inckley fox

Most phoenix clubs, if they"re recognised as a successor, get all of the trophies and history. I think there are some pretty specific guidelines on the time period (5 years, maybe?) and preconditions. That's what the modern day Fiorentina are, I believe. And I think AFC Wimbledon now own the historical accolades rather than MK (edit: I've just seen that this is wrong, though AFC do include WFC's honours among their historical honours, and it's generally agreed that they are 'theirs' even though they're yet to regain the physical accolades). There are quite a few more examples of major phoenix clubs. Wouldn't that apply to Rangers too? The phoenix club, in a matter of a decade, would to all intents and purposes be Leicester City. Unless of course we fans still can't agree on anything, and therefore can't have a single recognised successor, which to me would be the ultimate catastrophe. The club folded back in 1919 and was reborn as Leicester City. Yes, I know they weren't entirely separate entities, but if we ignore the legal technicalities, it was still a case of a crisis-stricken club being reborn and re-elected to the league with a slightly new name. In time, this episode will be looked on in the same way. Of course, if you decide you feel like more of a Quorn / Hinckley / Coalville / Leicester Nirvana fan these days (which would strike me as a wee bit odd) then yes, I suppose the club would be kind of dead for you. But that's a matter of choice. I suspect some very big names and a good few club legends will rally behind a phoenix club. It'll be a long way back from the 10th, 11th or 12th tier, but we'll quickly get some momentum behind us. We may even see the Premier League again sooner that way than if King Power choose to bankroll us in the lower leagues till the End of Days. I'd be fully behind it. I imagine many others will be a bit more optimistic than you about it too. I can't think of many phoenix clubs out there in the doldrums of football which were once of our stature, so I'm not sure why you think we'd go the same way as other failed phoenix clubs. There would be a huge amount of interest in resurrecting Leicester City. It won't be Hinckley Town Part Two.

I'd looked at it as stubbornness from one side coming up against not-always-particularly-well-articulated outrage on the other. People who have nailed their colours to the mast long since and aren't going to allow changing circumstances or evidence to sway them, and then those who are so incensed at the sheer incompetence that has led to the ship sinking that they've not yet composed themselves enough to figure out where the life rafts are. And (with apologies for the silly nautical metaphors) even when they do, they're not going to be sharing a boat with the other lot, who were too busy sharing nibbles and enjoying the Titanic band's last waltz to acknowledge that the whole bastard ship had been impaled by an iceberg. But this is why I'd asked you. I think we're probably in agreement here, because I've also laboured the point that sooner or later we're going to have to come together as a fanbase again. If we don't, then in the worst case scenario where the whole thing collapses we won't even have a phoenix, because that requires agreement on the successor club. You'd have one set of people saying 'you lot caused this with your (delete as appropriate) negativity / refusal to hold people account for their gross negligence. You're not welcome.' And as you've said before, there needs to be unity if we're to effect positive change before things get to that point. Some of us have to remind ourselves why people are going to cherish Vichai's memory, find it near impossible to revile his son, and be grateful that the latter continues to pay the bills. You'll convince those people that Rudkin should go, Top should take a step back, things should be radically overhauled, and maybe even that KP should sell up, but you won't convince them to hate Top or hound him out. Neither will you have much success in slating fans for attending matches or applauding improved displays or refusing to attend protests alongside those who, as you say, would have Vichai's statue at the foot of the canal with a Cambodia flag round it. So yes, point taken.

Has a lack of empathy has been a significant part of our problem as a fanbase? It hadn't struck me as a standout negative trait of ours, at least not in comparison to the rest of the world.

He's just said he's going to ask if anyone doesn't fancy playing the last two games. If so, can they please tell him and he won't pick them, because he'll be picking a side that wants to play for the next two matches. You do have to wonder why he didn't think of doing that on Day One.

I heard the interview, and just learned that I can add his character deficits to the huge list of others' which were key to our downfall. He was utterly unaware of the gravity of the situation, of the role of a captain at a time like this, and of the need for him - as a spokesperson for those responsible - to hold his hands up and clearly, sincerely assume that responsibility. It's this obliviousness and detachment from reality which has characterised our decline. So yes, he gave us a nice season-and-a-half before injury decimated his career, and was very decent when we first came back up, but over the course of his eight year stay (bearing in mind he missed the FA Cup) he'll be remembered as much for the three relegations and captaining the worst ever City side as he will for being a worthy successor to Danny Simpson. And, based on that interview, he probably doesn't deserve a great deal more than that.

