Bagworthblue

Couldn't be further from truth but I won't bite. iI f you don't want to read it, just spend 10 minutes scrolling past it.

Don't make me write part 2

Just helping get page count up Being in a similar line of work and regularly identifying business needs, running procurement exercises, negotiating drafting and agreeing terms in what are much more complicated agreements than in football, I can assure you all that it takes time to get these things over the line. Whilst I negotiate very complex agreements once we are down to the 2 parties, it's the tern6s that take time to agree. But in football, the terms will be somewhat simpler but with large £s at stake and considerable risk but.... you never have just 2 parties. There are 2 ( maybe 3 or 4 clubs) sets of agents, lawyers and the player himself all with a part to play). After initial identification of targets, there will be 2 or 3 targets for each position identified and in sounding out availability or in having initial talks, some press leaks will occur and we may get linked to a player who is our number 2 target. This is a player the club will be monitoring but holding off on pending progress on the 1st target. That 1st target may or may not be released by the club. They may want to wait and see how their own cover is panning out, they may be yet to decide whether we are the best option ( if a loan etc). The player will have a say. He will have preferences and that may change based on pressure from his agents or other factors. As you hold fire for your number 1 choice, you see your number 2 target isn't moving anywhere so you decide to hold off another week or 2. But that number 2 targets name has been in the transfer thread for 3 weeks now. Things move on and number 1 target is looking less likely so tou restart talks with number 2 target and start to have talks with number 3 target. Number 3 target's name now gets leaked and a thread appears on foxestalk. It's been 4 weeks now, there are 3 names on foxes talk. Eventually number 1 target falls through or you decide its too risky to pursue as time is moving on and eventually you agree in principle with number 2 or 3 target, the club, player agents but only after stepping up commercial talks and getting to a rough agreement in principle. You then have the finer details, league paperwork, medicals etc plus time to pull together a press statement. In some cases, on day 1 , the club says a player is available, the player wants to come, his agents are no issue and it only takes a week or so to agree terms. But in many cases it's not that easy as so many parties are involved in the process and it only takes 1 to hold it all up. If you try to force the issue too early, you risk an opposite party walking away when a bit more patience was required. Too much patience and you miss your 2nd or 3rd choice. Its all a balancing act. Nobody including me, can really comment on how well the LCFC recruitment team are performing or otherwise. We don't even know 5% of what is going on so its all conjecture. Remember also, all of that is for 1 position. You are also repeating this for other positions whilst also trying g to move players out the club and having reverse negotiations. Depending on how that is going g impacts your spend budget on incoming. Its likely very fast paced, and you need to be agile and able to change approach on a daily basis. Whilst on here it feels like years are passing, I bet every day is relentless for those trying to do the business. .

Being in a similar line of work and regularly identifying business needs, running procurement exercises, negotiating drafting and agreeing terms in what are much more complicated agreements than in football, I can assure you all that it takes time to get these things over the line. Whilst I negotiate very complex agreements once we are down to the 2 parties, it's the tern6s that take time to agree. But in football, the terms will be somewhat simpler but with large £s at stake and considerable risk but.... you never have just 2 parties. There are 2 ( maybe 3 or 4 clubs) sets of agents, lawyers and the player himself all with a part to play). After initial identification of targets, there will be 2 or 3 targets for each position identified and in sounding out availability or in having initial talks, some press leaks will occur and we may get linked to a player who is our number 2 target. This is a player the club will be monitoring but holding off on pending progress on the 1st target. That 1st target may or may not be released by the club. They may want to wait and see how their own cover is panning out, they may be yet to decide whether we are the best option ( if a loan etc). The player will have a say. He will have preferences and that may change based on pressure from his agents or other factors. As you hold fire for your number 1 choice, you see your number 2 target isn't moving anywhere so you decide to hold off another week or 2. But that number 2 targets name has been in the transfer thread for 3 weeks now. Things move on and number 1 target is looking less likely so tou restart talks with number 2 target and start to have talks with number 3 target. Number 3 target's name now gets leaked and a thread appears on foxestalk. It's been 4 weeks now, there are 3 names on foxes talk. Eventually number 1 target falls through or you decide its too risky to pursue as time is moving on and eventually you agree in principle with number 2 or 3 target, the club, player agents but only after stepping up commercial talks and getting to a rough agreement in principle. You then have the finer details, league paperwork, medicals etc plus time to pull together a press statement. In some cases, on day 1 , the club says a player is available, the player wants to come, his agents are no issue and it only takes a week or so to agree terms. But in many cases it's not that easy as so many parties are involved in the process and it only takes 1 to hold it all up. If you try to force the issue too early, you risk an opposite party walking away when a bit more patience was required. Too much patience and you miss your 2nd or 3rd choice. Its all a balancing act. Nobody including me, can really comment on how well the LCFC recruitment team are performing or otherwise. We don't even know 5% of what is going on so its all conjecture. Remember also, all of that is for 1 position. You are also repeating this for other positions whilst also trying g to move players out the club and having reverse negotiations. Depending on how that is going g impacts your spend budget on incoming. Its likely very fast paced, and you need to be agile and able to change approach on a daily basis. Whilst on here it feels like years are passing, I bet every day is relentless for those trying to do the business. .

