BKLFox

Have you guys heard of sky sports app? They doing commentary on every game being played on any particular day, the way you lot talk it’s like you are having to find an app in the deepest parts of the dark web to get any chance of seeing the score for this game 🤷‍♂️

Would Haaland have scored that at the end, I’d think not the angle, the height the speed was all against him he did well to cut it back across goal where 2 or 3 players could have tapped it in or got an OG shame neither happened & our attackers weren’t switched on (BDCR) Does this also put the Thomas doesn’t get past the halfway line cry to bed because to get that ball in the 1st place wouldn’t he have to have been the furthest forward Leicester City?

Fair enough but I’m talking week in week out and he’s not there, yes the odd reward of a start maybe. Trouble we have is Stephy very much a confidence player also and Enzo sum’d it up, you know what you will get after just 5 minutes of the start with him, it’s kind of like the same with Monga he wasn’t there after that 1st 5minutes. I really hoped he’d have a blinder allowing S Thomas to replace Fatawu as the game went on but because we relied on Fatawu it couldn’t happen. I would have liked Thomas to replace Monga over BDCR mind but hear BDCR pulled something from within 5mins of coming on so there’s a good chance he gets on v Hull at some point especially if Mav still injured.

So do we agree he’s not a starter….yet! Due to Mavididi’s injury he’s forced to play last night & when on the ball he looks ok but he really needs to work on his movement but then I’m a realist and know it’s going to take time and therefore understand he’s an impact player…for now! The constant push for getting 16/17yr olds into the starting 11 is delusional we don’t have a single under 19, could push it to 20yr old that is ready to start week in week out, those that think we do pull a name out from that development Charlton match midweek, without saying well can’t be any worse than ‘x’. These guys need time to grow, let them grow as 4 games like Monga had on the trot will do more harm than good yet 4 x 15-20minute cameos where he comes on and runs rings around tiring defences will push his chest out no end & we’ll end up with a better player. Same goes for any of the names people will throw out, Evans, Aluko, Page and even Hutchinson who’s being thrust into match day conversations now of those including Monga, Aluko would be my pick for adapting quickest for becoming a starter & he’s no where near the match day squad let alone a cameo yet. You have to look all the way back to Rooney to get a sense of what’s required to make it at that age and I don’t see a Rooney in our academy just let them grow they have loads of time to become a Rooney.

I still don’t get the sell Nelson part, if your reason on other threads is you don’t rate him then ok but if you do why put him up for sale? He has to play, is that your reason? Well wouldn’t you do all you can to get rid of any of the other three to enable that with us? Let’s say you sell both Nelson and Faes, at most you get £5m for Nelson & I’m being generous due to lack of experience, age & length of contract left, you still need to replace both as you need a minimum of 4 CBs, are you then getting new CBs in to start or cover, if start they will cost more than £5m but you mention us not being able to afford him to go for free but having to buy for more or to cover then what’s the point of selling Nelson? I do still live in the hope Nelson & Wilson-Brown are a future Leicester City CB pairing along with a established older CB, someone around the 28/29/30 age who can support them, remember in the main CB mature with age, then have 4th happy to play that 4th role.

Everyone blaming Carranza but what the f was Monga doing if he moved away from Carranza he could have passed to him but he stepped into him and was 2ft from him so Carranza had to turn around himself…he then got it nicked off him but it was down to a lack of movement from Monga

Really looking forward to the ENG squad selection on the 26th Oct for autumn internationals. It must be the hardest selection for any ENG manager in years such is the absolute quality in virtually every position, there will be some big big names left out. Just looking at Tigers v Bath today and in the wing position Arundell, OHC & Radwan all international quality yet probably miss out which is crazy. Arundell might be an outside bet for making it but Borthwick’s been loyal to Freeman, Sleighthome & Feyi-Waboso so far you then have Muir, Roebuck, Murley, Malins, Beard He’s going to have some head scratching to do in every position watching Sarries v Sale and Sarries young Eng U20 winger Caluori could even be rewarded for a look to the future edit 2 Caluori didn’t do himself any harm in getting a pick with 5 of the 10 tries Sarries smashed Sale with, he was awesome for a 19yr old

What a game of rugby that was, brilliant from both sides but well done Tigers for inflicting Bath’s 1st loss of the season. Well done James O’Connor MotM & well done Billy Searle for keeping his nerve at the end.

