inckley fox

The best argument I can come up with in his defence is that it's amazing how many baffling decisions even good managers make when they're scrambling for solutions. When there is a huge amount wrong at a club, from incompetence 'upstairs' to incompetence and apathy among the players (regardless of their experience, their wages or one-time price tags) and unrest on the terraces, there's rarely a sense of clarity from a manager on the best short-term way forward. Look at some of Pearson's selections in 2011/12, when the board's big-money Sven experiment went wrong, the squad was packed with overpaid dross and the fans were growing disillusioned. It took time for him to unravel, and there were plenty of moments when people said 'what on earth is he doing now?' or 'there's no apparent improvement in the team or in individuals'. On the other hand, I don't get the sense that Cifuentes has any sort of a handle on the chaos. We can't dominate games and yet select players like Ayew who, for all his qualities (and there are some), instantly breaks down our own counters. He did it on two separate occasions in the minutes before we conceded on Tuesday. There are individuals who needed putting in their place after having been negative influences in the past (e.g. Winks, Vestergard) who, whether they're rightly in the line-up or not, have also been rewarded with the captain's armband. There's the sidelining of most youth players, with their potential cameos instead going to the likes of Reid, Skipp, Choudhury and Kristiansen. There's a system which is slow, rigid, predictable. There's the peculiar exclusion of Nelson. There's the equally weird notion that our worst passer of the ball, in Okoli, might work as a full back pushing up into midfield. There's James being shifted into the ten role when he's done perfectly well sitting deeper, in order to accommodate Soumare. There's Carranza, who doesn't look like a footballer at all thus far. I could go on. In his defence, I'd say that the mandate he was given was primarily to get the best out of a set of senior players who, the owner maintained, were at very least too good for this league. I base that on Top's language when Cooper was fired, which implied that he believed these players to be better than their league position suggested - a view shared, oddly, by some on here. I think that belief persisted, and Cifuentes has done his best to get a tune out of the established senior pros. And, while you're doing that, it's inevitable that people will find themselves saying 'how does he still get a game?' when you're dropping Soumare for Skipp, or Skipp for Winks, or Faes for Okoli, or Ayew for Daka, or Thomas for Kristiansen. You move one player out who long-since burnt his bridges with the fanbase and the next guy in line is someone else who is equally despised. And overriding it all is the fact that our recruitment, our finances, our managerial appointments have been so damaging for so long that you can't simply click your fingers and snap out of it. Did Maresca do that, or did he have better players at his disposal and the money for something of a reset? And even then, it was starting to revert to type towards the end of his tenure. I have a degree of sympathy for Cifuentes on those scores, even if I'm seriously unimpressed, and strongly suspect that any man who Top and Rudkin deem ideal for the job is probably the last thing on earth that we need.

Everyone was. Was he more part of whatever it was that was malignant in our club's culture than Soumare, Faes, Vestergard and many, many others who had never been a part of the culture that brought the club up in the first place? Your argument hinges on the idea that Vardy's influence, and the fact that he had so much influence, was a negative thing. So have we seen any sign of improvement since he's gone, as you might expect? And at what point did his influence go from being a good thing to a bad thing? I'll bet, if you had to put a date on it, you'd go for some point in the final couple of years of Rodgers' reign - the time period which marked the departures of Morgan, Fuchs, Schmeichel, the more acrimonious exit of Fofana, and the arrival, for catastrophic sums, of the likes of Faes, Daka, Soumare and co. When Youri, Soyuncu and Evans clocked out. When Rodgers gave up. It's very peculiar, against that backdrop, that you'd single out Vardy, regardless of his wage or whether he's cordial with the chairman. The majority of the most successful and influential players in our history have also had been part of a decline. It applied to Black, Chandler, Lochhead and Adcock in the 1930s. It happened to Shilton, Sjoberg, Rodrigues and Cross in the late 60s. Then to Weller, Sammels, Wallington and Rofe in the late 70s, and to Izzet, Savage, Elliott and Taggart in the early 2000s. It's a real shame to take the view - as some always choose to - that as club legends like these, and Vardy, grow older, and as less talented, less driven newbies appear all around them, often led by negligent or incapable managers, that it was they who were the real problem all along.

It's very odd that he never gets asked about it. The total freeze-out suggests something has gone on behind closed doors. If his attitude has been found wanting then, given the culture at the club and the nature of our current problems, you might have more sympathy for Cifuentes' stance. Of course, to me it seems, on the surface, like sheer madness. Not least because the attitude of plenty of people in the team week-in week-out has also been found wanting, at far greater cost than 45 minutes v Huddersfield, and without having shown - as Nelson has - that they're capable of doing well at this level. But as I say, if journalists don't ask the right questions, then you have to wonder. Down the years we've seen young players at many clubs vanishing, much to the fury of the fans, only to find out that there was an incident, a row, a failed urine test, a heap of personal issues, or some bluster from an agent who felt he could push through a move. Or, sometimes, in spite of early promise they just turn out not to be very good. I've got a stack of gripes with the club right now and a much smaller, but rapidly growing, stack with Cifuentes. But I'm slightly hesitant when it comes to Nelson, simply because the whole thing seems so odd.

