S-Clarke

He had a chance of going to Celtic, no chance he turns that down to sit on the bench here.

It's absolute garbage again. Dysfunctional, dull as dishwater bollocks with the most prolific attacking players on the planet. Issues point one way.

For me, Austria are so far the pick of this tournament. I think they're a cracking outfit. Really well coached.

I'd never wish an injury on a player, it was awful what happened to him - but as a club we should have took that as a blessing, admitted our mistake on the original recruitment and used the opportunity to sign a replacement. We didn't have to upset him as he was injured anyway, just make sure the replacement was better than him (i.e can make saves) and Bazunu then becomes backup when he's fit. McCarthy is as bog standard as you can get as a GK, but the fact that he looked more reliable, our expected xg against dropped massively and we kept a clean sheet in the biggest game of the season without Bazunu should scream enormous alarm bells for everyone associated with the club. I pray it does, but I fear it won't.

I think signing McCarthy to a deal will reduce our search for a GK, I don't think it should, but McCarthy wasn't going to hang around here again for more bench time. He's been given a contract with assurances to play imo. It's as bonkers as you can get, especially given that he wasn't even our bench keeper last season. But we're way too sentimental and short-sighted when it comes to our long-term players. Sometimes we just need to say thanks for the memories and move on. The club won't want to replace Bazunu as we have a hard-on over him, so it was only ever going to be a stop gap whilst he was injured. Step up McCarthy I guess.

Our best performance of the tournament, and we didn't even play.

Upwards of £25m I'd have thought, but no much more than that. It's a shame that we have to look at ways to 'balance the books', not so much because we're skint, but just so we have the movement to add to the team - but to do that, we have to weaken it first. Absolutely bonkers rules and it needs to change. There is no 'fair' in this at all.

I find the Charly situation all a bit odd really. In the last 6 months of our ill-fated PL life, he was our standout. The one player who broke the line, carried the ball, scored a decent chunk of goals from CM in 6 months. It was a significant coup that we retained him for the Championship, I just never felt we used him right or enough. I will admit that he can be a bit frustrating with regards to retaining the ball, which is probably his death-knell as far as Martin is concerned...but he can still offer a lot more if pushed higher up and closer to the CF. His running with the ball on break aways, in space, will be a hugely valuable asset next season when our posession stats inevitably tank through the floor. (I hope the club are prepared for that) I think we'd be silly to let him go, he's shown he can operate at this level as we'll see by PL clubs wanting him - let's not cut our nose off here, we already have a goalscoring midfielder in the ranks.

Don't think that's the case. The problem in my eyes is that he has a system and he's trying to force players into said system, which is a) nullifying their creativity and b) forcing him to stick square pegs in certain roles. If he had no system and just let the players sort it out we'd probably be a delight to watch, but he's made us one of the worst teams to watch in Europe with his rigid approach. He's scared shitless of everything, probably even his own shadow. You have to take risks to win things, he will never take risks thus he will never win anything.

Are you thinking of Cuco Martina?

I'd say it's fairly likely that both will be out of a job by the 5th July.

Latest on Shaw is that there is 'no ETA' on his return to training. So he's not even training yet, he's just a body - won't play a min I'm sure. We're not blessed with LB's to be fair, so I'm not sure who else could have been called up - Tyrik Mitchell maybe? I mean that's really stretching it a bit. Our defensive options are utter shit, I'll give Gareth that as an out! But...for me that means we just go for it. Our attackers are better than what is behind them, so let them win us games. Stop trying to 'contain' and 'defend' with substandard defenders at international level. At this stage we just have to go for it, but it's not in Southgates DNA. If we sit back and worry about other teams attacking us, then we will lose any game against a top 20 side. If we just commit forward and let Saka/Gordon/Palmer pull out wide and stretch teams, i.e make them worry about us, then we'll be in with more of a chance of getting to quarters. That's as good as we'll get either way though.

Not even close, not sure where that comparison comes from. England were inept, and have been for months now. Couldn't even keep the ball, no movement up top, barley any attempts at goal. That's nothing like us from last season, you don't get 87 points by playing like England. Club managers like Arteta, Carlo, Pep, Klopp etc must be pulling their hair out when they see the horrendous misuse of genuine top level talent in Foden, Bellingham, Rice, Palmer, Saka (he hasn't even played a min yet, which is bonkers). This has been a decent Euro's in the main, I like watching the teams who take the hand break off and just go for it - and they'll get the rewards for doing that. A manager making a team like us, with the talent we have, suffocating the hell out of any attacking momentum should be a crime. These players must absolutely hate playing for England.

Yeah Spain were great, I believe we have the players in attack who can do that - if they're afforded a system to do so. The guy who has surprised me the most has been Marc Cucurella, I think he's been great in both of Spains games. And where the feck did they pull Ayoze Perez from? I had no idea he was still playing for Spain.

