S-Clarke

Longest amount of games unbeaten without achieving anything

I totally agree, it's all wrong. I hate it, I think they're ruining football if they've not already. All this is going to do is create a massively divided league with teams who are scared to compete, and the teams who have the revenue will continue to be able to compete. It won't be obvious immediately, but you'll have two clear leagues in the PL before long - but I guess that's what they want, the super league by stealth. I find it hard to take it all seriously when you have City still to be punished for their 120 odd breaches, but the PL throwing out points deductions for the easy targets without delay.

We didn't help ourselves with the mental signings in 2022 and the winter of 23, but what Leicester haven't been able to do as readily in recent years is recoup. They lost big players they spent a lot on for free, including Tilemans. We recouped almost £150ish in this summer alone, making substational profits on the original transfers which almost breaks us even, this summer if we fail to go up we will have more funds to raise from KWP/Bednarek/Armstrong etc, and the wage bill will reduce in a significant way. I think we're in control of it without having all the detail, we'll see in a year I guess.

We've done some crazy shit in recent years, but that's even beyond us at our worst. I reckon that Cov game will confirm our playoff place.

There is some chatter that their losses could equate to a 20-30 point deduction, so they could be relegated next year before it even starts (whatever league they are in). The pressure to go up must be huge though, without that PL money I have no idea how they can even start to recover. The players are going to feel the pressure on this imo, if we face them in the playoff final then I reckon it could be too much for them.

We need probably 1 win, 1 draw to get playoffs. Not even a thought that we won't make the playoffs, we have a 10 gap advantage to 6th, 2 games in hand, a miles better GD and only 8 games to play. It will be confirmed within the next couple of weeks I'd have thought. We will finish stranded in 4th.

Probably, but it was also because of players like Armstrong, Bednarek, Aribo etc and they've redeemed themselves. He's obviously incredibly injury prone which will limit any takers, I wouldn't be against him as a starting CB in this league - needs to rebuild his career and we can still give him that platform. If he does kick up and still demand to go then so be it, let him rot away in a polish league on loan on something.

In isolation I had no issue what so ever with us purchasing Bazunu 2 seasons ago, but.....it needed to be in combination with a seasoned goalkeeper. Bazunu as a L1 keeper the year before wouldn't have had any expectations to be a starter in the PL, so he becomes the backup/cup goalkeeper and he learns from the more seasoned pro. That's how it should have been done, but the way we put all our eggs into the kid goalkeeper, kid CB, kid CM etc was absolutely nuts. It's the same argument as above, no issues with signing kids in isolation but they can't be your key men...let them have some time to fricking develop. As a club we get full ourselves, we did under Reed/Kruger and also under Semmens. They probably still spend most nights patting themselves on the back regarding Tino livramento, but that signing alone wasn't justification to go and fill the squad with potential Tino's the following season. It's arrogance bordering on stupidity. We got full of ourselves after Koemans first season as well - we thought we'd cracked football, we thought we'd cracked that 10-15m player bracket but were totally ignorant to prices going up and inflation. This club runs me down sometimes because they do the most dumb fuck things, all self inflicted because they like to think they're different than anyone else.

I believe the Calta-Car deal is set as an obligation, so they will buy him for around £3m in the summer. It will automatically convert when the window opens. Charly and ABK are the interesting 2 for me, they've not done enough in their respective loans to encourage any buyers - if anything their value has plummeted. I think it's in the interest of both to get their heads down, get fit and have a good season with us and then see where we are. We have tons left on their contracts and a good season with us is only going to increase their value again and/or get us promoted.

You can go back a tiny bit further to the ridiculous re-contract of Fraser Forster, after he'd only just signed one. That financially lumbered us for years. Our goal keeping recruitment has been bat shit crazy for many years now. If Rotherham can find Viktor Johanssson then why can't we find one of those? This 'finding the next young gem we can sell for a profit' approach is killing us dead.

Rothwell did get a goal of the month, but that's all I've got.

That's for pre-season in my opinion. We've got to hit these 8 games as well as we can, see if we can get ourselves on another run to create momentum. I don't see these 8 games as a mini preseason for the playoffs, we've just got to keep going with the best 11 we can. I do believe we have a chance of winning the playoffs if we regain some momentum and we're not going to do that by playing around even more with the 11. These 8 games are still important and there are still things riding on the results - momentum.