It might end up being quite disjointed. Not to say it's a bad suggestion, more that a simple, effective, unifying gesture which doesn't require fans to part with something they've already paid good money for might get a stronger response. I saw someone suggesting the idea of bringing/giving out cheap whistles, and while I don't know whether that's practical or not, I could imagine it working. To organise a large scale sacrifice by not coming - and there must be plenty of fans who held on during previous questionable regimes like that of Shipman, or the final days of Elsom, and wonder what's so different now - could be tough.

That depends who the players in question are. Pearson was very big on including players in the decision-making process, right up to recruitment at times, and that way of working has persisted since then. It was a great way of doing things when the influential voices were characters like Morgan, Fuchs, Vardy, Huth, Schmeichel, Wasilewski etc. Not so good when the characters in question are less trustworthy, which is really the fault of those who brought them in post-2015. Even some of Puel's signings were arguably, in terms of their moral fibre, lacking the steel and mental resilience of their predecessors. Should we be sidelining some of those influences in the current climate? Yes, I think I'd agree with you on that one. But I don't see that we can blame Vardy for having been a positive influence who was rightly given a prominent voice. And that he's on civil terms with the owner is neither here nor there.

He's done an incredible job pretty much everywhere he's gone, just at lower league level. Perhaps employers have wondered if he's a guy who might not be able to make the step-up, but having heard him speak I think he's not a Martin Allen / Steve Evans type. The transition from League One to FLC probably isn't as great as the step-up from some foreign leagues. The big problem right now is that the squad needs a serious overhaul and it looks like that's impossible in the short term. While I strongly doubt that Cifuentes is the right man for the club, I can also sympathise with anyone who fails to get a tune out of this squad. Maresca managed, for a while at least, but he did have significantly more talent, and funds, at his disposal. I honestly doubt that anyone could turn that side into a force now.

I don't know. That squad had McAuley in it, who later spent much of his career at top flight level. Obviously different positions, but the jury is out on whether that will happen for Fatawu. He needs to get over himself and work on his game if he's going to come close to fulfilling his potential. The 2007-08 side had a competent FLC-level CF in Fryatt. It lacked a competent midfield, as this one does. But we had a good defence and all in all 6-7 players who were comfortably second tier level, and on occasion better, among our ranks. Nobody expected that side to go down. We had the 2nd or 3rd best defensive record in the league and our points total would have kept us up any other season. The Mandaric-driven chaos cost us severely. Just as the Top-driven PSR chaos may cost us this time around. This team isn't obviously any better for me. McAuley / McCarthy / Kisnorbo / Stearman / Mattock in defence or Faes / Thomas / Vestergard / Okoli / Kristiansen? Fryatt / Hume / Campbell up front or Daka / Ayew / Carranza? This lot just have unwarranted high price tags attached to them, but we're seeing how little that counts for. We also have a manager whose mandate is to get a tune out of those players, rather than refresh. And based on what's happened thus far, any approach which persists with proven failures at the expense of alternatives is very worrying.

My immediate thoughts were of De Vries, Cort, Hammond, Wayne Clarke, Akinbiyi... That said, I'm not at all convinced that Carranza is even a professional standard footballer. From what I've seen, it's amazing that someone like that gets a game at this level. No strength, flair, pace, touch, work-rate, finishing. If he isn't an example of an agent getting on the phone to a club that he/she knows to be desperate, and to have no meaningful recruitment network, nor any knowledge of how rubbish their client is, then I don't know what is. An utter joke, and a depressing, predictably-useless symptom of how appallingly run this club is right now. And while I'm not baying (too much) for Cifuentes' blood when he's such a tiny part of a hulk which is so monumentally, immensely crap as the club these days, I also think that it's damning, on his part, that he'd select an obvious amateur ahead of literally anything else. A youth player. A converted winger. Anything, anyone who has a chance of succeeding would make infinitely more sense. Seeing Carranza in the side only adds to the sneaking sensation that my worst fears are being realised. Marti is another of Top's men. And no-one with a mandate to do Top's bidding could ever conceivably be a healthy thing for the club.

Do you think he's lazy? I'm not sure that's his problem. Arguably, it's worse than that.

