cityfanlee23

Happy with this.

Difficult window really, when you consider the wages we have taken off the books in the summer and the KDH fee, we haven’t spent a huge amount and the players we have brought in haven’t been too much of a gamble. Not sure on the Okoli signing but Skipp is a player we can likely get our money back on if we go down, and has the scope to be sold for profit in future if we do well. Edouard, Ayew and BDCR are all cheap hits but obviously wages of the latter 2 are unknown as this stage, some good loans out for our younger players. Buoanotte looks a really good young player who will give us a bit of spark going forward from the bench, Fatawu will profit for us in future, khannouss is very highly regarded from what I’ve seen and has scope for profit if he has a good season. For a net spend of about £50m I think we’ve done okay.

I really like Edouard. Which probably means we should steer clear but imo this is a great signing. Very happy with that.

Burnley signing Hannibal for under £6m is a fantastic piece of business imo. Will settle there and 100% be sold in a season or two for £20m+ imo.

I mean, sure we want him to get minutes, but Okoli has proven himself at a higher level than Nelson has so far, he's not been great so far for us, but Nelson still doesn't get into the team ahead of Faes/Vesty/Coady. I don't think even Coady will play more than 10 games this season. So either he goes out on loan or he rots on the bench.

To be honest I'm trying to work out exactly who we can give minutes to this season in order to utilise some younger players, but also not end up with our best players sat on the bench. The issue we have is we have a lot of players who need game time but fitting them into the squad is going to be really difficult. If we sign a couple more players, say Fotis and El Khannouss, we then balancing is going to be hard. Everyone wants to see Alves get minutes and preferably Nelson but where and who gets dropped? We need an attacking outlet in midfield and Alves is not going to be getting game time ahead of Buoanotte and El Khannouss if the papers are right about just how close we are to confirming him. How do you fit them into that team?

I'd say if I was Steve Cooper, probably around the 72 minute mark

He was one of the players who benefitted massively from Marescas system last season, very much like Madueke has so far in pre-season and at the weekend. So many occasions last season Mavididi half arsed a run at the defender only to turn around and pass it back or run himself into nothing. If he got the ball and put his head down and ran at players he would be a far more dangerous player.

Okoli needs time, but watching his pre season i'd rather have Amartey in there.

I really want to like Cooper, he talks well, but so far my experience of him managing us has not really given me much hope. We've played 45 minutes of decent football since he's been here, awful pre season, Signings questionable (they will get time from me), We "couldn't afford" £5m for Corberan yet we have spent £65m on players with atleast £20m of that looking to be wasted, another £5m on goulding who likely won't get a sniff past cup games, we have some brilliant youth players who also won't get a sniff. We have Cannon who is apparantely a fantastic player behind even Soumare in the attacking pecking order, our CB Faes is now seemingly unhappy by being played as a LCB even having spoken to the staff about not being comfortable there, and we have our most diverse and probably best player in Ricardo Pereira being dropped because Cooper doesn't think he can play as a CB during play. Cooper was supposed to be the man who would get the most out of our team to allow us to spend wisely. We feel now more like a sinking ship than ever. He really needs to get to grips with the mess he's inherited from the club, and preferably not add to that by dropping our best player, playing our CB in a position he's not comfortable in and bring on a CDM as a makeshift striker when we have a decent young striker on the bench. It just feels like we are taking gambles at a time we desperately need stability and togetherness.

Honestly, right now I would rather keep him unless we have a guaranteed player lined up. He's a bomb scare at times but the last thing we need is to replace Wout with someone even worse, Rudkins list scares me. I've obviously not got an insight into the dressing room or the players individual thoughts, but in just a few weeks, Cooper has played Soumare upfront over Cannon, Basically snubbed Ricardo Pereira because he doesn't fancy him slotting in as a right central defender (I'd back Ricky to play basically anywhere and do a solid job for us) so arguably our most diverse, reliable and best player has been benches. Now we hear Wout Faes is unhappy being played in a way that doesn't suit him. There doesn't seem to be a real reason for Cooper to be doing this. Literally the whole point of us accepting him coming in was because he played to his teams strengths, so far he's done the opposite of that. Very strange decisions. Let's hope we don't annoy Wout to the point he leaves a few days before the window closes and we either panic buy a donkey or get nobody.

