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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.

Was reading an article by Tony Pulis the other day in which he said he'd always been the workaholic, first in and last out of the office type, but ultimately came to realise that particularly during international breaks there were greater benefits to be had from taking a bit of time away to refresh himself. We probably just have to trust that Rowett knows what's best for him and if he thinks that means a couple of days relaxing somewhere sunny instead of doing whatever he'd have been doing at Seagrave, cool. Reminds me of those times you get when we lose a game and then one of our players is spotted having the temerity to enjoy themselves at the darts or whatever, rather than spending the rest of the weekend in a dark room self-flagellating and listening to white noise. Who cares?

Penalties are so grim. I'm usually completely dispassionate when watching football on the TV even when it's Leicester but penalty shootouts between two teams I've no investment in whatsoever make me nervous. I reckon if I had to take one I'd probably start crying

I was looking at exactly that earlier and I believe he has done so once - started six in a row in December 2023 (four goals, two assists) before going to AFCON and then three in a row after he got back (three goals, one assist). Not sure if there were any games between those two spells that he could have played but didn't because although I'm sad enough to have looked those things up, I'm not quite sad enough to find out the dates he departed and returned.

Is there any reason we can't? I know there are regulations about "bridge transfers" and they're weirdly difficult to read up on but my impression is that they exist to stop clubs conspiring to circumvent other rules or do anything dodgy, and if you can just demonstrate you aren't, it's fine. Cameron Archer was a recent one where Villa bought him back from Sheff Utd and then sold him to Southampton not long after - it was reported that FIFA were looking into it and then as far as I can tell nothing happened.

It seems pretty likely it'll be either the Championship or League One so we could probably just take those two possibilities into account

My brief foray into the subreddit came to an end in 22/23 when I saw one of the mods arguing - and people agreeing - that Danny Ward was performing well and the criticism of him was "lazy and ignorant". I'm sure there are some normal posters and presumably there is some crossover between here and there but it did seem like there was a higher than normal concentration of thickos.

I know that recruitment at Chelsea is less about building a good football team and more about putting together a portfolio of assets they can try to make a profit on. Even so, it's remarkable how unimpressive a lot of their players are. Well over a billion spent since the takeover to end up with Sanchez as first-choice keeper, bringing on Garnacho, Delap and Adarabioyo, Trevoh Chalobah as a starting centre back and the player with the most league minutes before today. Such a weird squad.

Increasingly difficult to conjure up an arrangement of players that isn't totally repellent but please, Gary, not Ayew. There is no reason whatsoever for him to play unless Rowett's idea of players he can "trust" is players with the most experience, which I am a bit worried is the case. If he really doesn't fancy Daka and we want our striker to drop deeper and focus more on bringing the wingers and midfielders into play then I'd sooner see Mukasa or even Bobby tried there. They may be completely ineffectual but I have a hard time imagining they would be actively detrimental to the team and mood in the way Ayew is.

We're not better away from home in the sense that, like most teams in the league, our away points per game (1) is worse than our home points per game (1.32). We are however 18th in the away table compared to 20th in the home table, so it depends how you interpret it.

Can't say I've too much of an idea how Iversen has fared but Johansson has pretty consistently been one of the best keepers (or certainly one of the best shot-stoppers at least) in the Championship for a while now, hasn't he? As usual it is possible for two things to be true at once: being a goalkeeper in a team this poor defensively is a difficult job, and it's also not hard to imagine someone else with a more impressive track record at this level doing a better job than Stolarczyk has done. Things like form and confidence play a part obviously but the rest of the team being shit doesn't adequately excuse not being able to hold on to shots, and just as the defence don't do him many favours I wouldn't blame them for not having a great deal of faith in him either at this point. Mistakes are one thing, everyone makes them - the same mistakes made repeatedly and regularly are harder to accept.

I think we also have to assume that people in football talk to one another and word that the manager at Leicester doesn't get to choose the team, formation or tactics etc. would travel quite quickly and make future appointments even harder than they already will be. In the head coach era I know candidates have probably become accustomed to not always having the final say on things like transfers but I'm confident this would be a bridge too far. "Hi Gary, fancy a job at a club who've just dropped into the relegation zone, where morale, motivation and standards are at an all-time low and where the fans and players all hate each other" is a tough enough sell without the stipulation "also you can only use the players we tell you to in the exact way we tell you to". To me it is an obviously nonsense idea that I'm quite surprised is being discussed even semi-seriously.

Let's be realistic, it's probably going to be Rowett. I'm glad we're past the "it's not fair to criticise him, we don't know what he does!" stage of the Rudkin discourse but let's not take it all the way to "everything that goes wrong or that I disagree with must be solely down to Rudkin". I'm not sure why Rudkin would be particularly keen to have players like Ayew and Bob playing, nor why he would be making so little use of the recent signings he presumably signed off on. If he dictates the team, formation and style of play then surely he's also got to be in charge of subs and in-game adjustments, which begs the question of why we keep spending money on hiring and firing managers when they apparently don't actually have any responsibility for anything that happens on a match day. Was Rudkin in charge for Bristol City as well or was that Rowett because we won? To be clear, that's not a defence of Rudkin either. As far as I can tell he's ****ed up pretty much everything he's in charge of but I think there's a real lack of compelling evidence or arguments to support laying the blame for team selections and tactics at his door as well.

Hermansen excellent there, pleased for him that he seems to have turned things around after the start he had

In a way I think he's the perfect captain for us. If what you're after is someone who exemplifies what we're about as a club - consistent low performance on and off the pitch with zero standards, accountability or ambition to improve - you'd struggle to find a better fit.