Ricey

This is my thinking as well. I’m not sure we’ve had Premier Ambitions for a while.

Lots of eye rolling and head shaking around me on 14 minutes. Even a "call yourself supporters", followed by 90 minutes of the same person absolutely berating the team. I honestly think some people think that "We are going down" is being sung. Maybe time to mix it up? I also think that doing it on 14 minutes isn't ideal. When it's 0-0 I think a lot of people they find it counter productive. A lot of our fans can not separate their emotions and thoughts from the current scoreline. Do it in the second half and inevitable we'll be losing and it MIGHT encourage more to join in.

The widespread apathy is a bigger sign of how badly run this club is than any march or chant, but unfortunately that doesn’t cut through with the media or the board. It will just be put down to recent results. The fight has gone out of everyone because we feel no connection with the club and we know very little will change. Recent history has taught us that.

Incredible isn’t it. Honestly thought the bloke’s behind me head was going to explode. The apathy is just weird. Things are getting worse and yet the anger is subsiding. The loud chants during the Fulham game feel a long time a go.

The figures won't come into it, they know we breached for 22/23 and they know we got off it by claiming we weren't a PL team at the time of the breach (i.e. the final day of the three year period). That's what the EFL will try and punish us for. Whether they are successful or not I guess depends on whether we were technically an EFL club by that date and, if so, whether the EFL have the ability to punish a club that spent all but a few days of the three year period as a Premier League club.

It's not about that season though, we avoided a breach for the three year period ending in the summer. It's about the season before, our relegation season. We avoided punishment for breaching in that season because technically we had already transferred our Premier League shares at the date of the breach. Logic then suggests we were technically a Football League team at that point, so it opens the door to the EFL potentially being able to give us a points deduction instead.

We may still get a retrospective deduction for 22/23, but I don’t think we’ll get an embargo. Embargoes are normally used to make the club stick to a business plan if it looks like they may breach at the end of the on-going season. So we may get one later in the season, but I suspect we’ll sell a couple of players and be ok.

I think this is the crux of it. I think Maresca liked Top and Rudkin on a personal level because the club put a lot of energy into making it feel like a 'family'. Kasper said similar on the Overlap last week about Vichai not being particularly bothered about winning, as long as everyone tried and as long as everyone was having a good time. He would genuinely care about the players, staff and their families and look after them to a level none of them have probably ever experienced before. I think Top is probably the same. However there is an argument that culture a like that doesn't really work without the type of characters that Pearson rebuilt this club with. It can create a cosy environment with a lack of accountability. Here's a trip to Thailand, here's a new contract, here's a new Training Ground Spa etc. Also, no one is doubting that Top doesn't look after the Manager, players etc. Our issue is that he's not showing the same level of care towards the fans, nor is he showing a ruthlessness toward success. It feels like internal relationships are more important to this board than operating a football club that is innovative, ambitious, successful and has a strong connection to it's fanbase.

Trying something different, but looks like either Thomas or Kristiansen at left centre back (isn’t that why we signed Oklki?) and we still aren’t solving a couple of our major defensive problems (Faes and Soumare).

We’ll lose, obviously, but I don’t think it’ll be by more than one or two. We know how Enzo loves his teams to stop attacking once they are ahead.

Yeah, turns out it was. He did turn down Fulham separately though, but that was apparently because he felt Leicester was the better "sporting option".

Didn’t Vestergaard turn down a move to Fulham a couple of years ago go because he didn’t want to move his kids out of school? Doesn’t add up if he lives in London.

I love the man, but the King suggestions are weird to me. It was only a few months a go that he got his first coaching job with the U18's and he's only just started coaching the first team, why thrust him into the spotlight and burden him with an unavoidable relegation?

He’s given up. He doesn’t care. Won’t make a difference if we sack him though. The players and board care less.

Ban anyone clapping that.

Yes, it was always kicking the can down the road, plus we would have had some expensive legal bills to pay.

I did the same and then started wondering whether it would be the worst idea in the world into the end of the season. I was all for Ranieri coming back during our last relegation season, as it would have at least lifted the clouds and created some positivity (plus he's a firefighter, as proven by his two spells at Roma since). Mind you, at this stage, I'd take Shaquille O'Neal.

It's such a fallacy that Dyche has to play his style because of the budgets he has worked under. At Burnley Kompany got them playing Pep-style football almost instantly and Moyes has got Everton scoring and looking dangerous going forward. It's not a straight choice between Pep/Maresca possession football and Sean Dyche deep, defensive set piece football. There is plenty of nuance in between and it's within that nuance that lives styles of player that may suit us in the Championship AND the Premier League if we go back up.

Dyche might have kept us up with 4 or 5 signings, but even then I think his style would have been hated by most of the squad and most of the fans. He’d be in a hiding to nothing. If we are going down, which we are, we do not need Sean Dyche. We need to rebuild, not paper over cracks.

Most of the blame lies elsewhere and he’s right, this squad is way off being good enough, but it was always a really silly important in the situation we found ourselves in. It was an appointment made with very little sensible reasoning behind it. A couple of Caretaker wins against us and a legendary playing career should count for very little, but Top was drawn in by it.

It will be Barry-Murphy. If it isn’t, please for the love of god think outside of the box. There is a whole world of managers out there.

Huge credit to UFS for keeping on with the 14th minute protest.

Ruud has been a terrible appointment, but so was Cooper.

No end of people near me clapping at the end. Amazes me that songs taking the piss out of the players gets more people joining in than any chant against the board. People just don’t get it.

Genuinely tempted to turn around and go home again.