Memphis

You run out of superlatives. The finishing ability, the composure, the demeanor, the way he blends into the team and provides more than just pure finishing, the fact that he seems to love it here, there's not a better fit for us on the planet. No point in debating whether he's a top (x) striker in the world, he's 1 of 1 for us right now. And he's not Shearer, but that's OK. No reason to ever compare the two.

Ange and Maddison both sounded completely despondent post match. Like they'd been through a disaster, which, well...

He genuinely looks like Thierry Henry out there. On a different planet than everyone else. His composure is unreal. His first touch, his control, he's intelligence, I wouldn't take 150m for him, he is irreplaceable.

Imagine not believing in this guy... couldn't be me

Perfectly phrased

Looking back at the timetable, it seems that this all became public after 12 October, so it's not as if he was daft enough to bet on football after all of this emerged. This is a continuation of his previous infractions and I would hope common sense would prevail and his lengthy ban would suffice as punishment, but knowing the FA, I doubt it.

Feels as if the season of short squads, injuries, and upheaval is catching up to us. We just look mentally and physically tired every time we step on to a pitch. It's been quite some time since we've looked anywhere near our best, and I think it was always going to be inevitable that we would feel the pain of having squeezed by as long as we did. I think it's silly to blame Howe specifically, as he's merely a part of the whole club philosophy when it comes to training and squad management. I do think we will need to reassess how we do things this summer and prioritize depth more than we have. But it would be harsh in the extreme to make sweeping changes on the back of what feels like an inevitable drop in form. To me, it simply means this summer will be absolutely critical not only in terms of player recruitment, but also a reimagining of how we balance the squad and how we handle our fitness levels.

I think this is well stated. We are in a different position from a financial standpoint than when we hired Ashworth, but more importantly, we are now fully staffed behind the scenes. Knowing how things went with Ashworth, we may well decide to change the remit of the Sporting Director role. Or replace it with something else. Whatever the situation, I would expect whoever is hired to be indicative of that chosen direction.

There is a great deal of speculation and argument over a lot of things none of us can know or will likely ever know: 1. The specifics of Ashworth's role in our transfers 2. The specific things he has done to create and build out our infrastructure 3. The nature of his relationships with the coaching staff and the owners 4. How indispensable (or not) his specific knowledge and methods are 5. How much of our methodology leaves with him and would have to be rebuilt or reimagined We can speculate all we like, we can claim to talk to friends of friends, we can scrutinise public comments, none of it will actually help us have concrete information to address those issues above. At the end of the day, he is obviously very good and very well-thought-of within the industry. And it can't be a good thing for us to have to pivot to a new Sporting Director after only a year or so. But to say it's a crushing blow or to say that Ashworth was worthless are equally knee-jerk reactions that aren't supported by data. We will never truly know those answers, and that's OK. The fact remains that we are supremely wealthy as a club and are extremely attractive to prospective employees. I have no doubt that PIF, Staveley, Ghodoussi, and Eales will find a fantastic candidate and we will continue apace. And yes, they can either pay £20mm or get fucked. Zero motivation, I'd imagine, for anyone to do Ashworth a solid here.

With the importance of this role and the sheer amount of proprietary knowledge he would have, I'm not surprised we baked in a massive gardening leave into his contract. Him leaving immediately would damage us greatly in the short term simply from an information standpoint. I'm thrilled to see us taking a hard stance. PIF will have no problem paying him for putting his career on hold if it means keeping our secrets from them until 2026. Money well spent.

More like Dan Ashworthless if you ask me

We didn't crumble in the last 20 minutes because we weren't dog tired from having played 4 matches in 10 days or something crazy. There's not much more to it than that. If we had a deeper, healthier squad, we would have been seeing this all season. As it stands, once we've been given some time to breathe, we can play this way again.

A rested Howe team is a dangerous Howe team...

Fabulous performance so far. Isak injury puts a big stink on it, though. Just that kind of year, I guess. Unrecognizable from some of our earlier away performances, THIS is the team that I've used to seeing.