theessexfox

It’s been a fun day in Madrid to have limited cash - genuinely quite scary at times, with no way of getting anywhere and no power. Bordering on apocalyptic - hopefully can get a flight tomorrow.

I genuinely don’t think there was a market for him in 2021 that would have been a good valuation. There were 4 signings north of £45m in the whole PL that window (Grealish, Lukaku, Sancho, Ben White), and the overall spending was heavily down on 2019 and subsequent years. Newcastle made one permanent signing and were still owned by Mike Ashley. I think we were potentially quite unlucky on timing - that was the first summer we hadn’t made a relatively large outgoing (Kante 2016, Drinkwater 2017, Mahrez 2018, Maguire 2019, Chilwell 2020), and I imagine Tielemans was the one who had been earmarked.

I was in their end for our game there and it was as passive and disinterested as you can imagine for a team winning comfortably at home. Albeit our total lack of intensity didn’t help.

I get the general point but I think in this case, it’s tough to accept say £30m for him in 2021, when you’re probably spending that and more on a replacement (and it’s tough to get someone of that level) - I’m not sure if £30m in 2021 was more beneficial than two more seasons of a fantastic player, albeit he obviously phoned it in for a fair chunk of 22/23 which doesn’t help my argument.

But selling requires a club to be willing to buy at a reasonable price, and the player being willing to go to that club. Tielemans had two years left on his contract in the summer of 2021, when clubs had been hit by COVID and transfer activity was very low.

But in the case of Tielemans, what was the solution?

I never really understand what people think a club is meant to do when a player runs down their contract and leaves on a free. The club is awful in many ways but they don’t have much power in that situation if that’s what a player decides to do.

However, while broadcast rights revenue (£54.2M) and sponsorship revenue (£21.5M) were reduced as a direct result of absence from the top flight, gate receipts held firm (£18.4M in both 2024 and 2023) and other commercial revenues increased by £0.3M to £9.8M. £9.5m -> £9.8m.

It’s crazy how we could still be playing until this time tomorrow and we wouldn’t have scored, you watch teams in the league with pace and physicality and directness and there’s just absolutely nothing, I’ve never enjoyed watching football less.

Last time I went here was in the home end when we lost 4-1 and Antonio scored after a sequence of Ole’s. In the home end again tonight so expecting more of the same

Definitely a big part of making it easy to be proud of supporting Leicester, even when we were struggling in 14/15 - nothing about the club makes me proud to support them at the moment.

It’d break an impressive streak of clubs beginning with W for him.

I find it hard to emotionally invest in a club which makes consistently inept decisions, really woeful club from top to bottom over many years now.

Looks like everyone on the pitch has been heavily sedated - this game is actually tripping me out

City look seriously seriously weird, like a team of ghosts