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Interesting - and a remarkably good-tempered discussion considering.

It was the ref last time out, and the manager this time.

I tend to think that the buck stops with the players. When a ref gives a last minute decision that costs a team a game by the odd goal, the issue seems to be the ref's mistake. The players can fail to score for 90 minutes, but the ref blew it.

The same where the manager is 'to blame'. If he has a really bad run - not just a few games - his time at the Club is probably at an end. Few of the players who've performed abysmally will defend him and say, no way, we were utter rubbish.

Especially not when they're negotiating the £60,000 A WEEK. £60,000 whether he plays well or not. And for 3 or 4 years. Few players play all that well all that often. Year in, year out, they are a financial loss to the Club.

So I feel a little sorry for managers. Not that much nowadays. They line their pockets while the Clubs pile up massive losses indulging their dubious reputations as wonder-workers. But I do laugh at the notion that it is the manager's job to devise a system of play to cover up the almost limitless failings of the people on the pitch.

Of course they win sometimes. But that is because the bunch of overpaid clowns on the other side are even worse.

And I do feel that what they are paid is relevant. If they can't be expected to play all that well all the time , don't PAY THEM SO MUCH. If the buck stops with the manager, let the money stop with him as well, then he will deserve the stick if we lose.

By all means pay the players if they deliver. Not the odd win, but long term, profitable success. Profitable? Them? They talk big about football being a business, and they're happy to rake the money in even when their performances are laughable.

No team is as bad as its worst performance, otherwise it wouldn't be its worst performance. And no team is as good as its best. But that tends to funnel all but the most successful Clubs into the limited middle ground of mediocrity. That's OK if they are realistic, and understand their limitations, but investors are anxious to make money on their shares, so the Clubs are subjected to the exaggerations, distortions, and plain lies we're used to in commercial advertising. But whereas we have no vested interest in whether a vacuum cleaner is quality or not, it is tempting to believe that the Rs are better than they seem.

A small football club simply can't deliver on the promises this entails without a very, very large dose of footballing genius, at the very least, and in the Premier League, there doesn't seem to be much scope for the true geniuses who once lifted smaller Clubs up to compete with the best.

As a result, the gap between reality and expectation creates uncertainties which can be crippling. Gambling vast sums of the Club's money on players who lose 6-0 to a side next to bottom is dangerous. Not for any of them, but for the Club.

We all know that Clubs have freak results, steady themselves and go on to outperform their tormentors (QPR 1-6 Brentford in the opening game in 1966 will spring to mind for the more perennially youthful of our support. We almost won promotion that year, they went down).

But steadying ourselves and putting on a decent show in mid-table won't recover tens of millions lost. And it is difficult for a manager to know why the team is doing well or badly because it depends so much on what all the other Clubs are doing, and, by definition, we have very little knowledge or control over that.

It isn't a bad idea to bring unpredictable players down to earth. Paying them big money when big performances aren't always forthcoming is a fool's paradise. Unfortunately, there is little appetite - and maybe little scope - to deal with that, as there are so many fools in boardrooms at the moment. They are smart with their own finances, but indifferent to the losses they inflict on the Clubs.

We can spend more than we earn, in an effort to haul ourselves up by our bootstraps. But is there the talent around to justify it?

Me, I'd never call for a manager to be sacked. If we can't expect the players to deliver on this kind of money, the manager is in the cleft stick of sticking with them, and attempting to gloss over their shortcomings, or paying more for someone else and screwing the Club even more financially.

Excellent thread.