S-Clarke

He doesn't seem to get much look in does he. Almost more mind boggling by the day is the Cornet situation, what a waste of a spot that was.

All the explanations I've read around it being the right call are based on assumptions and opinions, that's where it's wrong. It should be black and white. If you're offside and you touch the ball, which directly aids a goal, then yes - you can make that call. But when you start saying ''he didn't touch it, but he COULD have impacted the play with his movement'' then you're into really, really dodgy ground and it shouldn't really be up for debate. That's not a VAR thing to get involved in. Black and white offsides for sure, but going down to the detail of if a player who didn't touch the ball or score the goal, could have impacted the outcome just becomes daft. It will absolutely ruin football if they drill it down to that nuance, simply because it will never be consistent as there's no black and white criteria. It's all opinion based at the time and I don't think VAR should be opinion based.

He's technically horrific, shown up massively at a high level. He had a perfect opportunity in the 2nd half to layoff to Fraser on the left, but his touch went straight up in the air and that was that. The guy has no right being a PL player.

The poor lad isn't cut out for the rigours of high level football, simply doesn't have the body composition to cope with the demands. Needs to go back to Spain's lower leagues, he could still have a decent enough career at spanish lower levels in a slower paced environment.

He didn't touch the ball or impact the course of the ball, that simply has to be the criteria in any situation being questioned. Sure, he was offside, but you cannot rule a goal out because someone was offside who didn't touch the ball. It then becomes the opinion of neutrals as to if the player, without touching, will have impacted the ball to the guy who was on side. It's absolute nonsense of the highest level and there's no sticking up for it.

The first half was much of the same, totally out of our depth and fortunate it was just 1-0. To our credit, we got better in the 2nd half, probably due to Brighton getting much worse, but we did actually get a foothold into it. I thought overall we were unlucky not to win that, but if you go back to the first half that's why we didn't win it. Completely hopeless use of the ball from the back, atrocious defending on numerous occasions - one of which lead to the goal - and that still is our achiclies heal and will always be so. We don't score enough goes to continue to be as vulnerable as we are at the back. The VAR bollocks though summed up everything that is wrong with top level football these days, it's just a depressing watch. A goal being disallowed has to be black and white, it simply has to be. You're either on side or offside, touching the ball or not touching the ball. That's as simple as it needs to be. When you add these daft nuances into the equation regarding interfering, without touching, or being too close to an opposition player, but not touching the ball etc - it just opens up too much inconsistency and goals become based on 'opinion' rather than factual 'on or off' - that's where it becomes very, very dangerous. If you look at the investment they put into VAR over the summer, it was all based around the 'VAR' brand - graphics, social media presence etc. How is that relevant? It shouldn't matter where they sit or what their logo looks like, but they seem to want to make a name for themselves and ensure they are in the spotlight. Corrupt is one word for it. Obviously finishing above 20th was a lost cause many weeks ago, but it's decisions like last nights which actually make me somewhat happy that we won't have to put up with it next year.

These comments are odd really. From a fans perspective, I don't think I've ever felt as low as I do about us in the PL. Every week is a proper chore. It's not fun in any way for the people who pay the hard dollar to watch. He might be enjoying it from his own personal ego perspective, but then that's what it's all about with him isn't it.

There are some good players for sure, but I will stand by the opinion that any decent PL team, serious about competing, should not be starting or including the likes of Manning/Stephens/McCarthy/Aribo/Smallbone/BBD/Armstrong/Fraser. There are some shining lights in Fernandes and Dibling, but the rest just bring down the entire standard sadly and it's made it a bit of an up hill struggle, well more of an up-Everest style struggle. Insurmountable.

I reckon it was Gio, or Fabrice.

Perraud, Salisu, DCC, ABK, Lyanco, JWP, Tella, Lavia, Tino, Moussa, Orsic (lol), Onuachu, Elyonoussi, Diallo, Theo - some loans, some free's, some perms. But quite a big shift there. Big money came from the Lavia, Tella, JWP, Tino sales - the rest were loose change really. This time round we'll probably lose THB, Dibling, Fernandes, Ramsdale, Bednarek - that's where the income will be generated. Maybe around £100m+ there (most from Dibling if we sort the contract out). I can see interest in Downes and Suguwara as well. Obviously KWP will be a gone for 0. We'd be left with a core of Bazunu, Wood, Stephens, Manning, Bree, Aribo, Smallbone, Fraser, Archer, BBD, Armstrong, Downes, Charles. Some decent players in there, but overall a pretty bog-standard Champ squad I'd suggest. Would need some big investment to be competitive at the top end.

The Cooper appointment was massively ill-judged by Leicester. He was onto the back foot immediately due to his previous Forest connections. They didn't read the room on that one at all. He never stood a chance.

He was horrendously misused last season, it wasn't even funny. Started the season as a CB for no reason, then when we did need that extra power in midfield when Downes was out, he'd persist with Smallbone and Aribo - and low and behold we got overrun, even at that level. There was chat that he wasn't good enough with the ball, but I call out bollocks on that. He's a footballer, he can pass the ball. End of discussion. A season like this will probably rocket his value though, so SR are going to be looking at the $$$$ in the summer.