Mid-90s was Whitlow, wasn't it? Way better than Thomas. I'd have to go back to Tony Spearing, personally. And even that one is very debatable. Luke has a good game in him here and there, and I don't doubt that he tries his heart out (which is more than you could say for some), but he looks like a lower-league player to me. No pace, no strength, no attacking threat - that tends to mean you don't get to play in the top two divisions. Regarding that point, I know people keep saying how crap the Championship is, but I have clocked that some of the same posters thought we were way too good for this league. And we clearly aren't, so people are either underestimating the second tier or buying into the idea that price tags are a fair indicator of quality. In fairness to Cifuentes (as underwhelmed as I am by him) I don't think he can take the blame for the fact that our options at LB / CF and, in reserve, at RB, CB and CM, are below Championship level. In spite of what we paid for some of them. I saw Marti state that younger players like Evans and Aluko need to learn to do the right things with the reserves before they're thrown in at the deep end. I see where he's coming from, but when the first choices are so consistently failing to do the right things, you have to wonder whether he's getting something wrong.

Is Page injured? I never saw the full bench. He'd be a better switch for Ramsey than Carranza, for me.

Sometimes a footballer turns up who simply doesn't look like they are, were, or ever will be a footballer at any significant level. We have a few of them right now, but he stands out. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I seriously doubt it.

Lots of people that we wouldn't wish to see in charge right now have won promotion from this division, albeit in very different circumstances to the ones we find ourselves in now. Martin is absolutely, unequivocally one of them. He'd represent the worst imaginable continuation of the Top era philosophy. Personally, I'd like to see a rethink, an overhaul, a change of ideas. Appointing Martin would mean that Top was doubling down on his ethos, at a time when we need to see the end of his ethos. Why on earth would we wish to see Top's agenda pushed any further than it has been already?

You're wrong, you know.

On Foxestalk he picked up a ban, Due to Israel, Gaza, bombs in Iran, Charlie Kirk quotes, stopping the boats, And an ode to Mr. G. Linehan.

Were you responding to me?! I'm curious now.

I read your comment and took it as a joke because, while I wasn't participating, it all seemed quite civil and well-humoured. Maybe I missed something wildly antisemitic. But I'm not sure you can conceivably have a news thread right now without talking about Israel to some degree. These are just the things going on in the world right now, as sad as they may be. I've seen a few posts on those threads down the years which perhaps warranted a cooling-off period, and so the mods have my full sympathy - and if a thread opened up entitled 'JEWS!!!' for instance (which might in itself be an interesting, or disturbing, social experiment) then I wouldn't expect it to last very long. But that particular conversation seemed quite good-natured to me. Maybe there are certain keywords which set off an alarm among Foxestalk mods (e.g. Jewish / Muslim / Charlie Kirk / Patson Daka). When things go down those roads, you're on a countdown to being locked. Or, like I say, it's entirely possible that I missed something appalling.

Despite having Mads, Vardy, Dewsbury-Hall and Ndidi among their number. And possibly breaking PSR limits (and, therefore, cheating). It was by no means an extraordinary achievement to stumble over the finish line with the most expensive second tier side in history. If we carry on telling ourselves that everything was wonderful under Enzo, and that's the way forward, then not only are we giving undue credit to the club, and making unfair comparisons with Cifuentes (who has a far harder task) but we're also kidding ourselves about where we should go from here on in. Enzo achieved exactly what he was tasked with achieving, and should have achieved. Well done to him - because plenty of managers have failed to deliver the absolutely deliverable. But we shouldn't go thinking that, for just one beautiful year, the club got everything spot on, nor that it was an unequivocal success.

Thankfully there's a royal blue-coloured remedy for that (according to my dad, obviously).

I've noticed some of the pages on History aren't loading up, like when you click on the managers. It may seem like a trivial thing but the History pages are my secret weapon when I'm busy arguing with someone - I look something up on there and casually pass it off as my own remarkable knowledge...

Mavididi was crap, surely? But yes, Soumare was fine. And, right again, the subs were weird.

I thought he was mostly rubbish and ineffective to be honest.

It's a bit of an assumption that there will even be future generations at this rate.

Da Silva was awful. I don't think Abdul fully capitalised.

That's a very unusual thing to say. Also a very unusual thing to say. We weren't positive enough - from early on - to create a sufficient number of good chances, in spite of the number of shots. We moved the ball too slowly, too conservatively, and it sucked some of the enthusiasm out of the crowd. That looked like at least partly a tactical miscalculation to me. Yes, there were two poor shots in very decent positions but we need more than that before we can say that we were 'massively' the better team, or that poor finishing was the key factor (because Cov also had their chances). Neither side was particularly impressive to me. Perhaps we shaded it. Just. And I am naturally very biased. But obviously, it'd be mad to either revere the manager or be too critical. He's had a reasonable enough start, for me, and the fact that we look a bit underwhelming isn't for the most part his fault.