Midfield_General

Speaking prior to the heading to Memorial Stadium for a 7pm BST kick-off, City’s Manager spoke about the standards in training starting to pay off in the pre-season matches, which must reflect what he hopes to see when the competitive action comes into focus. “We need it to maintain what they’ve set so far,” the 40-year-old explained. “The level of the work they’ve done in terms of the intensity they’ve approached things at and the willingness to learn and work and be coached, they’ve been fantastic." Training Like Beasts: Level Completed ✅ Next Level: It's A Process, It Takes Time, And When It Works It's Going To Be So Beautiful

Any level of League One income is basically irrelevant when the overall finances of the club have been managed as badly as Leicester’s have. Since 2019 they’ve lost £375m and they’ve had to take out out a further £100m loan at 9% interest. League One TV revenue is £2m per year. Meanwhile they’re still paying for transfers they made when they were in the Premier League and they’ve still got players like Winks on £60k p/w contracts. Their owners aren’t putting any money in so I’m not sure what magical income streams you think they have that can offset that level of fiscal clusterfuck. If they can’t shift those high earners they are in enormous financial trouble. Their whole team is for sale, they haven’t got a pot to piss in and since when did anyone choose to ply their trade in league one over the championship because of the ‘facilities’ 🤣 If Martin had had any offers from the league above, he’d obviously have taken one. But he didn’t. He went there because it was the only offer he had.

Rumours gathering pace that Martin's first signing is going to be another former Saint https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/26265237.ings-reportedly-set-sign-former-southampton-boss-league-one/

That, and the threaded pass from the centre half into midfield are the ones that I'd be looking to jump on. Let them have the ball, wait for the CB to bring it out and try and make that pass into feet, then spring the press so that when you win possession you've got men over and can get straight in behind while the central defenders are still pushed up and isolated because the wing backs are miles up the pitch waiting for a ball that never comes.

'It's not a tactical issue' - delivered with a dismissive smirk after gifting two goals in a disappointing 0-2 home reverse to Wycombe

Assuming Ronaldo plays tonight he would have made history by becoming the first player ever to feature in six World Cups... had Messi not done it last night, thereby beating him to it by one day 🤣

If we're looking at Scotland / Rangers we could do a lot worse than have a look at Djeidi Gassama as well. Quick, direct, gives defenders all sorts of problems and has got a goal in him. He was often their standout player whenever I watched them last year. Can play on either wing and they picked him up for less than £2m a year ago, which was a great bit of business. Only 22 so YHGTI.

‘Not perfect at Rangers’ = sacked after 123 days with a 29% win percentage, by far the lowest ever in the club’s 154 year history. Lovely bit of trolling. It’s like saying the Titanic’s maiden voyage to New York ‘had a couple of hiccups’.

France have been brilliant going forward but their keeper Maignan has been dodgy. Bazzed out the way of it for the Senegal goal and was lucky to get away with two others.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2026/06/13/russell-martin-appointed-manager-of-leicester-city/ Three year deal, according to the Telegraph. Hope they’ve got some good ball-playing centre halves.

I must be remembering it wrong then as that’s how I remember it. Fair enough if that’s not right - happy to be corrected. Edit: He had been out injured for 8 months when we signed him though. We signed him in September and he’d not played since January because of an Achilles injury: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66681314

He was also injured when we signed him. Saints knew the risks they were taking on when they signed an injured player. They took the calculated gamble, paying a lower fee than he would otherwise have been worth, thinking they could rehabilitate him and turn it into a bargain, but knowing the flip side was that they’d have to pay him whether they were successful or not. That’s on Saints, not Stewart. No-one forced us to sign him. He served out the terms of his contract. He’s not obliged to sign any new contract we put in front of him, regardless of terms. It’s his choice if he thinks he can then get a better offer somewhere else. Having said all that, It’s a very big risk going into the intense conditions of tournament football with his injury record and without a signed contract with someone. He’s taken a huge gamble there.

Salisu scored for Ghana vs South Korea in the groups in 2022

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.