indierich06

This will be my son's first game. Poor bastard. Can't let him grow up a Leicester fan without ever having seen Jamie Vardy in the flesh though.

I don't even know that it's down to not being able to afford it, it just seems to be something we never do. It's more often than not a one-way investment, as they have no transfer value by and large. I looked it up, King Power have appointed 10 permanent managers and the only times we have paid a club for their manager was Rodgers from Celtic and Pearson from Hull. The two times we've done it, we ended up sacking the manager and paying compensation, so a bit outlay upfront and a big outlay when they're sacked. I would be shocked if they change tack and do it now on the back of paying off RVN, the relegation, and given the financial strife we're in generally.

I hate it, honestly. Just feels like possession for possession's sake - for me, when you have the ball you should be doing something meaningful with it. Guardiola has always had the players to do it positively too, for everyone else it just ends up being passed around defence and midfield, there's no quick transition.

Basically it'll be a freebie, absolutely no way we're paying comp for anyone if we have to pay off Ruud. Last time we took a manager from another club was Rodgers, right? Can't even remember the last one before him.

Ruud had a 100% win rate at United, let's not forget

The Guardiola bubble simply must burst soon, for the good of football in general - it is the most turgid stuff to watch. Get us back to blood and thunder counter-attacking, **** possession - defend hard, attack hard. Nothing archaic about it, just high energy football that actually gets people out of their seats instead of boring them to death. Give it a fancy german or spanish name like contraataque and the foootball hipsters will lap it up.

Would be better then their current approach tbh. Given our recent track record, I'd say he's got more chance of being a Diabate than a Kante or Mahrez. Also, Ligue 2 is the pits compared to the Championship.

4 goals in 27 games in Ligue 2, pass.

The new patch for BG3 is out imminently, so I will almost certainly be starting a new playthrough with one of the new subclasses

RVN is toss, but managers come and go - Rudkin is a seemingly inoperable cancer on this club at present. I'd much rather we had new owners and a new DOF by the start of next season, but it will never happen in a million years unfortunately.

Well you've just answered your own question there. Ruud blasting rounds into his own feet yet again.

Setting aside the fact that having a newborn son who's a few weeks old is a perfectly acceptable reason to want to commute in - given most people would be on paternity leave (I don't care if he's a footballer, there's people who take home millions a year who still take paternity leave) - do you think the rest of the squad are going to think it's reasonable, or just dick-swinging from a manager who has done precisely nothing to earn the trust or respect of the players? Fergie could do these things because he was successful and the players respected him. Do you think anyone in that squad respects RVN? Seems his style of management is just a load of waffle and falling out with senior players, which he did in the Netherlands too. I mean talk about shooting yourself in the foot - you target a senior and influential player in the squad, you tell him you don't care if he's just had a baby, he needs to stay over one night a week at the training ground (why this makes any difference, who knows - I'll be kind and assume he has at least a half decent case for it). The player doesn't want to, and you publicly fall out with him. Is that going to make the players more or less likely to respect you? The phrase 'pick your battles' comes to mind - this, and the row about Okoli's boots? The bloke is a weirdo, I bet the players take the piss out of him behind his back. None of it matters because there's not a chance we stay up, but this should be the time when we are creating togetherness and a siege mentality, lead by the manager - I don't really care if they deserve it, do you think hanging your players out to dry publicly is going to do that? The best you can say about him is that he's just trying to stamp his authority on the team and it's not working - I think it's more likely he can see the writing is on the wall and he's just getting his excuses in publicly now so that he can just throw the players under the bus when he's trying to pull the wool over some owner's eyes at the next club he interviews with.

I just think it's poor management from him. Hardly going to boost morale or get him playing better is it? It's Ruud trying to come across as a hard man to the rest of his players, absolutely embarrassing from him tbh. Real leaders don't need to do this stuff, and they certainly don't conduct private business in the press. He's clearly trying to frame it as a player issue to cover up for his own deficiencies. The players are shit and their attitude is embarrassing, but RVN has been a total disaster of an appointment.

So forcing him to sleep at the training ground is going to... make him perform better? It's nonsense. He's just trying to act the big man to cover up for his own deficiencies as a manager.