I'd say over 35 years albeit having had to live in London, Leeds, Germany, France, Solihull as well as back in Leicestershire, I've been to at least 700 games home and away but will admit to having a Dalgleish Liverpool kit and schoolbag as an 8 year old along with every other lad in 1978 😉. I think I was about 9 or 10 when my folks treated me to my 1st trip to Filbo and they even screwed up and got tickets in the away area of the east stand 🤦‍♂️. But we moved at half time and any Liverpool kits were history from that point onwards and a new found genuine stress was added to my life 🤣!

Waiting for everyone currently excited and happy about Maresca to subsequently blame Rudlin, Top or whelan if it doesn't work out 🤣

I know, I kept getting those and cursing as was waiting for that one email

We can get relegated to L2 or non league, I was hooked as a young lad and will forever support LCFC and my son has the bug too.

Have you checked junk?

Seems 32 points were needed

We got our season ticket application success confirmed today and can purchase from 10am tomorrow

After supporting City for 45+ years, aged 51 ( I had a brief spell as a Liverpool "fan" in my pre-teen years 🤦‍♂️ but so did all my mates🤣) and having been to every game at home in recent years that I've been physically able to get to including every game last season, I've received the " hallowed" email that my 16 year old son and I have enough points for a season ticket. As a young boy, he came to L1 games with me,, saw the failed attempts at promotion, success and great escape,the title and any away games we could make but Work and coaching and not realising benefits of membership did its best to stop us getting those hallowed tickets. Anyone else had good news today? 😊

Just as a matter of interest, how could things have been handled better say re Tielemans? Player had the power both at the time his terms were negotiated and by refusing to sign a new deal. How do tou deal with that differently. Refuse to play him? What precedents does that create for future signings etc. Just interested where you state could have been handled better.... How?

When things go wrong, everybody's 1st inclination is to throw blame. I'm not saying there is no tangible blame within the hierarchy, the players etc. However nobody ever attributes any blame to a string of circumstances beyond any control and the fine margins in football. Whilst " just surviving" itself would have been failure following recent successes, we've had so many headwinds of late and a few things turning out differently and we are comfortably mid table moaning about a less than perfect season. We scored more than enough goals to stay up so we werent all bad. To list a few headwinds. FFP constraints and players refusing to leave/not being pursued by other clubs in summer to enable funds for a rebuild and OUR playing by the rules where others have overspent. Fofana's 11th hour toys from pram exit and the ill feeling caused and games without decent cover. TIelemans choosing to run his contract down but no offers tabled for him and other players following suit leading to a lot of imminent exits. The death of the queen meaning the villa game is postponed at a time we are not great but they are awful that I firmly believe we'd have won if played then. A game we lost. The 1st ever winter world cup coming at a time we have real momentum and would have arguably maintained it for some time longer. The fixture schedule in general leading to us playing even the poorest of teams when they were having a mini spell of form And avoiding the good teams during their bad spells. Happens to other teams but it really went against us this season. The amount of times we've faced teams on New Manager bounces. Maddisons penalty to take us 3-1 up vs Everton if scored. 2 freak own goals vs Liverpool when we were by far the better team. 95the minute loss vs Palace. Pope's Last minute save from Castagne at Newcastle. Ndidis fateful last minute pass vs Villa costing us 1 point. The countless VAR offsides by an inch that have gone against us. Evans / Justin / Ricardo long term injuries The string of Monday night games we had to play. Again, I'm not making excuses but if just 2 or 3 of the above had happened/not happened, we'd likely have finished mid table, Maddisons penalty miss alone probably cost us rekegation so at worst 17th , Arguably, momentum and good feeling would have followed if things above panned out differently rather than negativity, fear and low confidence and things could have turned out a lot differently. Rarely has an air crash been entirely the fault of the airline, or the pilot, or the maintenance crew, or the weather, or mechanical failure. Its usually a fateful combination of things going wrong and that's what's happened here. The owner, DoF, Board, Manager and players have brought successful before. Sometimes a few mistakes by them combined with external forces is what is truly to blame. So let's stop throwing blame in one direction, accept what is done us done and give those in place the support to put things right ASAP and be successful like they were previously.

Since its literally ruined my life, can you tell my doctors the real problem then!!! Think before you post!

Oh lol. No they really do. Its often very similar to ours and when you get to know them we are really no different at all. All treated me really well. I loved living abroad. Especially playing footy in Avigmon. Blimey that was 28 years ago now but I'm still in touch with many of them. The funniest thing is the German folk all blame the English for getting up early and putting towels on loungers.. if it wasn't for us they wouldn't have to get up so bloody early 😄.The debate used to be.... "what came 1st chicken or egg".. i.e which nation started the lounger dash 1st 😃 It always ended with. " well it doesnt matter as they always win the battle" 🤦‍♂️ All in fun.

