S-Clarke

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.

So did Ross Stewart, another more expensive striker yet to get off the mark. Ings might be on 120k or whatever, but he won't be on that with us. If it happens I see it being a loan anyway, some sort of deal in place where they cough up majority of the wage - or we pay a bigger chunk of his wage, and they knock a few mill off of Flynn. Who knows. Potential stuff to be done there though if we're creative.

Leicester fans are absolutely devastated by the appointment and are all but resigned to their fate now. That might be more the Forest connection though, as that's kinda a derby for them. They were dangled the opportunity of Potter and ended up with ex-Forest Cooper on a potential -12 start, so I can kind of see why they feel that way.

This is where I sit with Ings. He's not going to be the Ings of 2019-2020, I think we all appreciate that - but he can and will score goals. I'd trust him 1-on-1 more than I would Adams or Mara, so automatically that has to be an upgrade on anything we have today. It's notoriously hard to find goal scorers as a club, I lose count of how much money teams have spent over the years to try and find that ''10-15 goal a season striker'' (us with Carillo, Onuachu to name a couple - that's £40m down the drain on two who didn't even score). It would be daft to turn your nose up to a player at the price he is at and with the record he has of scoring goals at this level, international level and for us. No brainer for me if he's available for £6m. I fail to see who we could sign with the pedigree within the budget we're working to.

Really good game, my favourite so far. Georgia may be seen as the minnows, but they have some decent players. Like you say above, their keeper is of a high level playing at Valencia. Kvaratskhelia is also one of the best attackers in the world right now.

Two goals of the tournament in one game! Great game this. Guler is some player, hope he doesn't lose his potential by rotting away at Madrid.

Nonsense, the PL shouldn't have given two shits to that. Just let them deal with whatever the draw handed them. ''Oh, i didn't fancy playing Arsenal on the final day - can we move that?''

My argument to that would be that he hasn't played much, he's always been in and out of the side at both clubs. Ings has always struggled when it's like that, not just through form but he then becomes more susceptible to injury. His time at Liverpool was proof of that. Once he moved to us, played regularly, the rest was history. I do think we saw the best of Ings back in 2019-2020....but there are still goals in him if he plays every week imo. If you want a 'proven PL' goal scorer for under £10m, then you'll not get any better than Ings.

The opposite often happens - we'll drop points against the teams we shouldn't, yet pickup the odd surprise result against the 'tough' games. Those end of season games are potentially a nightmare for those 'bigger' sides, especially if we're fighting for everything. If i was in their shoe I'd prefer not to be facing a 'relegation' side at the end of the season. Look at us in our last season, we were pathetically bad - one of the worst ever PL teams, but still drew at Arsenal, beat Chelsea and drew against Utd. Be interesting to see how we shape up next season, all a bit unknown at the moment. The other 2 promoted sides will be saying the same.

Which I always found odd as he was clearly one of his picks, given he came from Germany and was Austrian - someone Ralph would have vetted more than any of our scouts. We used to paly him as a LB though which didn't help, he used to fly into challenges at LB and was a bit of a loose cannon. We never gave him the chance to develop at CB.

Wow, we overspent on him.

Not sure we could have realistically expected anything more. I think we paid £7.5m for him? We were never making that back as he was a big let down for us at this level. Great enthusiasm but rubbish when it came to the football side of it.

I cannot imagine what you are going through Noodles. That is no age what so ever and is a tragedy. My thoughts are with you and your family.

I think it was announced at 5pm on the Sunday of our playoff final win. From the horses mouth and also from Phil Parsons the following day. Probably feel it doesn't need an announcement as they announced it themselves.

Decent fixture list really, pretty balanced as others have said. May looks somewhat tough, but I've seen tougher.

Belgium flattered to deceive really, a lot of huff and puff from them (although they can count themselves a bit unlucky with two disallowed goal). First kinda shock of the tournament.