Why is it bang on? What difference does it make to turn up at training at 9am if you've driven there, or if you've slept at the training ground. It's nonsense. Again, it's a bad manager's idea of stamping authority on the squad. Is it going to make Winks perform better by forcing him in for no apparent reason? It's ludicrous. If my manager changed, and performance across the team declined so drastically, I don't think I'd be particularly receptive to him trying to blame performance changes on me not being in the office, it's a load of bollocks tbh.

Yet it has been absolutely fine for multiple players, who have played for this club, to do it in recent years. Schmeichel never moved away from Manchester the whole time he played for us., got a problem with him doing it?

He is getting on with his job - as far as I know he hasn't missed any training sessions? If I commuted from Leicester to London for work and they suddenly asked me to stay over in a hotel for one night a week for no discernible reason, then you can bet I would have a problem with it. What's the point? What's the difference between waking up at the training ground and starting training at 9am, vs commuting in and starting at 9am? It's pointless posturing from RVN and it is what a weak leader's idea of authority is. If people applied any of this logic to a normal job, you'd see how mental you're all being. Its a very cushy job, but at the end of the day it's a job. Don't get up in the night and look after your kid so you can be well rested for work? ****ing hell. I think Winks is shit and I don't like him, but there is much more to life than football and looking after your kids is definitely one of those things.

This is just posturing from RVN. Winks has been allowed to do this since he joined the club without a problem, and we've got a long track record of players doing this kind of thing in the past - i.e. Schmeichel. There's people in my office that commute in two days a week, if work tried to change that there would be uproar - presenteeism for the sake of it does nothing to improve results in any business. I don't know what difference sleeping over at the training ground would make as opposed to driving there in the morning. I do think that standards are a disgrace at this club, and the players' attitudes stink - but leaking this stuff to the press to make yourself look like some kind of authoritarian hardman does nothing. Bet the players ****ing hate him. Real leaders with real authority would never do shit like this.

It's easier for big clubs like Man City to blood youngsters - they can field 10 word class players and a kid, and the pros will carry him if he has a bad game. The big clubs are also in more comps, have more fixtures, so they have more opportunities. Clubs like Leicester are too afraid to do it because they want to win every point possible and blooding youngsters goes against that, even if it's counterproductive for the longer term. It's cowardice basically.

I work in social media - data, insight & strategy for a mid-sized PR firm - and I have to say, it's quite poor from the club. They've kind of established a tone that works well when we're doing ok, but comes across as really tone deaf when we're not. I have no doubt they're being told to keep it positive by the powers-that-be, same goes for the constant flogging of kits. But then I've always thought their 'on-calendar' content was nonsense (Greek Independence Day, really?) and I feel like there's a way to approach the situation we're in positively while also reading the room. The stuff about how good the players are doing during the international break is particularly tone deaf to me - 'Ayew leading Ghana to back-to-back wins' or 'Jannick and Victor smashing it for Denmark' etc - at best it just highlights what a terrible job they're doing here, and at worst it just shows what they're potentially capable of when they pull on a shirt they care about. They don't need to be posting so much, I'd say when we're doing poorly just dial down the volume in terms of how much you're posting - and focus on stuff that shows the players training hard, trying their best to turn the poor form around etc. Feels like they're often in denial about where we are and how we're doing.

I remember the FA Cup 3rd round game against Man City being particularly ****ing cold, the one where Sol Bamba scored with his first touch of the ball. Freezing January day - couldn't feel my feet.

Let's get those deckchairs rearranged, that'll sort everything out

Don't think it's the best idea for a new man to come in and probably oversee a bunch of defeats, fans will be calling for his head by the end of the season - absolutely no doubt.

There's no point bringing in an interim manager, as we're basically down. There's no point in bringing in a perm manager with an eye on the Championship because they will just start off by losing a bunch of games and it will turn the fans against them. Let him stay IMO, the damage is done, and can't be undone by anyone else. Sack him the second the whistle blows on the final match of the season.

The biggest thing for me is the total lack of mentality, these lot are all so soft and spoiled. They're all massively overpaid, and as soon as the going gets remotely tough they just **** it off. I'd love us to be able to bin them all and build a new squad from scratch.