I often wondered what would have happened if we gave him another season. Ultimately the owners were new and were making a financial statement signing all of those players and it just didn't click straight away and we were undone a few times, with hindsight bringing back Nige was the best decision we ever made, but I still like to think Sven would have got us up the next season.

Thinking about some of the players we signed under Sven, I thought Leicester were going to win the world cup I remember the summer anticipation when we had signed Matt Mills after getting promotion with Reading and deciding to sign for us, Jermaine Beckford, Kasper , Nugent! Sean St. Ledger, Konchesky, Yakubu, Fernandes. Sol Bamba with his trampoline touch driving the ball out of defence when thought he was beckenbauer Michael Johnson, massive shame that he had his problems, probably one of the most naturally gifted players i'd seen in years when he signed for us, slightly overweight and got an injury that basically finished him off. Was a fun time to be fan!

Wasn't it Sven who signed Kasper?

In the spirit of smiling is it time we dug out this gem again?

"I had a good life. I think we are all scared of the day when we die, but life is about death as well," he said, speaking at the end of the Amazon Prime documentary 'Sven'. He added: "You have to learn to accept it for what it is. Hopefully at the end people will say, 'yeah, he was a good man', but everyone will not say that. "I hope you will remember me as a positive guy trying to do everything he could do. "Don't be sorry, smile. Thank you for everything, coaches, players, the crowds, it's been fantastic. Take care of yourself and take care of your life. And live it. Bye."

Sometimes I think you have to gamble and by god we’ve gambled over the years. I want to give him a couple more games and if we look as poorly as we have done then we have to move on if we want any chance of surviving a potential points deduction. Regarding the finances, if sacking Cooper and Bringing in a new manager was going to cost us £10m, but that new manager was going to improve the entire squad as a unit by 10-15%, that would have a far bigger impact than any £10m player signing would ever do. I get the feeling Cooper has agreed to managed us in the championship if we go down, there’s no other explanation for such a poor window at such a pivotal point of our recent history, feels like the board accepted it before we even came up.

Was fully prepared to back cooper even down to the championship providing we played well, fought hard for wins and were solid as a unit, like we were under Nige 14/15 where we looked destined to go down but were well in most games but losing by fine margins. As a broader look since Cooper came in, we’ve had a single 45 minutes of decent football across pre season and our 2 league games. That’s not good enough and as much as Cooper does talk quite well he does come across as bland and uninspiring to me, and you can see how easily our heads drop, we’ve not instilled any fight into our team for years. If we have a few more poor results where we get dominated and we show absolutely no signs of playing to our maximum capacity (right now everyone is playing at 70% imo) then cooper will have to go. We don’t yet know what the points deduction is and I know we all suspect it will be 6+ points, that could be enough to really give this a go and fight to stay up, but not unless we improve dramatically. I can accept going down fighting tooth and nail, I can’t accept going down playing how we have all pre season, then today and the first half vs spurs. If this continues next week I’d say get rid. Either take a gamble or give it to a firefighter. We have to stay up if it’s within our grasp, the entire point of Cooper being accepted by a lot of fans regardless of most of us not really wanting him here was his track record of getting the most out of many players he has worked with, so far we’ve regressed. I do like Cooper, but a few more performances like this and it may get into territory where it’s more of a gamble to keep him than move on. Trying to be optimistic but so far we have looked very poor.

Sounds like our opponents last season 😂

I can't imagine how Cannon felt when Bouba Soumare went on upfront.

10/10 all round for our new star striker Bouba!

Cooper is now walking around the pitch applauding the fans. Saw him also doing the simple stuff like waving his arms to fans to get them going when we put the pressure on, you can see little moments like that and how he's applauding the fans now how he gets fans on board.

It's only game 1, but this is a MASSIVE point. I missed the first half which I've heard was as bad a pre season, but 2nd half we looked up for it, fighting for the ball and solid defensively. Few really good chances and we could have nicked it. Play like the 2nd half for the rest of the season and we have a chance this season. This is the most deflated I've ever seen our fans in pre season, hopefully that 2nd half performance and a couple of signings will show everyone we CAN stay up if we unite. The board have let us down, the owners have let us down, we have to get behind Cooper now, it's him and the players that will save us now.

Yep. Far better 2nd half, given the pre season we have had we can hope with a couple more signings and a few more games under the belt we may improve further.

Come to think of it, that is a strange one.