That comment summed him up entirely really. He seems to think we need two DM's in the side, i.e. Rice and Phillips. Such a passive manager, dull as dishwater. We have some of the best attackers in the entire world in the front 4, statistically from this season they are the best in the world. Somehow we are making them invisible, that's not down to the players.

I think we've been one of the worst teams in the Euro's up to now, I've seen everyone twice and we are utter garbage. Slow, passive, absolutely boring as all shit to watch. Nothing to look forward to with this lot. Gareth saying we don't have anyone to play Kalvin Phillips role. Umm, let me point you into the direction of the two fricking players you bought in Wharton and Mainoo. Bizarre management of the highest order up to now. Whole team is a disjointed mess of square pegs.

Serbia threatening to quit the Euro's should Uefa not punish Croatia and Albania for some slurs. But it looks like they're quitting by their own accord anyway...

This is the tricky situation we're in now, the days of getting someone like Clyne or Jay Rod for £10-12m a pop is gone - the equivalent now is probably £25-30m and we are not in a position to stick that sort of money this year on single players. We were very clever in our use of loans last year, they were the successes of our transfer window - so I'd be content with another approach like that, looking at experienced/good quality on loan rather than blasting through £100m (which we can't do anyway). The only thing with that is we'll need to sit tight, as we saw with THB and Holgate (lol), you have to wait until the end of the windows for lots of loans to materialise. The first month could be a case of going with what we have today, so thankfully the fixture list isn't ''too daunting'', but by the same token you could say we'd be missing some opportunities to hit those games hard. We'll see how it pans out, but even after 12 years since our last promotion the change in the financial picture is huge - not in terms of us being more skint than we were then, but just how much more expensive it is to compete for anyone bar the big boys. And if you do dare try to compete, i.e Villa, Forest, Everton etc, you are slapped with every punishment they can think of.

I'm sure I read it on a release from the club, something along the lines of existing people will step up into the roles etc and I'm sure I read that Mowbray was moving into more of his role during the time he announced he was leaving. There was talk of them not replacing Wilcox at all, and just evolving existing roles.

He stepped up once Jason left. And then others stepped up who were below Darren to fill his role. We've got stacks and stacks of scouts who are everywhere, Darren's original role was to head up that department and make sure the scouts had the right info/profiles to look for (whilst working closely with Wilcox)

It was a pretty well executed window that, the only issue I think fans had at the time was the lack of a left full back signed - I 'think' we tried to sign Buttner if you remember him, but he went to Utd shortly after. This season we could do with a Clyne at LB to replace Manning, a young Champ attacker to replace Adams and maybe that Soule guy from Juve as our vanity South American signing of the window. If Ipswich hadn't been promoted I'd have been all over Leif Davis, I'm not sure who else I'd look for at LB. I'd be tempted to look abroad or a PL loan. Someone in the Champ who reminds me of Jay Rod was Jay Stansfield (not just because of his first name!). Plays very similar, presence to him and is a pretty tidy player. I'd be all out for him if we were a Championship club...but not quite sure if he's ready 'yet', maybe another season in the Champ before I could say he's worth a sniff.

Jay Rod, Pelle, Ings, Gabbiadini were successes in my eyes - well scouted signings. In terms of the later, I don't think we used him enough in his second season. He was a proper player. After Ings our recruitment took a massive nose dive though, certainly in terms of PL output. Broja for 6 months, maybe. It does show that signing a 'proven' striker is pretty much impossible for us. We have to go for a foreign gamble (which we've been horrendous at for years) or a decent young talent in the hope that they step up. But even those sorts are starting to cost too much for clubs like us. Not much value out there anymore, certainly when you look at the fees we spent on Jay Rod and Pelle at the time.

Think we'll agree to disagree on this one. WHU have a truly terrible record of getting the best out of any strikers they sign, so I wouldn't read too much into his failings at WHU. I know why some people may question us going for him, but I do see the attraction in this crazy market of inflated prices and not being able to spend money.

Just reading around some Leicester forums, they seem convinced it's more than -10 - not sure why, might have some more background info. When you think of the fine margins to stay up, for a newly promoted club to be hit by any minus points is a bit of a hammer. This is another reason why we have to be so careful with spending ourselves. Annoyingly we probably have more money than we have ever had in the PL, but we can't spend it out of fear. It's such a screwed up system.

You need to look at that in context though. When he hit over 10 goals at this level he was playing every week, his seasons at Villa and WHU have been really bitty and he's never held down a place and has been a sub quite a lot of the time. (he's rubbish as a sub). He's the sort of striker who needs a run in the team and I'm convinced as a main man up top he'd score goals and get to those double figures. I don't trust our scouting to find any usable alternatives, so going back to what we know has worked before in such a critical position seems low risk.