It's a terrible trait to dismiss people who don't agree with you as thick. But it if you read the substance of what they say - how unfathomably removed from reality it is - and then just their sheer illiteracy, then yeah, thick is probably kind.

It wouldn't accept my phone number right at the end! I think it's because it's foreign. Oh well.

It does make you wonder why no manager has bluntly put it to them that the primary reason for their decline is their lack of willingness to do their jobs. It's been the most obvious conclusion to draw for a long time. Yet it feels as if every managerial appointment, and every decision made by said appointee, has been made without awareness that sheer laziness, entitlement, incompetence - on a crazy scale - is the main reason for us being where we are. The eye test tells us that. And, it turns out, the facts emphatically agree. To a comical extent. I'll ignore, for a moment, the obvious observation that only a club's owners can be responsible for contracting so many incompetent bosses on the bounce. It's almost as if these managers are given the job with a clear, unattainable agenda to pacify and placate a bunch of individuals of very, very limited professional merit. Technically nice players who have had a lovely year in their five star hotel / training spa....whatever you call Seagrave. But can't bring themselves to do their jobs. For anyone who questions the right of these people to earn these sorts of pay packets, Leicester City must be proof, of historical proportions, that there are many people on 'elite' wages without the level of professionalism to match. There are hundreds of lower league and non-league players looking at Mavididi's stats (assists / goals / running) and rightly saying 'given those opportunities, I'd do better'. You and I have played with people who would have done better too. Now if you ever hear Mavididi speak, you understand fully why this is. He's a born loser, clearly, obviously, if ever there was one. And that should have been spotted way back in 2023. But he's not the only one. We've accumulated players (and occasionally technically decent ones, like Fatawu and Winks) who embody the characteristics which guarantee failure. The easiest thing is to call them what they are - born failures. Characters who make success very unlikely, in spite of their flashes of quality. As others have asked, has there ever been a side in any division with the biggest wage budget which ended up relegated? The career-defining event for nearly all of these players will be that they managed to suffer back to back relegations with a major footballing force. That will eclipse anything else that has happened in Reid's / Ayew's / Winks' / Pereira's / Mavididi's / Vestergard's / Fatawu's careers. It's what they'll be remembered for. And good. They deserve to be remembered as utter ****s. The lot. They can tell their grandkids how horrendously **** they were. They may have nice houses and cars, but their place in history is something which no amount of money will ever erase. They are losers of historical proportions. And by god, I've never had such a black, demonic, vile, evil, virulent feeling towards a set of human beings as I have towards these players. You couldn't get any lower. I wish them long and healthy lives, but their disservice to this club, and the game, should haunt them for the rest of their days. Apologies. Had to vent!

It couldn't be much worse, obviously!

You might want to have a chat with Valencia fans about Corberan. They absolutely loathe him.

...and that's where we went wrong, alas!

Okay, I see your point. But I'm a teacher. I can't tell you how many kids have told me to **** off. And I've been hit a couple of times down the years too. There are plenty of nurses in my family, and the abuse they deal with at times is staggering. Among my old friends, one is a copper, another is a social worker. Again, it's unbelievable what they have to put up with. And I've known quite a few performers in bands and theatre who have a few stories to tell about people who gave them a tough time when they were trying their best to do their job. I thought about all of these people I know and realised that our combined annual salaries amount to a good deal less than, even according to conservative estimates, Winks earns in a month. And if any one of us told one of our 'critics' to **** off we'd lose our job and never work again. Fine, a good part of that is because we aren't as valuable to the world as Harry Winks. Economically, at least. But it also leads you to surmise that he's a lousy professional who deserves no sympathy whatsoever. He can thoroughly **** himself.

I think there's a genuine case, for what little it's worth, for Skipp being one of our best three performers this season. Mostly awful, granted, and leagues below James, but even so. He was dropped today, of course, in favour of two players whose presence in the side, statistically and factually, makes us vastly less likely to get a result. Decisions which, for me, neatly sum up how unable Rowett has been to grasp the reason for our malaise. And which, in addition to the complete void of new ideas throughout his tenure, have rendered him the least significant manager in our entire history. In the 1980s the Tory government supposedly responded to social problems in Liverpool with a policy of 'managed decline'. That's what the Rowett reign has felt like to me. There's no point in searching for solutions, let's just try to reduce the damage.

