Ricey

They would only be able to do the title winning kit without the Puma badges. Bearing in mind there was three of them on the shirt, I’m not sure it would sell that well. The FA Cup winning shirt however is surely a no brainer.

That sound you can hear is the barrel being scraped.

For the most part he's been fine at LB this season. His pace is essential to cover Vestergaard, especially tomorrow when Bristol City's gameplan will be to hit us on the counter.

Good job we've been highly cooperative with the authorities....

Weird match. I though tactically we were naive and defensively terrible, but through Chelsea’s ineptitude we got back into the game and gave it a good go. Crazy to play such a high line against Jackson, Sterling, Palmer and Mudryk. Even crazier to do it with Doyle instead of Justin. Maresca seems happy we didn’t change our style and gave them a good match, but they should have killed us by HT and ultimately it’s another match we’ve lost at the death. Without heavy investment or incredibly shrewd recruitment I really fear this style of play just won’t work if we go up.

Not playing Justin is really strange. High line and up against Palmer, Doyle just doesn’t have the mobility.

This ultimately is the problem. It’s a style that works scarily well if you have players that can maintain high possession in every match. If your squad contains a higher calibre of player than the opposition's it can work really well. Which is why it’s worked really well for us this season when our best players have been fit. However against teams with a similar or better quality of player, or if we lose a couple of key players, it can quickly become exposed.

It’s tactical suicide to play this high of a line, with huge gaps in between each defender and no protection in front of it. Add to that a half arsed press and two of the back four being painfully slow and you have yourself a recipe for disaster.

We are awful defensively, we just didn’t realise for most of the season because we kept the ball so well.

…and this is why I wouldn’t want Vestergaard in the PL.

Not sure if that’s optimism or pessimism.

Ipswich match will no doubt be moved to after the Semi. No doubt in the final week of the season.

It does…for 4 days until we play Southampton. I’d sooner Coventry didn’t have the distraction of the Semi and/or quite bad fixture congestion when they play Ipswich.

Bad for us as it means their match against Ipswich is moved.

Any first teamer who isn't going away for international duty will start. He won't want them going three weeks with no football. I can see him resting Faes and maybe Hermansen, but that's probably about it. Go strong and if the game passes us by, bring off Winks, KDH, Vardy etc later on in the game.

Makes you wonder why they prioritised the training ground instead of the stadium.

Possibly, but presumably the new rules would take effect from July. We could have two breaches by then.

Could mean it makes it easier to avoid a 23/24 breach, but does mean that we’d be the only team with a points deduction (if we go up).

Yeah, that very much blurs the lines of the three year rolling period. What happens if they breach again next season? Another 2 points? 4 points?

Happy with a point considering how off it we’ve looked recently. The referee was awful. Same one as Ipswich away when he didn’t give the KDH penalty or send Harness off.

….and we’d be sat here actively wanting the points deduction to be this season, rather than next.

Why didn’t Leeds just stop playing at 1-0 and try to see it out? I don’t understand.

Surely it won't be 10 points if Everton appealed theirs down to 6? We'll get whatever Forest and Everton get this season. Our appeal argument will be that we tried to cut our cloth, unlike Forest and Everton, but got relegated at their expense, which further damaged the finances. We'll also argue that if Everton's points for 21/22 had been taken off last season, then we wouldn't have gone down. It could be that a handful of clubs get points deductions next season, but I suspect that if we go up, we'll be the only ones to start the season on minus points. The charges and punishments will come later into the season. What an absolute shitshow, though. Either go up and get two points deductions (or sell our best players and get one) or don't go up and have to sell even more of our best players to keep it at a single points deduction. It's time for the fans to put some real pressure on the board, and yes, that means Top as well. They are all accountable for this mess, and yet no lessons are being learned.

Encouraging/forcing clubs to sell their homegrown players is such a weird by-product of these rules.

I suspect the £35-40M that we spunked up the wall in January, despite refusing to spend anything in the summer, might ruin that argument.