For sure about the rest of Europe no way it happens with Munich, PSG, Madrid etc just continuing to spend. I was going to add but would have a made a long post longer about I wonder if it’s a type ‘traitor’ to be implanted to push an ulterior motive such as the breakaway league again or even worse if Saudi are providing backhanders to PFL to try and force the top players over to Saudi. It probably is just a strap line of look we have implemented a salary cap we are looking after the small guy but we know the reality is nothing is implemented to rein in the cartels.

This season has certainly brought me back in, everyone is contributing in task & especially with the live engagements between them all and Greg/Alex being the funniest for a long time. The tasks themselves have stepped up again with a few of the previous 1s being a bit lame making me think it’s run its course but fair play to this season.

Wasn’t sure where to ask this, maybe Premier thread but I’d imagine at some point it would be pyramid related but as it’s close to our issues and money related I’ve put in this thread. The pending change to a ‘Salary spending cap’ good or bad idea? The proposal would be to cap team wages to no more than 5 times the amount of income generated by the previous seasons bottom placed team. On the face of it the strap line sounds great, a salary cap to make things equal but it will never get off the ground as each and every year the bottom club will probably have less and less income, depending on club, imagine this being governed using another Luton or an Oxford if they somehow got up, even ourselves just can’t see Arsenal and the likes managing on our income let alone an Oxford…but can it 🤔 That said Sheff U earned £110m for finishing bottom last season & Man C paid £413m in wages, the new cap would allow them to spend £550m going from Sheff U income. Is it actually just another paving slab put on the rest as Sheff U & the majority of the premier league couldn’t and wouldn’t pay wages of £550m but those top 6 clubs would be free to do so, this would then close the pool of players that has recently opened up to the rest of the premier league clubs as the top clubs would just add 20-30-50k pw to a players wage pushing them out the reaches of Villa, Everton, West Ham, Palace, Bournemouth etc who were getting players recently that maybe were only affordable to the top teams a few years ago…..if voted in the PFL will just say look we brought in a salary cap to make things equal but in reality has anything changed? I always revert to Rugby when looking at changes TMO & VAR, player safety, subs etc and using Rugby again English Prem have a salary cap but it’s a single figure that all adhere to not a % of an individual teams revenue. The numbers are smaller obviously with this year every Prem club can only spend £6.4m on player wages. This means clubs have to juggle squads, there are more movements on players with players having shorter contracts making for a more open contest as elite players can bounce from club to club ensuring there is no 1 dominate team year after year (generally), it keeps player wages more aligned with each other and more importantly it encourages youth development as academy lads are drafted in on smaller wages plugging gaps if elite players are over rewarded to keep or sign them. That’s a salary cap which makes a level playing field but footballs to far gone on spending to be able to make it a level playing, how do you say to Man C etc the cap is £200m adjust accordingly, it can’t and won’t happen so it’s just another wolf in sheep’s clothing for as much as it will do to realign the field.

Bristol have coped extremely well with the loss of 3 of their star plays, especially when 2 of those were pivotal to their game plan. Sam Worsley was excellent yesterday covering for the injured AJ Mac kicking all of the 7 conversions. Bristol & Lam are a club that really do put the onus on the players to play what is in front of them, yes they have their set plays but Lam does allow them to go off script. We do hear this more in Rugby and I think the understanding of this would help non Rugby fans that lay blame entirely on their football teams manager, that actually you can drill them to an inch of their lives midweek but come match day and once you cross the white line the majority of the game is down to the players themselves and how well they adapt to what’s in front of them.