There are two things that strike me now about Cooper and Ruud, when you place them in the context of the overall club management in the 2020s. The first, as some have pointed out, is that recruitment has been consistently poor over that time under everyone, but that the main criticism of Cooper seems to be, specifically, his recruitment. While he most certainly did push for experience, and most certainly welcomed the signings of Reid and Ayew (and therefore deserves a share of the blame), I still think it's hard to say that he was wholly responsible for the poor 2024 recruitment, above all because it was exceptionally poor for many years before that and continued to be poor after that. The second is that manager after manager seems to have been brought in to steady the ship and give a second chance to supposedly top drawer players who have fallen foul of the previous incumbent. We've seen that again and again, with the return of Soyuncu and Soumare under Smith, then Faes and Vestergard under Maresca, then Winks and co. under Ruud, Cifuentes and Rowett. Most of those managers have realised in time that the mandate they were brought in on (i.e. to take advantage of the squad's technically most gifted players, irrespective of their track record) was flawed, and that they should have learned their predecessors' lessons more quickly, but only Ruud went so far in his criticism of the culture and standards at the club. That he was right to do so is surely beyond question. Another matter entirely is whether either of these managers were right for the club. And then there's the question as to whether you can mount a meaningful defence of what they did in charge. On both counts, it's a clear no. For balance, I disagreed wholeheartedly that we were too good for Cooper. He was a good boss for Forest, among others, and it was no surprise to see him get another chance with a lower end PL club. The references to his looks and his links to Forest were totally irrelevant, much like the dodgy pre-season form, and I thought he came into an extremely tough set of circumstances with us: a side out of form for months, in need of a major tweak in playing style which the players were unlikely to embrace, with limited funds, and with a pending points deduction. Results were better than expected even if performances weren't, and many fans wanted him out because they thought that we should be a top-half side with the players we had. Most objective football fans thought we were deluded when we fired him and, given what happened next, you'll struggle to formulate much of an argument to the contrary. In spite of all that, I'll try. I think he was the wrong appointment. We were too unimaginative in appointing him, too safe, too keen to opt for PL experience, too reluctant to allow a manager with ambition to get a grip on the club. The players were never going to buy into him and he was never going to have the mandate to put them in their place. Like Ruud, and others thereafter, Cooper's appointment was a predictable symptom of an underlying chronic disorder. Of course he was the wrong man, because he was employed by the wrong people for the wrong reasons. And probably fired for the wrong reasons too. Ruud was appointed for his aura, by a man who knows less about our performances than your average fan. Cifuentes was willing to pay to come to us, had Barca links, and had a few nice videos about his clever football on Youtube. But it doesn't mean that these 'wrong' appointments like Cooper and Ruud didn't occasionally get something right, or learn a lesson that their successors would have benefited from heeding. Nor, by the way, does it mean that they were among the main reasons for our decline.

I understand this sentiment because I think the KP apologists are most likely going to have a lot to answer for when we finally reach the bottom of all this. But if the phoenix club is ever to be recognised as the successor, and eventually inherit the name Leicester City and its history, then there needs to be only one phoenix club. The KPFC brigade, the Ginettas and co, will want to push a successor club. They'll look for backing. Maybe they'll peddle a narrative that negativity from those who turned on the club led to our downfall, rather than their blind loyalty. And then you'll get the rest of us who want our club and who, like you, don't really want the KP apologists on board. This has happened already with many non-league clubs. Hinckley United was a case in point and that kind of split would be the true end. But it's entirely avoidable. If this does go as badly wrong as it could, then it needs to be a unifying event. There'll be no pro-KP argument because there'll be no KP. And no argument as to whether they can rescue the club, because there'll be no club. The outcomes will be there for all to see, and it won't matter any more whether you were marching, paying for plane protests, staying away or applauding to the death. The scale of Top's failure will be undeniable, so who cares whether you were right all along, or a hopeless optimist to the last? There will be the chance to have a massive phoenix club to get behind. A new 'LCFC', which can inherit the club's accolades and soar up through the pyramid. But it will depend on the Ginettas of the world accepting that they were wrong, quietly at least, and the rest of us not expecting them to self-flagellate through the streets of Leicester with the letters K and P crudely branded on their foreheads. Whatever anyone thinks or thought and wherever the money comes from, we're all going to have to be willing to unite behind the same Leicester City at some point or other.