I find it hard to get behind this reasoning, we have scored more goals than both Leeds and Leicester - we have the 2nd top scorer in the league, and the single player who has the most goal involvements across the entire league. Goal scoring isn't the problem when we're having to win games 4-2/5-3 etc. I think it's crazy to say we needed a goal scorer to make that 4-4 game a 5-4 etc. We should be winning 2-0's, 1'0's etc. The goals and way we concede has been what's killed us, if we had a relatively stable defence in the 30-40 conceded ball park then we'd be up there, probably top right now. We shouldn't be bemoaning the lack of a striker because we haven't scored enough to make up for the shit loads we let in. The other end is the problem.

You can't dissolve Martin of all blame, everyone is accountable to some point. In the PL, Bednarek struggled I'll give you, but at this level he is probably as good as you're going to get. He hasn't been shit this year, far from it. One of the best CB's in this league. It wasn't Bednarek, the board or Marie the tea lady who decided Jack Stephens had to be in the team at all costs, at the expense of the settled back 4. That was on Martin and that will always be the pivotal reason we chucked it.

I can genuinely see Charly, ABK and Perraud back in the mix - who is going to touch ABK after this season? At this stage it's probably in his and our best interests to keep hold of him next year, get him a season under his belt and see where he goes. He will still hold value as he has a long contract, so we're not losing out. I imagine takers will be low anyway, needs a season to build his value again.

You could argue he has tweaked it slightly, totally unnecessarily though and in the wrong way (the Jack Stephens floating role). He fiddled with something that wasn't broken, using Ramus's mantra right there.

Credit to you guys, you are riding that crest of a wave ourselves and Norwich did in 2010/2011 - back to back promotions is certainly on for you in my opinion, Leicester look like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders and that may well affect them further in the run-in. One thing I didn't quite understand, why were your fans shouting abuse at Downes and calling him scum? Did he leave you under a cloud when he went to Swansea? He's never struck me as the sort of player who'd kick up a fuss, so I was wondering if it was just the default ''he used to play for us, so we'll boo him'' stance

Shocker in what sense? We certainly didn't play badly or get blown away, far from it. We were miles better than Ipswich and that's my main frustration, we beat ourselves rather than Ipswich tonking us.

Maybe our analyst team had these tables upside down. It's the only sense I can make of it.

The first 2 are the ones for me. GK - To win promotion via any means you need a GK who will occasionally win you a game on his own, but he's not capable of those point winning saves sadly. Remember Leeds away back in 2011? Kelvin was ridiculously good. As a team we were so, so bad....but we needed him to stand up in goal and he did. This season that sort of performance resulted in a 5-0 at Sunderland. So for me, over the course of an entire season, you see the importance of a keeper who can make saves at crucial moments. If you don't have that then you don't achieve anything. Inconsistent team selections is the other thing - we pissed around with a settled 11 when we didn't need to, bloated out the squad with Rothwell when we didn't need to, had to find ways to fit Stephens into the team when we didn't need to. That made a huge difference to us and totally derailed us from Feb on wards and I'd say it has ultimately cost us the season. It feels as if Martin had too much choice and it has lead to him going mini-Pep on us and trying to reinvent roles and players. Idiotic.

The club don't believe there are GK issues though, so in their eyes/his eyes there was never anything to solve on that one. Anyone would take the shot at Man Utd if they were offered the chance. People call them a mess, but it's Manchester United - globally one of the biggest names in sport, who wouldn't be excited to go in there at a time when they have a chance to breathe some life into it? I'm disappointed he's off at the first shot though, and it shows a lack of loyalty, but by the same token this is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity for him (and he gets to move back to where his roots are). From his personal POV I imagine he wants it and it will happen, the club will play the woe-be-me line crying about compo for a while...but that won't help us planning for his replacement. Hopefully SR have more luck with the next appointment because to have the same situation occur again, after Shields, is a bit naff.

That midfield for this level is really bad, we'd never have any control in games. We need a hell of a lot better than Smallbone if we are to see the best of Charles.

I can't buy that KWP is only on 20k, with Alex McCarthy on 50k. I just can't, makes no sense. Even with a 50% relegation clause, that would mean in the PL he was one of our poorly paid players which would be nonsense.

Not sure I buy that. THB, Bednarek, KWP, Downes are the best 4 in their respective roles in this league individually. I wouldn't pick Vestergaard, Morsey, Sam Byram, Harry Clarke etc over any of those for example. Martin is so lucky to have the individuals he has to choose from, and he's fucked it. Individually we should have enough, but we leave ourselves too exposed and have over complicated the structure with Stephens inclusion.

The logic of that reasoning fly's out of the window as he picked Adams again. You need to have a certain type of arrogance to drop your best player, and Martin certainly does have that.