cityfanlee23

Definitely, his football led to many mistakes, although I believe if Championship strikers were any good we would have conceded many more goals as defensively our record often flattered us I felt, but the stats say different so it's just a matter of opinion. Last season I saw Martins Southampton as a look into the future of what would happen to us if we went up and tried to play Enzoball with these players and without £100m+ spent. Sadly it looks like we are going to be seeing it next season.

Winks is fantastic at 5 yard sideways and backwards passes, he's a master at it, but there are many championship level midfielders that could do what he did last season with a similar result, maybe not to his level entirely, but not far off. He was massively overrated for much of last season, on balance If we get to the end of the transfer window and we have signed all of the positions we need to fill and there is a CM position left and it's financially viable, I'd happily put Winks back in. But for the sake of his 90k a week and the fact beyond sideways and backwards passes he's pretty average I'd want to see him moved on, being better than the Champ isn't worth 90k a week, sadly we might be stuck with him for that very reason.

I didn't say they would, I said I'm surprised they are not, because Martinball is a massive step in the same direction as Enzoball with very similar patterns of play. I can't see a massive difference between the two, so I'd be interested for someone to properly break down the difference between the two styles. I detest the style anyway, give me heavy metal gegenpressing over that any day.

Would snap your arm off for Claude Puel right now. A man who plays possession football, has a fantastic eye for a player, doesn’t take any nonsense from players and has a clear identity. If we can’t get a new DOF we need a manager/coach who can drive change despite the board incompetence.

Me too.

Someone throw up a poll Martin vs Ruud

I saw it from the BBC personally, I don't read the Mail but it seems like both the BBC and Mail have copied Football Insider since nobody wants to reveal a source, the Mail doesn't even mention having a source. Maybe there is inside info somewhere, are Football Insider legit? the website looks like a glorified blog.

I hope so, but this is KPFC so.....

I think the short price is because Cisse said Gerrard couldn't attend his anniversary match for "professional reasons" so I assume that's an interview? either that or it's basically a done deal, but bookies suspended betting straight after Cisse said that so the price seems more on speculation than details, would make sense for Rangers to go for him over RM though.

It could easily be a storm in a teacup, but the source seems to be Football Insider, and their "source" is..... "sources" So we can only hope it's rubbish.

Which is precisely why I said "they are not like for like but Martin has more in common with Enzo than differences" .... Both styles are awful, which is why Chelsea fans are sick of him already. Both Enzo and Russell want to dominate possession for the same reason, to try to convince the opponent to lose shape and press, it's boring, it's sideways, it's negative imo.

I’ve never wanted Ruud Van Nistelrooy to be manager more in my life.

I can’t really understand this. Russell Martin is the closest manager to Enzo in terms of philosophy and style that we could get. I’d have imagined fans would be happy about this on this forum. This is most definitely a step in the Enzo direction. 🤢

I think he will probably get us promoted providing if/when we get a deduction it’s not too big and if we can hold on to half of the squad. But you’re pretty much guaranteed it’s back to square one when we get promoted with a squad that’s been conditioned so heavily to play a single style they are completely unable to change.

I think it’s time to start the Ruud In society…

The fanbase obviously don’t want Martin, but the fans made it completely untenable for RVN to stay. We just knew they were going to do something stupid.

We didn’t mean it Ruud please stay

Yeah, it’s genuinely a good interview and he speaks really well. But about half way through he admits he’s more determined than ever to play his way…. Ruud in.

If fans are genuinely against this, it can be reversed. As long as it’s not confirmed before Bournemouth, the fans can voice it, they won’t listen but atleast voice it on match day.

RVN IN.

Love the way he talks (his interview with lineker was very good) love that he isn’t afraid to play a younger squad and sign younger players, love that he has a clear identity and philosophy and will build the club around that philosophy. Absolutely detest the boring sideways football he offers. Genuinely surprised so many of the Enzo supporters on here aren’t excited by a return to sideways ball. They aren’t like for like obviously but Russell has far more in common with Enzo than he does differences imo. I really hope that all of the talk during his Lineker interview about recognising his mistakes is genuine, and I hope to god him admitting he’s more determined to play his way than ever was a lie. I do quite like RM, but the football…. Genuinely, **** this board.

If true suggests we are likely going to sell Kristiansen or possibly Thomas but Celtic are paying half of his 60k palace wages, even on a free transfer he's going to want 40k a week minimum he's hardly going to want to cut his wages in half, we need to get off of this spending addiction. EDIT: I thought he was 30 for some reason, he's 32. Absolutely not.

I guess it depends how much we need to do to comply really, ideally we want to get rid of of Vestergaard, Kristiansen, Ricardo (😭) Daka, BDCR, Ayew, Winks, Coady, Hermansen for the profit and then look at the names mentioned if we still fall short, my guess would be if we could get those players above off the books (even at a book loss) it would stand us in good stead to keep hold of the likes of BEK/Nelson etc. We only broke PSR by a small amount in 22/23 despite having a wage bill that was £30m above anyone else through player sales and big earners leaving, hopefully we can shift some on. I know they’ve been largely awful this season but I think players like Faes can get a move for a few million somewhere in Europe, and Kristiansen did a good job in Serie A last season. Fingers crossed.

AFAIK although it's the premier league bringing the case against us, because it happened in the championship season they can defer the punishment to them.

Don't get me wrong I completely agree and this scenario is a best case scenario, a lot of it will be down to WHO we can get rid of, if for example we fail to ship out Faes, Daka, Coady etc, we may then be in a position where we are forced to sell players like El Khannouss, Fatawu or Nelson. I'm curious to know how the EFL deal with certain scenarios, say they come in and force us to produce a business plan, and part of that plan is to sell one of the big wage earners like Winks, if we are offered lowball fees for him which would result in us losing money, would the EFL accept us making another book loss to try to achieve wage stability? Or would they say "that's great you got 90k per week off the books, but you still made a book loss so you've breached again here's another deduction" It's a weird merry-go-round, we can't afford to keep these players but because of PSR breaches we can't afford to lose them for a cheap fee if it results in a loss of money on the books.