To be fair i'm generallly full of it but on this occasion all true. Studied Gernan and French at Bangor Uni 1990 - 1994. I've spent time living in Avignon, Saarbrucken and Jena 😊. Somewhat rusty these days though.

Yes but I can assure you it is THE only thing I have to show off about 🤣

I can guarantee you sarcasm is hard to recognise when englsh isn't your 1st language. I speak both French and German and have lived in both countries and can assure you their humour is on a par with ours - no question. 😊

Simply put, there are too many unknowns to confidently do business right now. The club will have pulled together a number of scenarios, each with differing levels of assumptions related to expected revenue this season. The worst case no games played, then being not one single fan attends a game, no additional match day revenue x% reduction in merchandise etc. The best being everything returns to normal in a month or 2. Against each scenario, you overlay the impact of unwanted player salaries should you fail to move players on, anticipated TV monies etc, the possibility of paying to keep non playing staff employed once furlough ends etc. You model this against the cost of failure on the pitch. When you model all of this and land on your most likely scenario, and.plan accordingly, you still have to mitigate risk as much as possible. I'm no accountant but you do this by not over committing, backending payments as much as possible. I.e the loan to buy deals (important they are option to buy and not commitment to buy as otherwise the full amount hits the balance sheet even though the cash impact is deferred). This ensures immediate cash flow is protected and avoids potentially over committing in a difficult and unstable economic climate. I'm sure there is an accountant on here who could put this across much better but this is the gist of why we aren't just going out on a spending spree right now.

Pretty sure they've expected this all summer. I reckon now its 100%, certain, they will pursue the other targets quickly, ,the plan A options rather than the plan B options had we had less cash to spend.

Sold to fund coutinho ?

As a coach myself, it's clear to me what is happening and in time we should improve considerably but patience will be needed. Increasingly in the past, we faced teams like Huddersfield sitting deep ( initially) and staying compact in fear of our counter. Games like Saturday may well have ended 0-1 Or 0-0 In the past. Puel is trying to get us to retain possession more but also attack at speed either via quick passes to break central lines or via the counter. The issue is that when you try to get players to focus more on keeping possession, reduce the % game longer balls, players often go too far the other way. This is what we started doing last season, at times this season and what Southampton did the Season before. To please the manager you choose not to lose possession, recycle, recycle, recycle bit you've missed much of his message. The result is we play sideways, we isolate Vardy etc and deny any kind of service. From being fast and furious, we go to the opposite extreme and play a too measured ( boring) game. In other words, players start to go too far in the opposite direction as possession becomes key.and they fear losing it too much. Albeit not overly enthralling to listen to, Puel has always maintained the desire to play quick attacking football, not retain possession at all cost, to be brave etc but players on the pitch are a little too afraid at first to do this as it may result in lost possession. Equally, it relies on good movement infield from your advanced midfielders and striker. Yes it means Vardy sometimes has to offer himself up to hold up as a 10 not play constantly as a 9. On Saturday, early on I saw Schmeichel grab the ball and look long for Vardy. On a few other occasions, I saw us try a more direct approach. I was impressed on Saturday as it was the 1st time in a while I saw us trying to move back to the centre ground we need to be at. A mixed game where sometimes you switch play to create space to break lines and other times where you look longer. This makes us more unpredictable and is key for breaking down stubborn teams who park the bus. There was good movement at times in the pockets of space but all too often it's Madders. Nacho, Guezzal etc need to come narrow at times to create forward opportunities more often too. At 2-1 up, Huddersfield had to gamble and play a higher line which makes Vardy a greater threat again. Mendy and Wilf are looking great but need to look for those line splitting balls more. Maguire is crucial as he breaks lines with passes more than anyone. Other than him, Amartey also finds those line splitting balls which is why he's preferred to Simpson who could only really play safe or go long down the line. We've gone from 1 extreme of play to the other over the course of last season but the owners held their nerve. Its easy to panic and pull out halfway through a transition but we are now showing signs of gradually making better decisions more often and showing greater movement to enable those line breaking moves forwards. There is a fair way to go and with younger players we need to be patient. With older players accept change is hard to adjust to as they may have played a certsin wsy for years and for some just not conduisive to their skillset.(Simpson) I just hope we forgive the lapses and allow the progress to continue. Puel bores me shit less but that's no reason to discount the progress he is slowly but surely making. I don't post much so apologies for the essays when I do. ?

Anyway good debating chaps. Probably the worst behaviour today comes from me given my wife's mother died out the blue this AM and here I am debating a red card. Night folks

Or Docherty endangered himself byarriving late? If you arrive late at a less than 90° angle in the direction a ball is being kicked, you will get kicked by a follow through. Simple maths.