Guest

Makes for a grim spectacle but they are undeniably very good at what they do unfortunately

I can quite happily do without an apology, personally. Wouldn't mean anything, or change anything. If they are sorry for their litany of avoidable failures then they can express that by actually doing something about them. I need another insincere, likely AI-generated missive from our glorious leader and his underlings like I need a hole in the head. People are always asking for more communication which I understand but every written or verbal statement that comes out of the club and its figureheads only serves to make me less confident in them. Ideally I'd like them to all just say absolutely nothing for the foreseeable future because I don't think they have anything worth communicating to us at all.

It does feel like we might need to take a chance on someone like this because I'm not convinced we'll attract (or target) anyone genuinely impressive and going for a safe, "proven" option at this level seems like a good way of getting someone who's "proven" that they aren't actually very good. Not necessarily an endorsement of Fuchs specifically, and after hearing the way the likes of Huth and Albrighton talk about us I'd be very wary of bringing anyone from that era back at a time when we badly need to become less sentimental and more ruthless/meritocratic.

Now?

At his peak a genuinely outstanding footballer and I'd agree there was a point when he was up there with the very best in the world in his position. A sorry way for him to go and of course as the captain of this shambles he's by no means blameless but I think I'll still ultimately remember him fondly as one of my favourite players in recent years. The early days when he'd just replaced Simpson were very funny - people absolutely bewildered by the sight of a right back crossing the halfway line and running with the ball. "Definitely not a right back".

Good how Rowett said he couldn't do anything about "cultural things" like disciplining players because he's only here until the end of the season, but when it comes to giving academy prospects a chance and dropping players who've been stinking the gaff out for months (years, in some cases) he's obviously got to take next season into account, and that somehow also works against the young players rather than the experienced ones. Never really makes sense to read anything into press conference or interview stuff these days but some of the wording there is funny. Nobody has been "doing so well that they're suddenly going to come into this team" - yeah, you'd have to be doing so well to break into this team wouldn't you? It would take a veritable wonderkid to meet the incredibly high standards set by the seniors here.

It's weird because logically the one obvious consequence of your Director of Football also being heavily involved in the academy should be that it's front and centre when it comes to recruiting managers, building the squad etc., and it's just not. Ruud made a bit of an effort towards the end I think but Cooper, Cifuentes and Rowett have had basically no interest in using our prospects, and then we fill out the squad with decrepit old mercenaries, pointless benchwarmers like Aribo and youngsters from other teams to further limit the opportunities we give to our own.

Done, reckon it took me somewhere between 5-10 minutes. It's not a big ask, is it?

His parents speak it and he played in France for four years so it seems a safe assumption that he probably can speak at least some French

We'll Be Fine

I think it's two different questions really: Should we have kept Cifuentes? No. Things were pretty clearly only heading in one direction, and it was the direction anyone could have told you they would head in as soon as Fatawu and James stopped trading wondergoals every weekend. Should we have sacked Cifuentes if that meant handing the reins to someone with literally zero managerial experience for almost an entire month before appointing Gary Rowett? Probably also no.

I was only half paying attention to his interview after the game so can't remember the exact quote but he said something to the effect of it being the same story as the last few games, same patterns, same problems - no ****ing shit. He neglects to ever do anything differently and then seems confused when the outcomes don't change either. "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!" People want the players to get raked over the coals which I get but I don't think it's ever a particularly good idea for managers to do it in public, and to me the stuff he's been coming out with recently comes across less as frank honesty aimed to motivate and more as him trying to absolve himself of any responsibility. Yeah the squad probably isn't equipped for a relegation battle but that's the position we're in and unfortunately it is actually your job to come up with a way of getting us out of it.

Proper manager, great fit, he just gets it etc. His refusal to actually make any meaningful changes is pretty remarkable. I do get the thinking that when you're working short-term you maybe don't have the time to overhaul things tactically and it's more about simplifying, making little tweaks and trying to build the players up, like De Zerbi was saying recently. Problems with that: firstly, he's been here for two months, not two games or two weeks. Assuming he's here until the end of the season he'll have been in charge for almost a third of it, and he's won one game - probably worth trying something at least slightly different at some point? Secondly, his focus may well have been less on tactics and more on trying to improve confidence, morale, energy but unfortunately those things are all still through the floor as well. As usual, two things can be true at once - it's obviously not anywhere close to being all his fault but ultimately he's been appointed to keep us in the league and we're going to end the weekend at least five points from safety having won one of his 11 games in charge. The guy is ****ing crap.

That is not "fight" from Ayew and Lascelles, by the way, same with Hamza when he came off. It's petulance because they know they're embarrassing themselves at a level most of them probably feel they should be above and it does absolutely nothing to help us.

If he'd spent the season crossing it to where Ayew is supposed to be or looking to pick out non-entities like Skippy and Bobby instead of shooting, I'm fairly sure we'd already be down. Getting flashbacks to 22/23 when Maddison and Barnes were our most productive players yet ended up receiving some of the most vitriolic criticism.

Tell you what is encouraging, Robbie Neilson is their assistant #knowstheclub #LeicesterDNA

I have long thought this and it goes beyond simply liking players who graft and work hard. It's like they'd rather have a player who definitely won't ever produce anything than a player who sometimes will but sometimes won't. I think a lot of Leicester fans reckon football is fundamentally incredibly simple and also really easy, so if a player has the ability but isn't performing it can only be because they aren't trying hard enough or the classic "thinks he's better than he is".

Could do without the autotune being brought over from the Voidz, particularly given how good the vocals were on The New Abnormal, but this is growing on me already

Shocked that we've signed another "leader" who isn't actually that good at playing football and it hasn't fixed everything

Proper manager. Give him the rebuild and see if we can draw our way to League One survival next season I reckon because he just gets it.

They're presumably calling for him over Mavididi, who has played about three times as many minutes but is level on goals + assists. Monga's "plenty of chances" have seen him start two league games since October while the guy getting picked ahead of him is contributing basically nothing. To add to this, the most recent of those two starts was Rowett's first game at Stoke, when he set up our equaliser. Didn't get off the bench in the subsequent five games and the three minutes he got against Preston were the only ones he's had since.

Thank god we've got him around as cover. If, for example, we end up in a situation where James and Ramsey are injured and our other midfielders are short of form, he'll really come in handy.

Good couple of weeks for Arsenal's quadruple

Two well-taken, opportunistic goals, some nice touches on the ball and a big shift off it considering he was playing in Argentina on Wednesday morning. Looked gutted sat on the bench at the end, hopefully he's not injured because we absolutely cannot afford to be starting Ayew and Rowett obviously has no intention of playing anyone else there.

People take the piss out of choosing a striker because he "runs about a bit" but if you're looking for an example of why he has to start over Ayew, there it is. One wastes chances, the other is never even in a position to waste a chance.