cityfanlee23

To be honest 2 days of work really isn’t enough to massively turn things around, but if Ruud can get a basic defensive structure into the team, and get the players fighting we could see a massive improvement. All I care about is performance here, result is ideally needed but he’s taken over a complete mess, so I can’t expect much from him so early on, just fight for the badge, never shirk a tackle and hope Buonanotte, Vardy or Mavididi can produce a piece of magic.

We need a huge window in January which will be difficult, but just some random defenders names to throw out there, proper football manager stuff. Cancel Edouards loan deal. Victor Lindelof - (Loan) Not the greatest, but is a huge improvement on Faes, he's struggling for game time and his deal is up in the summer, a good 6 month loan deal could be what he needs to put himself in the window for potential clubs Devyn Rensch - Dutch right back at Ajax, he's been slightly unsettled last couple of seasons as he was fighting with Mazraoui for a starting place before Mazraoui joined Bayern, 21 years old and his deal is up in the summer, maybe he wants to join the Dutch revolution in Leicester and would likely be on a cut price deal if he's only got 6 months left. Chancel Mbemba - CB, Played 54 prem games for Newcastle 2015-2018 before moving to Porto, played 87 games for Porto over 4 years and moved to Marseille where he's played 61 games in 2 seasons, not featuring this season, deal is up in summer. Very random one: Simon Kjaer - (6 month deal if interested) he's on a free transfer and had a pretty solid Euros as Denmark Captain, very solid on the ball, played 20+ games for Milan last season and Milan fans loved him, if he's kept fit he could help shore up the defence on a short term 6-12 month deal, he retired from International football in August but I don't think he's fully retired from club football?

Yeah he's a big risk but JJ needs a rest, I was also not 100% sure on El Khannouss, I think he will give us a bit of flair coming from central to link the defence to the attack with Buonanotte, but he leaves us a bit more exposed in the middle

I still dislike him for that, embodies the problem at the club.

We just seem to have absolutely no standards, no leadership, nobody cares. Watching Ndidi and Soumare today every time Brentford broke through our pitifully weak midfield they were more often than not jogging back. First priority in January for me is to sign some nasty bastard player who is willing to lead this lot, we need to rebuild this squad in Summer with STANDARDS. If you can't follow the standards you're out. Blood sweat and tears for the badge. If you are jogging on the pitch you'll never play again. Where are the Roy Keane/Vieira/Adams/Keown leaders anymore? Absolutely spineless bunch. I wouldn't care if any of them left really. A couple i'd be a bit nostalgic over, but the vast majority can go and rot in the Championship for all I care.

Has he run yet?

Okay I’ve revised my January wishlist. We need a minimum of 4 defenders.

I fear you are probably right, but always willing to give players a chance under new management, we will likely have to go 6+ weeks (half way into January) before we would likely sign a new DM so my gut instinct is Soumare will play there.

Mine relies on a few variables, IF Ruud plays a defensive midfielder, I think it will be Soumare, and think he will improve massively with a proper role, if it's Ndidi playing in that role, it will be him. Sangare was a very important role in his PSV system, I think Soumare is the closest we have to that.

If it means dropping JJ, yes, especially if his plan is to invert either JJ or Kristiansen. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think Hamza is cut out for it either at this level, but I don’t think Hamza is going to cost us a goal a game whilst we wait for Ricardo to return.

I agree with you, but I think Soumare is closer to the Sangare role than Ndidi is, I’m just assuming he is going to want to replicate what he had at PSV.

So I haven’t quite kept up the last 2-3 days since it was basically confirmed it was Ruud by everyone, can someone explain to me why our new manager hasn’t had 2-3 days to train the team and take us into Brentford tomorrow? Just Leicester stuff or?

Credit to those pointing out that Hamza could be playing right back and tucking into midfield. That makes far more sense than my daft idea of making JJ do it (because kristiansen literally fled to Italy to avoid doing it) I’d be happy to see JJ given a rest and for hamza to step in too.

