Nordic Saint

We certainly do not want a repeat of Strachan's two games against Arsenal at the end of the 2002/03 season, when he played a weakened team in the first one, so we got thrashed, and were then demoralised for the second one. We should field our strongest team for both games..

Should we wait at least 100 games before saying anything about him? Pretend he's not there? It got a bit like that with Clasie. We needed a goal scorer last summer and we were crying out for one at the beginning of January. If Carrillo was the best that Ross Wilson and Les Reed could come up with, after all the research they supposedly put in, then they are incompetent and that is a big concern with an important summer transfer window coming up.

There is a much more significant difference than that. Cuco scored a goal for us.

#blackbox was at Tottenham when Liverpool signed Salah, and they already had Harry Kane. He's at RB Leipzig now so it will be interesting to see what players and managers they sign in future.

The first manager to have three goalkeepers as first team coaches: Kelvin Davis, Dave Watson and Eddie Niedzwiedki.

I wonder if Les and Mark gave them a half-time talk?

He's not going to let him out of his sight, is he? He's literally not giving him an inch of space. He was with him at training too. At least it gets Old Les out and about.

Hughes has just scored Leicester's 2nd goal!

Only about 100 left now and it's still Thursday. It will certainly be sold out by Sunday. Unfortunately, with plastic sheets covering the front 6 rows, you won't see us on TV. There will probably be just one glimpse when they zoom into about a dozen of our fans just before kick-off.

This reminds me of the early part of the Carrillo thread. Les Reed is making a series of poor decisions and we shouldn't be trying to justify them. We should be trying to get him out.

We should beat Wigan but after that I'd expect Hughes to start to have an influence so we'll get shambolic defence and heavy defeats. This season Hughes' Stoke team lost 3-0 at home to West Ham, 4-0 at home and 5-0 away to Chelsea and 7-2 away to Man City so we can expect similar defeats in our remaining games.

There was a thread on a West Ham messageboard earlier in the season saying that a certain DOF had let them know he was available but obviously they didn't want him. Who would? So, we are still stuck with him.

So.. a team which was below us in the table sack their manager because he was going to get them relegated and we appoint him as our manager to save us from relegation???? Is there really nobody left at the club who can see how stupid this is??? #LesReedmustbesuffferingfromseniledementia

Our aspirations are to be the new Stoke, although if Hughes does become our manager, it will have to be a Championship version of Stoke.

I sincerely hope Les Reed isn't going to impose Kelvin Davis and Dave Watson as first team coaches on the new manager.

Paul Cook as a short-term fix to keep us up or Javier Calleja to make us a top 6 team again. It's a tough choice as the sort of motivator you need to keep us up with the limitations of our current squad and so few games remaining isn't necessarily the same as the type of manager you need to build and coach our squad in the long-term.

Actually, I agree with you. She was good at getting cash fast but the lack of long-term investment in a business will eventually lead to its demise. When Cortese expected her to invest some of the money she got from her father through no effort of her own, for the long-term growth of the business, she was outraged and sacked him. I seem to recall that her father had left financial provison in his will to take care of the club long-term. I wonder what happened to that money? Yet, nobody was outraged at Kat when she got 210 million paid into her bank account by Gao and even charged the club (supposedly her business) interest on a loan, which had to be paid into her personal account in full before she got the money from Gao. She should be very grateful to Cortese for helping build a business from one which cost her father 12 million to one which she sold an 80% share in for 210 million. Meanwhile, Brighton's owner, Tony Bloom, who is no wealthier than Kat, has spent 150 million out of his own pocket on a new stadium and new players and taken nothing back. Bournemouth's owners have also invested their own money in their club.

Too true. She has probably made more money for herself out of this football club than just about any other owner in football history. The priority of the club has been to make money as quickly as possible at every opportunity, and that includes every trnsfer window. The Academy is there to produce players for sale, although it hasn't produced many of any great value recently, and players are bought primarily as investments to be sold for profit. The performance of the football team is just a secondary issue.

Many of us do but we are realistic enough to realize he wouldn't want to work for Les Reed.

It's incredible how you Reedites are still desperately trying to heap praise on your hero. Fortunately, you are in a tiny minority now.

What's reactionary about not being Reedite? Surely, you Reedites are the reactionaries. The majority of us want change.

For the Reedites on here, the performance of the football team is irrelevant. As long as they can worship Les Reed and wonder at the size of Kat's bak balance, they'll always be content. The only time they ever got annoyed was when that Nasty Nic Cortese wanted poor Kat to invest some of her hard-earned dosh in our football club. How selfish of him. They'll never forgive him for that vicious threat to the size of poor Kat's bank balance.

I don't mean played together. They would share the central striker role over the season. The point brmbrm was making was that you need another reliable goal scorer or two in the squad to cover for Austin when he's injured. We don't have any. Even Gabbiadini, throughout his career has been, at best, a goal every 5 games striker, while Long has only scored 1 goal in his last 35 games and Carrillo hasn't score any.

Pelle and Austin would have been the ideal combination. If we'd than added another goal scorer, like David Gameiro, in the last transfer window, and sold Carrillo, Long and Gabbiadini, we'd have had excellent striking options and saved money.

This is, after all, what football club owners usually do. Football clubs, like race horses, have always been bought as a hobby by wealthy businessmen, traditionally local men made good, like Jack Walker, who wanted to put something back into the local community, not people who wanted to make money out of them. Nowadays, it's a sporting arena where international billionaires compete against each other but football clubs have always been rich men's playthings and the wealthier the owner, the more the fans have benefitted. It's not just the likes of Man City and Chelsea. You only have to look at neighbours, Brighton and Bournemouth, to see that. Brighton's owner has already spent 150 million out of his own pocket to build their new stadium and buy players. Saints and Coventry are 2 of the few clubs where owners have wanted to make money for themselves out of the club, and the quarter of a billion that Kat has made must mean she has made more money out of our club than just about any other owner in football history. The board's main task has been to make as much money as possible for Kat and ensure that she doesn't have to reinvest a single penny - the performance of the football team is just a secondary issue - and that's why we are still stuck with Les Reed.