I understand why he's in the side and I get what he brings to the table. He's a match-winner and, at his best, one of the best players at this level. He struggled in most of those pre-injury PL outings, but at his age clearly has some potential to play at a higher level. I'm not sure we can class him on balance as having been a particularly good purchase, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of him having a very decent career either. Obviously when someone is a team's principal outlet they get flipsides of the same coin - on the downside, defenders doubling up on them all over the pitch, and on the upside, plenty of exposure, plenty of the ball in dangerous areas and so on. For me, the trick is to separate what those players actually deliver from their invariably impressive highlights reels. And the outcomes when it comes to Fatawu, regardless of how threatening he looks, just aren't consistently positive enough for it to be clear that he's a major asset. Maybe he's taking on too much responsibility. Maybe another manager could make him a little more unselfish. Maybe he's trying too hard to put himself in the shop window. Whatever, it's hard to say that, over ninety minutes, game-in game-out, he does the basics well enough to make it worth the wait for those flashes. So you could say that we're kind to him because Ayew, Daka, Stephy, Bobby and Mukasa have offered so little. Those names alone render him 'undrop-able', and I wouldn't dispute the fact. Or you could say that he'd look a damn sight better if any of the aforementioned stepped up. Either way, it all amounts to him being pretty ineffectual. As regards the 'blame game' comparisons, with how Maddison and Barnes were also our most productive players in 2022-23 and yet got a disproportionate number of fingers pointed in their direction, I'd argue that this isn't as unreasonable as it seems. In a PL relegation dogfight you need James Maddison like you need a bullet to the head. And not only for the 'you're mad to think we could ever go down' tweet or the penalty miss. He was the epitome of everything wrong with us back then. On his day - wonderful. A superb highlights player. Technically brilliant. When on form, a massive asset. But he was also totally representative of the cultural malaise at the heart of our decline: Arrogant, unaware of the gravity of the situation. A showboater, perhaps. Not up for the fight. And that, for me, is also Fatawu in a nutshell. Sometimes your very worst players aren't the figureheads for your demise, just as your best players aren't necessarily the figureheads of your ascent. Maybe some of us preferred Rooster to Kitson, Walsh to Joachim, Claridge to Heskey, Albrighton to Mahrez and so on. Some of them just seemed to sum up the character of those sides better than technically more gifted players. And conversely I think Maddison and Tielemans tell you more about our downfall in 2023 than Amartey or Ndidi. And - on the pitch at least - Fatawu and Mavididi have more to do with our current decline than, for all of their endless faults, Thomas or Nelson or Skipp or Bobby Reid. So yes. A technically very nice player. Highly rated and valued. On paper - he should be great. And yet it's all for nothing because he doesn't work for the team, and doesn't appear to have the stomach for a proper fight. That summarises the current squad and its plight pretty much perfectly.

They did buy into it, but after the six-month mark they weren't in automatic promotion form. After the eight month mark, they weren't even in play-off form. There were plenty of players out of form who were still in the squad and in the first team. We limped over the line and it was clear to all and sundry that the tactics were going to need a rethink in the PL. And this was a guy who had significant funds in the market, often misspent, no pending points deductions, and who inherited far better players (Vardy, Ndidi, KDH, the younger Pereira etc.) than our last few managers. The downturn which still afflicts us today began over two years ago, when he was in charge. Faes deciding to hang around as a result of Enzo's faith in him merely meant that he was a disaster for the next two managers in the PL, and the manager after that in the FLC, just as he'd been a complete disaster for Enzo's two predecessors. It's not much of an argument in Maresca's favour or legacy that, instead of working on Nelson or Souttar, he prioritised such a straightforward disaster of a player. You could argue that it was the lesser of the evils - especially given the failure of the defender he himself brought in at great cost - and ultimately justifiable as a result of him actually achieving what he was appointed to achieve. But I'm unconvinced that any of that represents a significant achievement on his part. Would he have done a better job than Cifuentes? It's very possible because I think he was a manager with a clearer vision and greater ability to get people (initially at least) on board than those who followed him, but the circumstances in which he achieved his success were very different to the ones that Marti faced. Many, many managers would have achieved what Enzo achieved with what he inherited. And many, many would have struggled as severely as Cifuentes and Rowett with what they inherited. The two situations are barely comparable. And the key factors dictating the outcomes were not the specific bosses in charge at the time, but rather the worsening chaos in the boardroom.