The Luton situation this season is a bit odd, they had by far the better PL season than either of Burnley or Sheffield United - but both Burnley and Sheffield United have recovered fairly well and are well in the auto race. Luton nowhere to be seen, but realistically they were fortunate to be promoted and it was one of those ''once in a lifetime'' things for their fans to experience - they were pretty poor quality/depth wise and I'm surprised players like Morris and Adebayo did as well as they did in the PL, as they are fairly bog-standard crap. I'm sure the club will develop off the pitch on the back of their single season, but I doubt we'll see them anywhere near the PL again in our time.

He's one of those few players you look at, and say, ''Yeah, he's going to the top''. These guys have some sort of aura about them, it's hard to really describe - but Chamberlain, Bale etc had a similar vibe around them. I'd compare Dibling closer to Bale than any player we've produced since. Without doubt he's a big money banker for us within the next 18 months, obviously the contract situation will dictate that - so if we can get him signed up before the end of the season, we'll have protected his value tenfold. There's nothing to enjoy about this football club these days, but he's a small chink that gets me excited when you see him on the ball or running with the ball. Beats having to put up with Adam Armstrong running into blind allys or Brereton-Diaz tripping over his own feet.

We didn't play badly at all, as everyone has pretty much concluded - but I don't give a shit really, because we still lost - again. The fact we're performing like this against Man City, Arsenal, Liverpool etc is making it even worse for me. These are irrelevant performances which just fluff up the ego of some, whilst not helping us at all. The games that matter are Wolves, Ipswich, Leicester etc and we threw them all in the bin - so I find it pretty much impossible to come away feeling proud or anything like that. It's just how you'd expect a plucky lower league team to play against a big side in their 'big day'. This team is killing me really.

I don't truly buy that, we have spent a fortune in SR's 3 PL transfer windows. £100m Summer 1 60m January 1 £100m Summer 2 In their 3 PL attempts they've spent £260m, the fact we haven't been able to build a stable PL team and are left with loads of Championship players is down to the awful decision making and poor use of that money.

It's a sad state of affairs when 20 points is seen as too ambitious a target!

Luck does come into it for sure, but there is also an element of having the right people in situ to identify the choices. We weren't unlucky that Jones or Selles didn't do well for us, they wouldn't have done well for anyone as they were shit picks. Ditto all of the transfers we've failed with recently. You'll have the odd bad pick for sure, but when all you have are bad picks then there's clearly something wrong somewhere.

That's the frustration really, when SR came in I don't think the club was broken per-say - we had a pretty stable setup, just incredibly limited due to finances and Gao's lack of involvement. We're in a much worse state in terms of the local leadership nowadays. We obviously followed the Rasmus ''If it's not broke, break it'' approach. Absolute charlatan.

I think Ralph was a Semmens appointment. At the end of the day, Gao sat back and allowed Semmens and David Jones to effectively run the club and make all the decisions. He had nothing to do with us bar his name on the shareholders documents. I thought Martin Semmens was decent for us up to a point, I thought he started to waiver once SR got their teeth into it a bit more - and I think as fans we did like to see the ownership get a bit more involved, but I don't think any of us appreciated how utterly hopeless and underpreped they'd be. I think if you look at the club prior to SR, we had David Jones, Martin Semmens, Ralph, Crocker, Brunnschweiler all at the top levels. They had no money, but they did have a plan and there were football people in the mix. I always felt like we had a little more credence to what we were trying to do, it was just the lack of finances that were really holding us back at this point. You do have to question why so many people have done a runner since SR have come in. As a club we never replaced the Technical Director or Director of Football - they've just morphed it into the roles of 'business' people which is why it's simply not working. We can sack Martin and spend a shit ton of money again in January, but it makes no odds if the club structure isn't in place to make the right decisions.

I think we resemble Sheffield United closest, but I look at our squad and still feel it has a bit more about it. I think we'll get more points than Sheffield United did, I predict the low 20's and -50 gd or similar. Obviously that's 20th by some distance and still one of the worst ever PL teams, but I do think we'll make 20 points.

The fact that Bournemouth have surged in front of us is such a bad show for SR's tenure thus far. Given our resources, reach, facilities etc there is no way a decent run club of our size should be allowing Bournemouth to move levels above us like they have. It's just rank poor management.

That's alarm bells to me, we don't need to keep throwing more money at this in the hope that something sticks - that's all they've done since they've been here, moving from one footballing approach to the next. SR firstly need to sort out their plan, what they want to do with us. Revamp the entire analyst and scouting setup, bring in a 'football' DOF - not a business man who ran Dyson, and then maybe have a look at the budget and see what could improve it. None of that is going to be in place by January so it's best we do very little. Spending MORE money without the above in place will lead to another window of Onuachu, Orsic, Sulemana, Charly etc etc.

If that is the logic SR are attributing to anything, then they're even worse than I imagined. Last season was honestly not cracked up to the fanfare it got. I was never convinced. Promotion surprised me as I didn't think we ever looked like a promotion side, just a good Championship side. Lots of draws, lots of fluky last min wins, some absolute thrashings by teams we were supposed to be on a level with. Our squad is caught in this bubble at the moment - full of players who are very good at Champ level, but ultimately total failures at the top level. Eventually that will erode though if we can't build a squad to compete at this level, and we'll just become a pretty poor Championship side - ala Stoke.

People keep saying the answer is to spend money, but isn't that what SR have done for the last 3 years? They are just absolutely terrible at doing so. It won't matter how much money we throw at it if the same people are making the picks, I include managers in that. I thought the years when we spent on Boufal/Hoedt/Lemina/Carillo were bad enough, but these guys are on another level of incompetence.