inckley fox

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.

You must have watched a totally different game to me. Far from our worst performer, had a few decent moments, but very underwhelming.

I didn't know about that (and I can't find it anywhere). His u-23s debut was that month, but it wasn't against Man U. I'll take your word for it, though!

I think his debut was vs Boro, and he was decent. Are you talking about his PL debut? I think that was vs Everton, and no, he didn't do much.

Best: Pearson. Took us up two divisions, kept us up and - in unprecedented fashion given our financial limitations - formed a side on a shoestring that would win the league. If we were treating Pearson I and Pearson II as separate incarnations, then you could possibly argue for O'Neill ahead of him - and certainly Ranieri - but if you combine the two reigns, he's got to be the most important manager in our history. In fact, his achievement is, for me, the most underrated in modern football. He was the architect, if not the deliverer, of one of the most significant events the game has ever seen. Most liked (by the fanbase): Ranieri. Retrospectively, Pearson perhaps, but while he was actually in charge he was in and out of favour with the fans. It was always 'fine margins', as he'd say. Ranieri was feted pretty much from game one to the rather messy ending. O'Neill was adored, but the negativity towards him in his first six months leads me to lump for Ranieri. My personal favourite? O'Neill just pips Pearson and Ranieri. I should also add that I posted on here under a different name when I was a kid and people thought I was secretly in love with Craig Levein, which is unfair because I thought he was crap and was merely trying to offer some balance here and there. I actually fled the forum for a few years on the back of that! It is true that I had a soft spot for the late Gordon Lee though. I met him when I was little, and he was a good man. And saved us from disaster back in 1991. Most disliked (by fanbase) - Cooper. Ahead of Taylor and Ruud, who were quite popular for brief spells, and Megson, who was gone before the hatred could hit fever pitch. At first it was because he wasn't good enough for us, then because he wouldn't give Alves a chance, then because he wouldn't play Pereira (both justifiable decisions), then because he was to blame for our dodgy recruitment (Skipp, Bobby etc.) even though our recruitment had been awful for years, and then because we should have been in the top half of the table, and weren't, (which was an utterly insane stance, even at the time). I'm sure people are trying to realign their arguments now. Yes, he was the wrong appointment and we'd most probably have gone down if he'd stayed, but it was still disproportionate hatred. People just couldn't get beyond a real gut distaste for the guy, and the tidal wave of negativity - which gave the green light, I thought, for some of our players to express their antipathy too - meant he was doomed from the off. Personally, the one I could least abide was probably Rodgers, but it's an irrational dislike because I think, given time, it's inevitable that he'll be seen as one of our more successful bosses. I also had a serious issue with Taylor. I wrote him a letter telling him how crap Junior Lewis was and, to his credit, he replied. But he wrote, quite brusquely, that anyone who understood the game would see what Lewis had to offer, and he weirdly double-underlined the word 'manager' where it said, beneath his signature, 'Leicester City Manager'. I still have that letter in my parents' house somewhere. Worst - Holloway for me. Taylor at least achieved a 13th place top flight finish. There are only 13 or 14 of our managers who have kept us up for at least a season in the top flight, so even though PT was the manager who perhaps did the most damage to the club in my lifetime, his achievements put him a notch or two above Hamilton, Allen, Megson, Holloway, Ruud. Ollie inherited a side in 17th which, in spite of the chaos, should never have gone down, and his complacency (e.g. saying 'we probably already have enough points to stay up') was key to our worst ever finish. Hamilton, Pleat and Sousa, for instance, were nowhere near that awful or that disastrous.

Lineker was quick!

Personally, I think this is also a bit over-the-top, even though I appreciate someone offering some counterbalance. We've seen with our own eyes his lack of commitment on the pitch. Last season on occasions his lack of interest in tracking back (even when introduced as a sub) was picked up by commentators. If I were to be kind, I'd say he was average in the final months under Enzo, then outright rubbish under the next two managers. The incident in the nightclub wasn't by any stretch normal. Of course, things can get coverage and bother the general public without being particularly significant, but that was very unusual and very unprofessional. He and the others were, by all accounts, rightly reprimanded. Had his performances been up to scratch then we could have forgiven his disrespect for Cooper perhaps, but they weren't. He then continued to be awful - and fell out - with the next manager too. Like most of what we talk about on here, if you pick a side then there's always a good deal of speculation involved, but from what I understood, Ruud's request of him (for one night) was no different to what Enzo required of all the players (for several nights) when he first arrived. Ruud said that professional standards weren't high enough and, for all my doubts about his judgement as a manager, I doubt his judgement on professional standards is too far off the mark - especially based on what I saw of us last year. And the suggestion that Winks was one of the chief culprits tallies perfectly with what I saw of him, specifically, on the pitch and his attitude towards the previous manager, which isn't at all speculative. When it comes to questioning a player's commitment, I'd say you're on firmer ground - and dependent on far less speculation - with Winks than with most players we've criticised down the years. The fact that he's now posing a problem for a third consecutive manager by - again, demonstrably, visibly - sulking with the fans, is neither here nor there. We've already seen more than enough. Obviously we should consider people's feelings. Footballers have always benefited from and, equally, suffered from febrile matchday atmospheres, but you could argue that it 'coming with the territory' is no excuse for nastiness. I'd have more sympathy for the teachers, nurses and police officers I know who deal with far worse than him for far less recompense, but that's me. However I'm not sure I've seen evidence of either excessive, unfair criticism of Winks or of any mental health issues. If he had a serious problem with the criticism he has received then that'd be a shame, but he should also ask himself whether he's doing everything in his power to help himself. From what I've seen it's quite the opposite.