Hodgson isn't responsible for several years of incoherent short-term planning, but the board isn't responsible for his training and tactics.

So the blame is probably something like 80:20.

What's the bet Parish lives to survive another failure of a season? Does "but he saved the club" really still cut it with you lot in 2019? Surely it's embarrassing seeing what other clubs have made of their promotions? Looking at our squad outside the first 11 or so is enough to send a man into counselling

Roy is making a dogs dinner of this season but the way our club is run helps him not one bit. I think we'd all agree now that the big money vanity signings and lack of a Palace way have been a mistake. Can't fix the squad until we get rid of the 80k+ underachievers clogging up our wage bill and then we have to take a modern approach to rebuilding (ie decide on style of play, recruit manager proven to coach it well, buy players who can fill in the gaps from all over the world, preferably without spending 20m and 80k on each via having a good scouting and analytics system, give the manager time to get their system drilled into the players, back the manager over the players and get rid of anyone he does not deem good enough and the dissenters like with de Boer). We nearly did it with FdB but lost our nerve and went back to the comfort of firefighters.

I think we can all accept down times as long as there is progress being made, something being built. Can anyone say we are now? Is there anything about our club that is sustainable and fit to keep us a stable PL club for the years to come with the hope we can push for top half and maybe even Europe like Bournemouth? Best I can think of is the academy news and that will take ages for the place to be turned into a facility fit for Cat 1

In my opinion we've been very unlucky and we're a bit too quick to look for a scape goat.

We've recently had some very tough matches and secured excellent draws against Arsenal and Man Utd.

We've followed this up with a very convincing win against Burnley.

We appear to have been robbed by the ref at Brighton on two occasions which severely affected the players on the night. This was also an away game so do we really expect us to win?

Lastly West Ham (away match again). They are on fire at the moment. We outplayed and won the first half but unfortunately conceded to a wonder goal early second half. With their tails up it was always going to be a struggle from there on.

Clearly we need replacements or the return of quality strikers (whether that is Benteke or Wickham who knows). Another option is to spend big in January if there is someone out there to buy. I'd like us to do this.

Lastly, it might be too late but I'm sure RLC wouldn't turn down and move back to us, even if on a loan. I know he's got more game time recently but I can't see that happening on a regular basis at Chelsea or any other top 6 club. He needs game time to ensure he's back in the England team in time for the Finals in Portugal next summer, which I'm sure will be on his mind.

Keep the faith people, I know its tough but its still early days to start panicking.

I cant believe that we are starting to blame RH for the mess caused by Steve Parish, IMO The club is totally mis run by people at the top. Roy was the messiah last season saving us with a totally depleted squad, He did make it clear that SP needed to be active in the transfer market otherwise we would be bang in trouble again, As always and as a consequence of SP totally ignoring the advise of his Manager we are where we are, No strikers available and a very poor bench, IMO STEVE PARISH himself and whoever he has put in place as his backroom team are totally responsible, for the poor and inadequate running of our club, I wish he would relinquish his role as chairman and accept he just is not up to the job

Edited by Medway Eagle (10 Dec 2018 11.49am)

Edited by Medway Eagle (10 Dec 2018 11.51am)

Willo. that's what I mean, Its an equal playing field as far as the financial constraints are concerned for Premier league clubs. Many of a similar size or smaller. I don't see any of them blaming this for poor transfer dealings. I wish we had Mike Ashley that's how poorly I rate SP, nice guy but not up to this level

The reason is simple, we have signed mediocre players on ridiculous high wages. Look at our wage structure compared to other clubs around us. That in a nutshell why we can’t spend money now on transfers.