indierich06

I'd like him to stay, but what I hope we don't do is give him a silly contract to ward off any interest, like we did with Rodgers and Arsenal. At Leicester, all players and all staff should have their price, and we shouldn't stand in their way when they want to leave - just make sure we get the best possible compensation. It's a model that has served us so well in the past, and shows that no-one is bigger than this club.

Graham Potter anyone?

Don't reckon they would have been obscene. Think we've probably just decided that there's better places to spend our money.

I think if we weren't watching our spending so closely, we would have probably made this permanent - he's a good squad player.

I wouldn't have thought so, he's got a good track record of giving youth a shot in the first team, and with Liverpool's injury record over the past two seasons, I don't know if they'll be keen to ship out a decent squad player.

Agree with all this. He's gotten away with it because his missus didn't want to press charges and they've since reconciled, and there's basically no chance of getting a conviction without her testimony and her pushing it forwards. In his statement he talked about being 'cleared' - he was never cleared. He's never had to answer for what everyone heard on those recordings. For me, that's enough reason to not touch him with a barge pole.

Abso****inglutley not

Maybe, might be cultural differences, but you do get the feeling across multiple interviews etc that he's not particularly introspective when it comes to his own performance as a manager.

To be clear, I do rate Enzo and I do actually enjoy the football when we play it well - it's clear we need reinforcements this season to meet our potential. But I would just like a little more humility from Maresca (and his arselicker, Balague) about his shortcomings. It's fine - no-one expects you to be absolutely perfect in your first proper job, there's learnings to take from this season, but the way he reacts to criticism suggests he's quite thin-skinned and that he doesn't seem to think there's any need for him to improve - and that's worrying. The fact that he's pointing to his record and trying to almost imply how lucky we are to have him, and that we should be giving him whatever he wants after that stinking run at the end of the season - that doesn't sit too well with me. I feel like he would get a lot more goodwill if he came out and said 'look, it was a good season - there was a lot to be happy about, and we met our ultimate objective - but there was a lot to learn from too - for the players, for the club, and for myself - and we need to go into the new season with everyone on the same page, and with everyone pulling together to ensure we give ourselves the best chance of success.' It's all way too adversarial at the minute.

If CL was the only consideration, then Celtic would be beating most PL clubs to signings on a regular basis - the pull is strong, but so is the pull of PL football. As for Porto, in a bad season they're going out in the groups, in a good season they might get last 16 or QFs - they're not serious European contenders, and the Portuguese domestic league can't compete in any way with the PL. And if the idea of playing CL is to put yourself in the shop window for bigger clubs, I'd say that playing for a PL club is more likely to get you a move to a big club with bigger CL credentials.

Oh I don't know. Don't discount the attraction (and money) that comes with playing in the PL.

Balague is an arsehole, but it's in a revealing piece. Essentially trying to use interest elsewhere as leverage to get what he wants here - all I'll say is no one man is bigger than this club, and if he's not happy with transfer funds or the wage bill, then he's free to pursue his options in my opinion. He shouldn't overplay his hand - I can't believe anyone who watched us during that run-in is beating a path to his door, let alone 'top' Italian and Spanish clubs.

At £15m that's a no brainer.

https://www.footballinsider247.com/arsenal-will-accept-offers-for-trio-to-fund-bruno-guimaraes-move-sources/ Nketiah, Nelson and Smith-Rowe? I'd take all three to be honest.

We're so obviously going to need to cut our cloth this season, I really hope we go back to trying to find rough diamonds in smaller leagues - it worked well last season with the likes of Hermansen, Fatawu etc. Let's build a young, hungry squad and forget trying any 'marquee' signings. Wage structure needs a total reset too.

