we can draw from this, it's that we as a club have become very poor at making these loan signings; and that it's happened pretty much since Dan Ashworth left?

[Beefy 1965]

Also we have to remember Wenger didn't want Gnarby back ........

He also stated he wasn't fit enough and have to go out to a championship club.

He is now still stuck in their U-21's who we beat 2-1 last night

[Worldclassalbion]

It amazes me that some of us are happy just to be in the Premier league. As a football fan and a decent player in my time I like us to actually play nice, attacking football. I am a football lover and like to see the game played as it should be played, to try and beat the opposition......... Maybe I have it all wrong.

[talkSAFT]

It amazes me that some of us are happy just to be in the Premier league. As a football fan and a decent player in my time I like us to actually play nice, attacking football. I am a football lover and like to see the game played as it should be played, to try and beat the opposition......... Maybe I have it all wrong.

That baffles me, as well, Worldclass. A number of posters are just simply happy to finish 17th each season (as if that's the Holy Grail). They even want to put "B" teams into Cup matches in case it interferes with next week's League match against fellow strugglers.
Football was played years and years before any League was thought up, and the idea was to outplay and to attack and to win.
I'm assuming the "We'm Premier - Yow'm Championship" people have never actually played any competitive football. The game itself is far bigger than petty one-upmanship.

[4evaabaggie]

Talksaft, worldclass, I agree with your sentiments wholeheartedly, I want attacking, attractive football, I want the best possible team playing every game, I want to win the league cup, the FA cup, the league and I want to be champions of europe ...... I want to win the euro lottery but not everything is possible.

First and foremost we need to get properly established in the greed league, we need to sort out our recent poor transfer record, we need to encourage develop and bring thorough youth players, all of this takes money, money that vile will struggle without next season, money that we currently do not have due to the restrictive ffp rules, which are anything but fair.

I do not want to just finish 17th, I do not want to finish as low as 11th, I want top half entertaining football, but until we can 're-establish the in depth quality in the squad to enable consistency then I will put up with 17th, and for a short time, maybe a season or two, I will be content to grind out results.

I do not agree with your opinions 're chopping and changing but I will not attack you for holding them and I respect your rights to hold them

[talkSAFT]

Eva, it's a very precarious business these days, football. "Establishment" does not necessarily work - it's not as simple as that, as Newcastle, Sunderland, and Villa will confirm! You could say Stoke have done it right (and pat TP on the back!) but just when you think you've cracked it, like Bolton and Charlton, West Ham and QPR, they prove you wrong.
No doubt at all that Albion will come crashing down (maybe next season) or the year after, and I wouldn't bet a penny on them lasting another 5 years.
But I'd rather go down (when we do) playing football the right way. The Premier, for me, is not the be-all. I might sound unambitious but I love the Albion even when they're in the 3rd Division, but I've had as many miserable Saturday nights this season as back in the 90s. It's almost a lottery, rather than a science, to stay in the Prem, and I don't get that much more pleasure looking down on the Dingles as I did looking up to them.......

but that's me, and I also respect your opinions.

---

I meant to add that I now live in the West Country, where I have the craic with all sorts of fans: Argyle, Arsenal, Exeter, Spurs, Owls, etc, and when I go down the pub to watch them, I can feel them feeling sorry for me this season!

[GlassEyedBomber]

It amazes me that some of us are happy just to be in the Premier league. As a football fan and a decent player in my time I like us to actually play nice, attacking football. I am a football lover and like to see the game played as it should be played, to try and beat the opposition......... Maybe I have it all wrong.

That baffles me, as well, Worldclass. A number of posters are just simply happy to finish 17th each season (as if that's the Holy Grail). They even want to put "B" teams into Cup matches in case it interferes with next week's League match against fellow strugglers.
Football was played years and years before any League was thought up, and the idea was to outplay and to attack and to win.
I'm assuming the "We'm Premier - Yow'm Championship" people have never actually played any competitive football. The game itself is far bigger than petty one-upmanship.

It's sad but imagine if money didn't come into it and every team was on an even keel...wouldn't it be so much better? This country needs to follow the MLS, not in terms of league set up because that's bizarre and not so much the draft, but wage caps would be ideal. (Champions League will unfortunately always come first for some, why?) There's not going to be the kind of competition us fans crave until every team is spending the same sort of amounts.

I'm resigned to Albion never winning the top division in my lifetime...where's the magic gone, where's that feeling of suspense that I used to get as a child. Premier league? Yeah right...I'm enjoying watching Newport County every week a lot more at the moment.

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

It amazes me that some of us are happy just to be in the Premier league. As a football fan and a decent player in my time I like us to actually play nice, attacking football. I am a football lover and like to see the game played as it should be played, to try and beat the opposition......... Maybe I have it all wrong.

That baffles me, as well, Worldclass. A number of posters are just simply happy to finish 17th each season (as if that's the Holy Grail). They even want to put "B" teams into Cup matches in case it interferes with next week's League match against fellow strugglers.
Football was played years and years before any League was thought up, and the idea was to outplay and to attack and to win.
I'm assuming the "We'm Premier - Yow'm Championship" people have never actually played any competitive football. The game itself is far bigger than petty one-upmanship.

It's sad but imagine if money didn't come into it and every team was on an even keel...wouldn't it be so much better? This country needs to follow the MLS, not in terms of league set up because that's bizarre and not so much the draft, but wage caps would be ideal. (Champions League will unfortunately always come first for some, why?) There's not going to be the kind of competition us fans crave until every team is spending the same sort of amounts.

Yep, I've been saying the same thing for years.  Sadly some of the "bigger" clubs in MLS are already trying to get the league changed so they can be run as businesses rather than franchises, monopolise the league and spend silly amounts to hoover up all of the talent.  They're also wheeling out the old chestnut of "it'll improve the US national team if we do this!"  Yeah, because it's already worked wonders for England, guys...