Midfield_General

He didn’t slap him though, he vaguely and briefly pulled his pulled his shoulder/ neck with no force at all. You’d see that incident ten times a game in a Tyro u-14s match and they’d all just get on with it.

3rd red card 🤣 Not one of them deserved Absolute joke

If that’s a red card then you might as well just say the game is now completely non-contact. Absolutely pathetic. Add VAR to the long list of things that are ruining this already. ‘It’s been a glorious occasion’ says whoever this gimp is with McCoist on ITV. No it hasn’t. It’s been a desperately shit start.

Nope. All the real fans have been priced out so it’s just a bunch of boring middle class people and corporates sat in their $100 replica shirts quietly munching their hotdogs while a League 2 standard game unfolds before them. FIFA have taken the game away from the people, ruined the format and killed this tournament.

Weird that they have a carefully scheduled three minute hydration break but don’t stop the clock for it and just treat it as injury time to be added on by the referee

He's about to become a free agent, so any calls would be going straight to him/ his agent and for as long as he's without a club I doubt he'd be cutting off anyone who wanted to discuss offering him a contract

Don't forget Aribo...

Also Gilly, who he's worked with in every job, has said he's staying at West Brom so he'll need a new no.2.

Given Leicester's financial situation, you'd think that they're going to need to try and offload a lot of their more expensive players (if they can), and replace them with cheaper, 'bottom half of the Championship / top of L1' -level alternatives. It's going to be genuinely fascinating seeing what he asks League One defenders, in particular, to try and do. With us and Rangers, the centre halves were expected to be the passing fulcrum of the whole system - continually showing for the ball, playing with their heads up, bringing it out of defence and finding the accurate pass to feet into midfield to start the build-up. They were also expected to receive the ball under pressure and play when being pressed. Jan Bednarek (75 caps for Poland) and Jack Stephens (156 Premier League appearances) struggled with it, albeit against better opposition. But how is some League One lump going to adapt to that?

Leicester forums seem to think it's pretty much done on a 3+1 year deal and will be announced this week. Also on a very big wedge, if rumours are to be believed. Leicester board feel they have to work hard to 'attract' him, so they're offering top whack for Championship level, let alone L1. If so, you've got to take your hat off to him really. Given that his seven year career reads one notable success, two unmitigated disasters and a lot of mid-table mediocrity, the man is certainly gifted at talking a rich sucker out of his money.

Is it possible that given how most of the rest of the game has moved on from possession at all costs, and after his chastening experience at Rangers, he’s used his time away to reflect and maybe evolve his approach? There aren’t many who are still sticking to the pure, old school, death by a thousand passes tiki-taka any more. Even Pep has been mixing it up and going more direct more often this season. PSG move it through the lines and attack with speed. Bayern are all about wingers creating for an old fashioned centre forward. Arsenal focus on set pieces. Liverpool fired Slot for his team being too slow and ponderous. The elite have evolved past slow, possession-based build up. I wonder if he’s been paying attention to that.

It doesn't help that football has reached a total saturation point generally. In the days of Italia 90 you used to get one game a week on TV if you were lucky, plus the big cup finals - that was it. When a World Cup came around and suddenly there were three games on a day for a month, it felt like some other-wordly event that you wanted to immerse yourself in because it was soon going to end. Now there are multiple matches on literally every day of the week, throughout the year, plus god knows how many summer tournaments, all of which have been expanded, plus the non-stop relentless media coverage on and offline so it's just a constant rolling feed of more football content than anyone could ever consume and it doesn't feel special anymore. Just more football matches to go on top of all the others. Then throw in the fact it's in the States, the 48 team format creating loads of really boring games and removing most of the jeopardy from the group stages, and half the games being on in the middle of the night, and it's a recipe for indifference, at least until the knock-outs start.

He's 28 and has already been relegated from the Prem three times so far. If goes to Cov, he can get one more under his belt to join the storied ranks of Rob Green, Marcus Bent and Carlton Palmer who all got relegated from the top flight four times. And if he wants to go for the record, as a keeper he's still got plenty of time left in his career to match the relegation GOAT, Hermann Hreidarsson, who managed it a genuinely impressive five times.

Loving all this Saints-related chat, just what the main board is for

In talks with Wolves: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c70yz917vkko