Come on you guys where’s your sense of mocking gone, I remember the old days when there would be 5+ pages of mockery if the chancellor had said “The UK is the envy of the world with the trade deals we have done recently..” you’ve all changed 😜

For sure there would need to be a little more thought put into by each association and league, it’s a little easier in Rugby as it’s only the elite players that would tend to go over that 30 game limit and certainly in England & Irelands case these players come from clubs that should be able to swallow the missing weeks anyway although Ireland have at least 14 players in the starting 15 for Leinster but they must cope, club cup games usually continue whilst Internationals are on, 6Nations for instance. Due to talent pool of SCO & WAL (keeping to our national teams) their clubs probably struggle as would as you mention players in the EFL championship for the same nations as their players could tend to come from Cardiff, Swansea for WAL etc who obviously don’t have the squad depth of Arsenal, Liverpool etc. 1 big plus point in Rugby is that a lot more academy players get blooded to fill the gaps especially in those cup games. But it’s a concept that needs to be looked at because those clubs that whinge about player safety are the clubs that flog their players to death for a few extra peas, they want to have and eat that cake they don’t care about player safety.

You’ll probably find that there are more similarities than you think, Villa are sailing very close to the wind with PSR reporting losses of £119m 22/23 & £89m 23/24 and even closer with a UEFA charge hanging over them. Villa fans are turning on Emery, he’s spent €400m since turning up in Oct 22 that’s 2.5 seasons and yet only 4 players are probably rated by their fans. He got a mid table team much like ourselves to 1 top 4 place then dropped to 6th and currently sitting 13th. He has called out his players recently and stormed off down the tunnel without acknowledging the fans up setting. Im not using Rodgers as a if it wasn’t him we wouldn’t have, I’m saying if we didn’t sign a manager ‘like him’ we wouldn’t have got the 2x Top 5s + FA cup as he was the type of manager that polished off what we had, as is Emery, the managers we were attracting at the time wouldn’t have. Villa currently have operating costs of £140m per season, even with European funding and psr exempt costs it’s a big number to reduce to fit psr and this is mainly due to change in operating model and higher wages since Emery turned up…sound familiar?

Wouldn’t a better concept be to hold owners personally accountable as opposed to the ‘Club’? Again I go back to Reading or currently Sheff W probably could throw in Wigan, Bolton & Portsmouth also as the rules damage what they state they are trying to guard against, Clubs, players, fans, communities. An owner has no real affiliation to a club, it’s generally a play thing, the must have like a super yacht or their own island it’s all about 1 up man ship when you have that much money, my clubs bigger than your club. So you say well if they that rich they won’t care about personal fines to them not the club as they could afford it but the other thing about multiple billionaires is they don’t like their own personal wealth hit. Currently they say fec it fold the club for all I care I’m stripping assets and getting out of here onto the next but hitting them directly will ensure they keep the club on the straight and narrow as they don’t want to be held accountable directly. This is just me thinking out loud on a Thursday morning and I guess there are some measures in place, could also argue won’t affect a state owned club but anythings better than seeing local communities decimated due to the current “custodian” of a 150+yr old institution shirking responsibility 🤷‍♂️.

All in the name of player safety blah blah blah meanwhile as soon as the season finishes let’s do a 3 week tour of Asia, America etc ooh and wouldn’t it be a great idea if we fly to Australia to play out a league match once or twice a season. Rugby are serious about player safety and whilst granted footballers aren’t subjected to the hits like rugby players are 1 rule that would be good for football is a total number of games played per season/calendar year. For instance those players who represented The Lions in July/Aug have only become eligible to play for their club teams this past weekend (Wk3) of the season, after a mandatory 10week rest period for those that have exceeded the 30 games per season rule spread over league, cup & internationals. Something like this should/could be implemented in the football calendar ensuring those teams that always whinge who also have the biggest squads rotate & manage their players better.