My post was a bit tongue in cheek, but I genuinely feel like we're in a lose-lose situation. If we don't reinforce the squad, we're almost certainly going down with the points deduction we're likely to receive, which will put the club at risk financially. But if we do reinforce to the level we probably need, then we likely get punished again and the cycle continues. In the meantime, these arbitrary deadlines mean that bigger clubs can force you to accept low-ball bids for your best talent in order to meet your financial targets - no more holding out for big money like we did with Fofana, Maguire, Mahrez etc when clubs know you need the money in this year's accounts - if Dewsbury-Hall is going to go, he will need to go by the end of June, so that's not exactly going to allow us to play hardball, or encourage any clubs to spend big. And then the clubs that can afford to throw money around are skewing the market by paying exorbitant transfer fees for average players, with the trickle down effect being that everyone has to end up paying bigger fees overall. How do we a) abide by the rules and b) hold onto to decent players and generally be competitive? Because those are two goals that, for a growing number of clubs, are not compatible with eachother. Most clubs don't have a setup like Brighton and aren't able to uncover the same kind of prospects - we certainly don't any more when you look at our average recruitment over the last few seasons. It seemingly only takes a bad window, or sacking a manager to put you at risk of falling foul of PSR, so more and more clubs are going to fall foul of this. FFP has always been a joke, but these new rules are genuinely broken to the point that they're going to lock smaller teams into a cycle of either 'overspending' (based on the arbitrary rules) or just existing to be asset stripped while the likes of Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal et al batter them every week on their inevitable march towards the title every single season - if it wasn't football we'd be calling it a monopoly, and talking about the absolutely flagrant disregard of basic competition law.

Sounds like we can either spend and get a points deduction or not spend and get a points deduction, so we may as well fly in the face of these ridiculous rules and just do what we want. Every team outside the top 6 will be getting a points deduction every season if this nonsense carries on.

If he's happy to drop his salary significantly then I say keep him on - I adore the bloke, but there's no way he should be on anything approaching 6 figures a week if we get promoted, especially considering how much cost cutting we're going to have to do, and how many players we're going to need to buy.

This is brilliant, thanks!

My brain isn't working this morning. What do we need to guarantee promotion? By my maths, if we beat Southampton and Preston, Leeds can't catch us regardless of whether they win the rest of their games.

I do think Enzo will (or should have) learned a lot in his first season as a manager, and that will stand him in good stead. But one thing that does worry me is that he never seems that introspective after a match - it's always 'the system is fine, we created enough chances to win, we played well'... but how do we account for the losses and the poor form then? If it's just him backing his players publicly, that's fine - but if he really doesn't think there's anything to improve on, or any ways that HE can improve, or any ways his system can be tweaked to counteract the ways it's been exploited this season, then that's a problem. The style can be a bit dry at times, but that seems like the way football is going more generally at the minute, thanks to Guardiola. I do feel for Enzo in the sense that - by and large - we DO create enough chances to win most games we play, we just don't seem to have the strikers to finish them. Vardy is quite a way past his best, I had high hopes for Iheanacho and Daka in this league, but they've proved they're not up to it and should be moved on IMO. But then it's baffling that Cannon hasn't been given more of a chance, given the performances he put in when he did play. And it begs the question - why didn't we move for a more suitable striker in the summer? We let Leeds strengthen by buying Piroe, while leaving ourselves with strikers who weren't good enough. Piroe's not had an amazing season at Leeds, but you look at a lot of the chances we create and we're crying out for a strong, mobile, skilful finisher, and I don't think Leeds have utilised him well. Maybe we were gambling on the fact that the existing strikers could do the business? But I think a smarter move would have been to sell one or two (Iheanacho and Daka) to get them off the wage bill and fund a replacement. All in all, you can't argue the season hasn't been a success if we go up automatically, as champions or runners up, and Enzo should be given the summer to evolve the team - we're likely losing Ndidi, Iheanacho, Praet, Vestergaard, Vardy, Albrighton, the futures of Yunus, Fatawu and Doyle are all up in the air currently too, and clubs are once again going to be sniffing around at the likes of Dewsbury-Hall. That's about six regular starters and 10 squad players whose futures are uncertain. And all this set to the backdrop of ongoing financial issues and a likely points deduction. We'll likely be odds on to go down next season, especially if we start on -6 or whatever the PL decides - I hope we go back to looking at young players with potential (<£10m), and shrewd experienced players, rather than just throwing money around in a desperate attempt to stay up like Forest have done recently. Build a side for the future, regardless of next season's outcome - the mentality at this club is rotten to the core, it looked like we'd fixed it early in the season, but the fight appears to have gone yet again now we're in the thick of it. TL;DR - Enzo's got his flaws, hopefully he learns from them, if he gets us up he deserves a shot at keeping us there.

Tbf, I can't imagine anything worse than sitting in the home end at Leeds while they're winning. Dreadful fanbase.

I think he's doing the best he can with a bunch of freaks who don't actually care/have enough footballing ability. I don't think there's any scenario where someone like Farke or McKenna would have walked the league with these players. About two-thirds of them aren't good enough, don't care or don't want to be here - it's not enough.