Yeah you could be right on that, but that’s only in possession and sitting in CM would mean Justin is probably closer to his position than he usually is where he was often hovering around the opposition box or further forward under cooper where he constantly got exposed on the break. I’m just not sure he would fancy kristiensen to be tucking into midfield since he was pretty vocal to Enzo that he couldn’t do that job and wanted to go out on loan to avoid it.. others pointed out Hamza coming in and that probably makes much more sense.

I'm probably completely wrong but this is how I imagine we will setup, I think Justin will be asked to invert into midfield and Kristiansen will become the left sided CB in a back 3. I have a funny feeling Soumare will feature heavily in RVN's plans, he fits the Sangare role that he had at PSV of being a defensive minded midfielder who can also be quite comfortable on the ball. If all players were fit, I'd guess Ricardo would be at RB inverting to CM, Winks will very much suit RVN and would replace Ndidi, and El Khannouss may be dropped, Buonanotte taking his spot and Fatawu stepping in to right wing. I won't be surprised at all if the Soumare call is wrong and Ndidi returns to his old CDM role, the attacking experiment worked fine in the Championship, but going forward Ndidi has been caught out too often this season.

Even if we defend poorly for a while, if Ruud can actually tell the players to attack, we will improve MASSIVELY. Literally every time we got to 75 mins and were losing and started to attack, we improved.

I did read somewhere a couple of days ago that the club are confident the new manager can be backed in January, need to find the link, but atleast we will be able to sign atleast 1x 500k player

@StriderHiryu Do your thing!

A positive gamble that all of us can get behind. Love this, Get in there Ruud, fire some rockets at this squad and get them fighting for the badge again.

IT'S HAPPENING!! IT'S HAPPENING!!! 97cfc857-24ad-4c32-aac3-3673fc232e50.mp4

Best mate is a Wednesday fan so I follow them pretty closely (our group chat is named Super Danny Rohl) The job Rohl has done there has been phenomenal, they definitely had a new manager bounce when he came in, and his form last season would have had Wednesday comfortably mid table with a League 1 squad, their owner makes our board look like masterminds and you can pretty much know who Wednesday have signed days before it happens based on the owners son following the new signings on instagram before it's announced. He was given a budget of about £5m and signed about 10 players (Ben Hamer was one of them funnily enough) This season they've struggled for a bit of consistency but had a big player turnaround in summer and overall I think Danny Rohl is going to be a top top manager in future, I'd love to see him managing us, but I'm a bit wary on the timing and whether now is the right time, if we had a points deduction I'd snap your arm off for him, but I'd worry he needs more time.

@mods what can I report this for?

As long as he doesn’t upset BDCR and Bouba we should be good. In all seriousness we do need someone to come in and show some rockets. We need a leader who is going to demand respect and Ruud does that. I also do think player power is quite strong at this club, it seems like Top often lends an ear to players a bit too often for my liking. It can work in some respects such as with Cooper since it seems to have pushed Top into making a change that we can all see is necessary, but every time someone gets sacked around here it sounds like the players have had a strong role in it happening, which fundamentally I hate. The balance of power at the club has seemed a bit toxic/skewed towards players since Pearson left. It’s about time we had a warrior in charge who isn’t afraid to bash some heads together and put up a barrier between the board and the changing room.

This wouldn't surprise me especially in the early days where Ronaldo was a showboat, Keane was brutal with him, I will say though having watched today the interview he did with Gary Neville from a year ago, Neville and him openly discuss how he managed the transition from being a completely goal driven player who went mental if he wasn't supplied goals (and they spoke about his attitude then) to now where he has to manage a group of players, and to his credit Ruud did acknowledge that he has changed that side of him when going into coaching and management and now understands the bigger picture and says he much more enjoys the focus on the collective compared to his playing days where he would scream at anyone who made the wrong decision if he was near goal.