Midfield_General

Macca's ony got a year left, and at his stage of his career no-one else will be matching his wages even with a relegation cut, so I very much doubt he'll be going anywhere. As you say, if we get a proper new number 1, Macca's absolutely fine as second/ third choice until his contract expires next year.

And right. And high to the left, and high to the right. And don't forget the straight ones.

If Fernandes and Dibling both stay then we really would have no excuse not to be challenging for the league. I think it’s rather unlikely but we can hope 🤞

Would be a great signing for them on paper, until he lets them all get unfit and then makes them all look stupid with how he tells them to play. But it looks like he's getting all his affordable mates back together, so hopefully the call for the Wee Man™ is coming in 3, 2, 1...

'Welcome to Leicester Danny! Must be good to have escaped that madhouse!' 'Ja' 'Oh and by the way we're broke, we're starting with a 12 point deduction, the owner sold the club yesterday and the new Chairman has said he's not convinced you're the right man for the job' 'Scheiße'

Very sad news. RIP.

Mad that anyone responsible for signing off the design could see that and think it was alright. The overall concept is great and with a tiny bit of thought it could have been a classic, but the whole design and execution of the sleeves is just so shit. I can't believe how hard they make it look to design a football kit every season. It's such a basic thing to be able to get right, half the people on here can do it perfectly well. Ah well. If we win in it no-one will care. But so near and yet so far.

I personally hope not, but yes, he could well be. Who knows though. It's still very early days and until some of the bigger sales start happening and we start to get an idea of how Still wants us to line up, it's very hard to tell.

Yeah Armstrong's the one who, if we play him in his best position coming in off the right, gives me the most confidence will get goals out of who we've currently got. I personally wouldn't read too much into his WBA loan spell because by all accounts they were playing him down the middle which anyone who's watched him enough knows he can't do. I'd definitely keep him. Stewart looks to have a bit of quality but you just feel he could break down at any time. With Archer, the jury is still totally out for me and it would be an enormous risk to rely on him to lead the line, and BBD I just think is an embarrassment and he'd be the first out of the door, regardless of whether or not he's scored a few at this level before. He's abysmal. I'd still like to think we're going to spend some proper money on an established, obvious first-choice striker. Going in with that person, Stewart, Armstrong and Downs, and getting rid of Archer and BBD would feel to me more like the behaviour of a team expecting to challenge for the league. And I agree with you about the supply being critical. Until we see how Still wants to play, who stays, who goes etc it's almost impossible to predict what the team will look like at the start of the season, but it definitely feels like there's a lot of work to be done.

The risk at the moment though is that even with Downs arriving you don't look at any of our striking options and think 'yeah he's going to be the main man to score the goals to get us promotion'. Every one of them still feels a bit 'might be alright off the bench for the last twenty minutes'. It's only the beginning of July though, so let's see where we are at the end of the window.

It’s hard to write much when you’re doing a running high five victory lap and laughing hysterically

Reports say Russ 'wants' Downes... but he ends up signing Rothwell. There could not be a more perfect illustration of the difference between the speculation on who Rangers 'want', and the pool in which they are fishing in reality.

Quite. I could definitely see deadwood like Fraser going there, because we'd almost certainly want rid and it could easily be the best (or only) offer he'd get. Which is very different to them realistically competing for much better players that other, much more well-off clubs might actually want.

Which they can't. He's a £20m-£25m player under contract until 2028. Their all-time transfer record paid is £12m, and that was 25 years ago when they were good and had money. Apparently he was also on £30k per week last season, so if goes he's going to want to increase that. He's 26 now, so he's got probably 5 years left to maximise his earning potential. No way can Rangers compete with what even the relegation bait down here would be able to offer him. It's TeamTalk. It's bollocks, just rehashing other clickbait stories that were made-up in the first place. Downes may well leave, but it 100% won't be to Rangers. It's almost as absurd as people suggesting Rangers could come in for Ramsdale. Look at who Rangers actually sign, what they pay for them and the wages they pay. It just has no basis in reality whatsoever.

https://www.manutd.com/en/players-and-staff/detail/maya-le-tissier If THB does go we should be all over that

That's weird, at Uni I flicked your girlfriend's bean while thinking of Gwen Stefani The circle of life I suppose

The stage is set for Fraser Forster's glorious return

My first ever game at The Dell. We win 5-1 on the opening day and our brand new striker scores three on his debut. He instantly became my hero.

Better hope Juric manages to stay in the job until Friday then 🙏

And Sulemana by the end of the day hopefully unless he somehow manages to fuck up his medical as well

He can’t stop people bidding for him though. It doesn’t sound like he’s being a dick about it, so it should hopefully be a case of only selling if we get an offer that we feel is too good to turn down. Otherwise he stays. We seem to be driving some very good deals on sales so far, and if the player’s not throwing his toys out then there’s no real pressure to sell if we don’t want to, so I’d imagine the offer would need to be nearer £25m + performance add-ons up to closer to £28-30m and maybe a sell-on to make it worthwhile. If we’re going to play a 4 at the back then I suspect the thinking might be that our starting CBs will be Stephens and Edwards, with Quarshie and Wood as back-ups. If the club and Still are comfortable with that, then I’d imagine that sort of money through the door for THB would be considered very useful to strengthen the other areas of the team that need more major surgery.

Big Saints flag right in the middle of the front row of the crowd for the Libertines at the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury right now. Rod Stewart's on next. Did someone get mixed up and think it was Ross Stewart?

You're right to be suspicious because Saintsmarching is a load of AI-created gibberish shitting out keywords for clicks. 'Mehdi Gokal' doesn't exist and if you read any of the other 'stories' written under that name you'll see that they don't even make sense. The whole site is total nonsense purely designed to harvest clickbait revenues.

Exactly this. Rohl is under contract and Chansiri is demanding £5m to release him from it from any interested club. We didn’t want him enough to pay that so looked elsewhere. Leicester are financially screwed so there’s no way they’re paying £5m to pay to get a manager out of his contract - they’ll go for a free agent. The exception being if the situation at Wednesday, where they haven’t paid their staff on time for a few months now, triggers a legal situation whereby the players and management team’s contracts become void if it happens too many times, which enables them all to walk for free, which is possible.

There's a joke open goal there, but I'm certainly not making it