Like him or not we don’t push on to the top 5 places or FA cup without him. We could have stuck with a manager happy to restart every season after losing their better players and not seeing profits pumped back into playing staff, with a club view of just stay in the league. The issues come after twisting and then not fully achieving but even then achieving means successive years and adding proven quality to keep that success rolling. We can all sit and blame Rodgers but does that also mean that Emery is to blame for issues that Villa now find themselves in after trying to run with the big boys? I’d wager the likes of Glasner, Iraola & Hurzeler (although the latter might not be thinking this just yet) will be wanting their clubs to push on and build on the successes they have had in the past year or 2, this is when you will see how well those clubs are run, you can almost guarantee the 2 former names won’t be at their clubs much past their current contracts if the board don’t twist & change their operating model.

We need to learn from past experiences that a team isn’t always your star players. For me Foden & Palmer now don’t make the starting 11 but play off the bench. This team needs a Butt / Carrick type which Anderson & Wharton bring so it’s 1 of those sitting with Rice & Bellingham. There will be a few ‘big’ names missing out on the squad

Another lover of Mindhunter and really hope they return to it, it’s probably had greater viewing figures since they canned it which will hopefully trigger a new series. Another show worth watching if not already seen & like Mindhunter showcases the changes in the FBI’s profiling and forensic techniques is Manhunt: Unabomber (set mid 90s) the search for Ted Kaczynski

We all do it, pick a stat that runs in our favour, truth is they/the UK isn’t doing as well as they would have us believe snippet from Economic’s Editor Ed Conway’s report “One of the standard exercises each time one of these reports come out is for the Treasury to pick out a flattering statistic they can then go back home and talk about for the following months. This time around the thing they will most likely focus on is that Britain is forecast to have one of the strongest economic growth rates in the G7 (second only to the US) this year, and the third strongest next year. But there are a couple of less flattering prisms through which one can look at the UK economy. First, if you look not at gross domestic product but (as you really ought to) at GDP per head (which adjusts for the growing population), in fact UK growth next year is poised to be the weakest in the G7 (at just 0.5 per cent). Second, and perhaps more worryingly, UK inflation remains stubbornly high in comparison to most other economies, the highest in the G7 both this year and next.” Knowing what i know about ‘any’ government I’d tend to focus on everything after the word but.

Joint 2nd in key passes with Winks both behind James…..but doing a shite job and doesn’t get forward to support😂

Is china really way ahead or are those numbers skewed in their favour due to the lengths they have to go? Yes that reads they have put in more solar/wind capacity than x countries combined but that’s only reduced their fossil fuel consumption by 2% does the UK for instance have to put in the same amount of ‘farms’ to reduce it’s fossil fuel consumption by 2%? Is the goal to put in the most or reduce the most 🤷‍♂️ Not trolling because it’s great they are doing what they are doing and if their numbers lead other countries or in the case of USA out perform thus embarrass them to try and beat them in the next quarter for installations so they can have their name top of the pile for installs, then it’s a win win either way.

Other teams have done well against Fatawu and Mav/Monga because their LB (RB) are not isolated 1 on 1 they double even triple up on Fatawu, Thomas doesn’t have the luxury of defending in a pair/throuple. His positioning is a lot better than it was, he is making more interceptions and clearances & writing this I can’t think of a goal directly relating to this, the main issue is pace and you can’t really fix that. If isolated 1 on 1 with a speedy winger which he has been he’ll get pulled apart but he can’t fix that only Marti can with ensuring he’s backed up against a speedy winger & currently Marti doesn’t see it as an issue as we haven’t been conceding time after time directly due to Thomas 🤷‍♂️

Chances are Winks leaves next season even if we offered a contract and none of us want Soumare or Skipp & hopefully we can move those on, so we will need the likes of Cartwright, Braybrooke to go with the hopefully purchase of JJ & a 10 as we are not about to start dropping 15-20m each on 2 or 3 new midfielders regardless of division we’re in.