I wouldn't argue with you for one second on Glover. I appreciate that this environment might not be a great one for him to thrive in, but the track record - on expensive and budget signings at both this level and higher - suggests a major overhaul is needed at recruitment level. That'd cover his unceremonious dismissal and that of Rudkin, you'd tend to think. For that reason, the failures of our post-Puel managers in the marketplace (and I'd include Enzo in that for the money spent on Cannon, Coady, Winks etc.) has to be put in the context of five different managers, some of which haven't been entirely awful in their recruitment elsewhere, failing at LCFC. Rodgers will get zero sympathy for that because he brought in his own incompetent Head of Recruitment, but he still had to deal with Rudkin, and everyone since him has additionally been saddled with Glover and a whole raft of financial difficulties. So when I say that Enzo did well, I'm not just saying it for a little balance before I go on a rant about how his achievement was nothing remarkable, how the wheels were already coming off, or how his team-building did nothing to establish foundations for on-going development. He really does deserve ample credit for what he achieved. He was a good City boss in an era of managers who were either substandard, or unable to cope with the cascade of **** splashing down from 'them upstairs'. That doesn't apply to him. Was he a shining light in the darkness? Hardly. But he did a sound enough job for a while. Would he have signed Okoli, Skipp, Ayew or Reid? Regardless of them being well-known players, and Cooper publicly embracing the need for experience, it still doesn't mean that the recruitment department weren't the main players in preparing that shortlist. Nor does it mean that Enzo had had no involvement in creating the shortlist, or disagreed about the need for top flight 'know-how' in the months before his exit. After all, targets are usually prepared over a period of months rather than weeks. Enzo's own aforementioned errors in the market mean that we can suppose he would have (together with Glover and co., of course) made mistakes of his own, whether they were the same mistakes or not.

Has the PL's appeal (to deduct more points) also been rejected, or only ours?

It was the most predictable promotion in the entire history of the division. The highest wage bill. A set of players who'd done well in the PL if you went back over a season. He inherited Ndidi, KDH, the younger Pereira and the younger Vardy. He got money to spend, and with which to bring in the likes of Hermansen, Fatawu and a fully-motivated Winks. And even then we were barely in top six form for the final quarter of the season. The slump in form which continues to consume us to this day arguably began in that second half of the Maresca campaign. Few if any of his players proved to be truly fine acquisitions (the profit made on Hermansen, whose ability to make the step up to EPL was nonetheless very dubious, may make him the best candidate). And it was always clear that we'd never get away with playing his brand of football if we did go up, thus necessitating a painful and ultimately disastrous transition under his successor. He deserves full credit for earning a promotion, regardless of how likely it was, and how unconvincing at times. But the idea that he would have done better than he was doing towards the end of his reign with no money, no Hermansen, no Vardy, no Ndidi, no KDH, a past-it Pereira, a points deduction (with another possibly on its way) and the most poisonous of atmospheres at every level of the club, is fanciful to say the least. He was a short-term fix to a long-term problem, a shoo-in for success who delivered exactly what he was expected to, but did nothing to address the things that needed addressing. Kidding ourselves otherwise gives the false impression that we need more Enzos, that this board can occasionally get things spot on, or even that these players - with the right boss - could be world-beaters. The sooner we get over all three of these delusions and focus on the glaringly obvious issues at hand, the better.

When people say that I lack respect for Top, I think it's a reasonable response to say that putting down our collapse to incompetence rather than sabotage is kind. Not because I believe he's doing this on purpose - not for one second - but because it's so, so bad, that it kind of looks that way. It's like people who looked at the questions asked of Trump's closeness to Putin a decade ago, wondering whether he'd do everything he could to embolden his supposed enemy. Now he has apparently done exactly that, there are three camps. Those who say that this is because he's in Putin's pocket, those who say he isn't but it looks like he is, and those who say that there's nothing whatsoever to see here. You can debate two of those viewpoints, and the third is hysterically removed from reality. This almost mirrors where we are with the Top debate. It's silly to say that he's done this on purpose, even if it damn well looks like it. But if he hasn't, which would of course be malevolent beyond words on his part, then the only other logical explanation is that he's an incompetent of historical proportions. This is, of course, the overwhelmingly logical conclusion, and way easier to arrive at than it would be to laugh off the possibility of any murky kompromat which explains DJT's foreign policy. The only truly, truly dumb way of looking at things; the third option, and akin to those who actually defend Trump's presidency, is the mad idea that our owners have been anything other than diabolical. Their failures and the culture they have nurtured in the post-Pearson era has led us here. The entire thing is rotten and impossible to thrive in. We're detestable because we've allowed ourselves to become detestable. I genuinely find it scary that only one of our last four managers has really put his finger on why we are where we are, and that was the utterly unqualified Ruud, who grew hoarse moaning about our low standards and lousy culture. At some point the whole club and, hopefully, a better manager than Ruud, needs to address this.

