Bettsj2

Such a strange thing to watch both him and Soumare in that scenario do the exact opposite of what was required.

Has anybody said he's going to 'tear up the championship' yet?

There surely isn't anybody left to excuse what we saw yesterday and i'm not just talking about the performance. Yesterday symbolises everything that is wrong with us as a club. Zero fight, zero passion, zero desire. A complete resignation of responsibility as a professional football club. We started that game with an expectation of defeat and got exactly that. In truth, the team is probably the least of our worries. The King Power Ownership as a whole, have provided the peak moments that any of us could have even dared to dream of. However, the goodwill of that has ran dry. An absolute catalogue of successive poor decisions have left us not just relegated, but in danger of slipping back into the football oblivion that we languished in for so many years (which having done so much hard work to drag us out of, is even more criminal). Unfortunately, Top, Rudkin and Whelan are the ones that are accountable but unfortunately for us, won't be going anywhere in the near future. We have made ourselves unattractive to any potential suitors and they seem so intertwined, the prospect of any of them going is close to zero. It was a truly depressing watch yesterday. Players being paid vastly more than their worth, jogging around, flailing their arms in the air with seemingly no coherent plan to work to. The lack of quality is breathtakingly obvious. There are posts on this forum from this season citing Soumare as our best midfielder. As a fanbase, we are complicit in this mess. Our default is to find the silver lining as it's the only thing that keeps us sane, but we can no longer be blind to it, nor make excuses for any particular player. To a man, every single player was a disgrace. RVN cannot be excused. He has been dealt a bad hand, that much is true and i'm sure after he leaves, the full extent of the lies he was sold to get him through the door will be revealed. Even with that in mind, how he can look himself in the mirror and call himself a manager after presiding over the last dozen games and not walk away. I don't fear relegation and I don't particularly fear for next season. I fear for the ongoing existence of the club in general.

This. I like him and he does have obvious talent but he really hasn't produced anything yet that justifies the adoration he gets on here.

This is the issue that I can't quite get my head around and probably never will. There is no way that from the position we were in, should you find yourself in the position that we're in now and having found yourself in that position, to continuously make the same mistakes is just bizarre.

Doesn't appear so. Unless the plan is that we get relegated in which case it's working perfectly.

This x 1000

Was watching some highlights of the great escape and title win seasons the other day. Ulloa was unbelievably good at holding the ball up. I didn't really see it at the time but there were points where you just couldn't get it off him.

SK4 was worse than a library on Friday. Zero atmosphere and more focus on trying to get Gary Neville's attention in the Sky Studio than watching the game. It's been a while since I've been to a game and left thinking the atmosphere was even half decent.

We wont have put our pants on by the time they're 3-0 up. #supercoops

I think this will be the worst of the games so far. Palace will dominate and we'll delay trying to utilise any creative output until it's too late. 3-0 defeat.

Pretty happy with all of the signings apart from Okoli. Nothing against the player, but was hoping for us to sign a centre back that could come straight into the first team. The goals against Fulham were just awful to concede and speaks to having no real leadership across the backline. Edouard is an interesting one that could prove to be a masterstroke. Not overly set the world on fire at Palace, but bags of talent, a good age and in the last year of his contract, could be extra motivated to overperform in the hopes of getting a better move. If he scores 10 it should be looked on as a successful signing.

'He'd stone John Barrowman to death, you'll never sing that......'

I think Cooper likes his full backs to be on their natural side, hence him not really playing a JJ at left back, Ricardo at right back combo which is what many seem to be advocating for. He obviously doesn't want to shoehorn a player in for qualities sake if it means the natural balance is compromised. At this present moment, the last thing we want is for the ball to be in the middle of the pitch in the defensive third so being able to naturally progress on the outside looks to be his preference. Harsh on Ricardo, but physically, JJ is probably better as a defensive option at right back.

We have to look a little short term here. Can this guy go straight into the starting 11 and improve us? Yes he can. Anything after that is moot at this point. Priority 1 is giving us the best chance of staying up.

Are you saying this puts the Ayew deal in jeopardy??

Absolutely they do but there isn't a set formula here where throwing them in will definitely pay off, or not. In our case, Alves and Braybrooke are really the only two that are spoken about as breaking through. In this circumstance, is it the right thing to do to throw them into such a meat grinder of a situation? Maybe yes, maybe no. Obviously we'll find out in time. Personally, i'd prefer to see them go on loan first.

I think we're all desperate to see Alves and Braybrooke become superstars. The issue is if they aren't that pretty quickly, it makes it hard to continue to pick them. KDH didn't get into the first team until he'd been on loan twice getting regular football at Blackpool and then Luton which aided the transition. Throwing Alves or Braybrooke in when really all they've had is U21's could bury both players. That standard of football isn't competitive enough to think they could handle the Prem and then of course there's the injuries they've both sustained. We have to loan them out until January at least.

If we sign him and the reveal video isn't Harry Souttar having a BBQ in the car park with a can of Castlemaine 4X doing a dodgy Aussie accent saying, 'G'day Skipp', someone needs firing.

Tielemans was an exceptionally good player and played a huge part in our top 6 finishes and FA Cup win. If the club really went for it around that time and sanctioned the signing of 2 more players of that quality, we would definitely have finished in the CL places in at least one of those seasons. The fact that they didn't would definitely have had an effect on his mindset, his willingness to sign another contract and indeed his work ethic in that last season. I agree with the sentence in bold, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the fact of how close his involvement actually got us to breaking the big 6 mould.

Listening to the tapes and seeing the pictures, there is no chance in hell that this was a one off.

By meaningful I really meant having a run of games where his contribution couldn't have been done without. Don't get me wrong, there have been examples of his quality (Birmingham at home, the cross for the Norwich winner), but we can't afford to have a player taking a squad place and eating up wages on the chance that he may do something decent every once in a while.

Wouldn't really count that as meaningful.

He's a luxury player that we can't afford to carry. Has talent but not enough to carry a team through what we're going to be going through next year. Didn't ever let us down but didn't really ever contribute anything meaningful.

He has all the tools but doesn't really know how to use any of them. Likeable guy and as others have said, his FA Cup record is the thing that separates him from the other striking flops we've signed in recent times. It's a shame that he got injured pretty much as soon as we signed him and was out for so long. At that point, him, Vardy and Mahrez would have been fantastic together.