The officials were poor, and we were unlucky with one or two big calls, but I do actually think the referee could make a case for his decision not to give a red. And as others have pointed out, both sides were error prone. Our goals came from mistakes too. We came very close to nicking it and, given Preston's decision to go defensive, they could hardly have complained if we'd taken the points. But I don't think that our performance truly constituted deserving the win. I still think that we're not always doing the dirty work in games. And it's frequently our better performers who are culpable. Today Mukasa had a really decent game, but he's averse at times to putting the boot in, closing players down, making it hard for defenders. And it's unfair to single him out because you could say the same about so many others. Fatawu. Mavididi. One minute they'll do it, then the next they won't. It's so undisciplined, and while I appreciate that Rowett has made some improvements, he still hasn't improved this. So we never truly deserve to win games for me. We never get to dominate because there's a whole half of the game that we tend to neglect.

Has been, I think. Or did I dream it?

I understand, but he'll know those words already, it's a case of whether he uses them or not. Telling him he won't get to go to the football if he does would create less of a taboo than kicking up a fuss. We can't shut kids' ears off to the world, and if we try it tends to backfire pretty quickly. Mind you, if the consequence of him saying the word 'cxnt' is that he doesn't get to see Leicester anymore, you may find he turns into Ray Winstone overnight.

I think this begs three obvious questions: 'Why not?' 'What makes you think it affects morale?' And, as regards your last comment, 'What do you propose we do about it then?' There are, as I see it, five possible futures for the club, all of which are to my mind equally feasible. In the first, we stay up and struggle on with KP for a few years - maybe next season is a little better, maybe a little worse, and maybe at some point things start to even out again - but it'll be tough. In the second, we stay up and they either find an unlikely buyer or go into administration in this division, and we get new owners. Either of these could signal our revival, our stagnation or an ultimately irrelevant delay to our demise. In the third scenario, we go down and go bust. There are no new buyers, and we restart in non-league football. In the fourth, it's much the same, but we're rescued at the death. And in the fifth we go down, KP keep us afloat for a period of time, and we gradually, painfully rebuild from wherever. Or don't. When these are the likeliest scenarios, I have to wonder - if you're contenting yourself with a quiet 'tut-tut' - whether anything could ever make you see the need for a little more than a roll of the eyeballs. But some of these polite eye-rollers are, in spite of what we may think, actually capable of outrage. Okay, Ginetta was more outraged by Pearson selling Sol Bamba a decade or so ago than by Top's catastrophic tenure, and most of the ire of the KP apologists has been directed at everyone who's said 'Hang on a minute, we might have to pipe up about this', but at least that's proof that they're capable of getting annoyed. And at some point I suspect you'll all need to get annoyed again, just instinctively, as a reaction to watching the whole thing fall apart once and for all. It might make more sense to speak up before that though and, given that this freefall began when everyone was still keeping their seats warm and nicely minding their Ps and Qs, I wouldn't worry too much about prompting our downfall if you do choose to do so. Protest has sparked positive change at this club and others. In time, it may do the same again. We're getting towards the stage where it may be our best hope and, if we do lose on Friday, I doubt the real reason will be a smattering of placards on the terraces. Regardless of whether or not that's the narrative the Supporters Club and co are going to be spinning from now on. And I should really add that the things we're moaning out aren't matters for debate. Years ago O'Neill said, of poor old Barrie Pierpoint, that his 14 year-old daughter could do a better job. That was maybe a tad harsh, but what we've seen under Top truly is startling incompetence. You really would have expected a teenager to show more sense, and interest for that matter. It's indefensible and the only argument in favour of keeping quiet is an emotional bond to a member of the owner's family. As much as I share that bond, I don't think it should come first, and I don't think judgements based on emotion (including, for the sake of balance, those of some protesters) are always the best. This is very much a 'use your noggin' kind of a moment!