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Very much so, wasn't a huge fan of the first but loving this one

My uninformed, surface-level take is that it looks like, where Martin would have been Enzoball taken even further, Cifuentes is maybe a small step in the opposite direction i.e. we're still going to be looking to control games and dominate possession but with a bit less rigidity and more freedom for players to express themselves and act independently of the structure. Theoretically that sounds nice. I hope everyone realises and accepts that however positive and attacking he wants us to be, there will still be occasions, maybe quite a few of them, where we're having to patiently move the ball around trying to unpick a team with everyone sat on the edge of their box and no intention of engaging with us whatsoever.

Difficult to say with much confidence without having much of an idea what their personalities are like but I agree the obvious one is Ricardo. Hamza has worn the armband on a few occasions I think so despite his track record of being a bit of a bell and not a particularly good player, he might be in the conversation for vice captain. Nightmare scenario is Coady stays and gets given it, can't be arsed hearing any more about what a brilliant talker and leader he is.

In fairness you are right in that besides Bakayogo, all the others did indeed come in after the season had started - Hammond at the end of August, GTF and Wasilewski on frees the following month, Phillips and Mahrez in Jan

They will also have made quite a lot of profit on Quansah and Kelleher and will presumably sell Diaz and Nunez for big fees. I dread to think how much they've made over the last 10-15 years shipping out players they don't really want - we did our bit in that of course.

Pleased if it is white shorts again as that's my preference but everything else about it is, as expected, shite. K Bet my ****ing arse

If they stay up they might have proved it. Alternatively they could very easily still get relegated having spent more than £100m which would probably tell us that the gap is indeed pretty big - we will have to wait and see.

Class isn't it, almost three months after they knew for certain which division we'd be playing in as well. Wonder how many other professional clubs there are in the world who, with less than a month to go to their first game, are managerless and haven't bought or sold a single player. Still, remember to be careful what you wish for!

I reckon there's probably also a correlation between people who think Stolarczyk is as good as/better than him and people who don't think it's at all important for keepers to be good with their feet

Or they have access to YouTube

Slowing the game down and diving to win free-kicks and scoring direct from corners, an unusual skill set for a forward but a skill set nonetheless

Gruesome stuff. The emotional whiplash from winning the semi and walking out for the final to this must be horrendous.

I thought it was quite interesting, same with the one on the fitness testing with Matt Reeves. Considering they've got no new manager or players to show off I reckon the video content they've done so far, with these little peeks behind the curtain, the daily training clips and the interviews with King, has been pretty decent.

More like all of. I wonder if part of the reason some clubs are moving towards simpler designs for their crests is because AI has an easier time with them so they can churn out content quicker and cheaper.

In that case even by recent standards it would be a questionable signing because Keane is right-footed

Come on mate, he's FOREIGN. He might well have been coaching for 20 years, including in this country, this division and against us very recently, but how are we meant to know anything about him? Realistically you'd need to be an obsessive hipster mega-nerd to have any idea about anyone who isn't Sean Dyche or Chris Wilder.

Happily, as long as you're actively in the process of obtaining the Pro Licence - which we know King is - you can still manage in the Premier League, again according to their regulations. I sense this is a waste of time so you crack on.

Not according to the EFL regulations you don't. If we wanted to appoint King we could do so because he has the A Licence, which is what you need to manage in the Championship. Fortunately, because that would be mental, we haven't.

You don't

Theoretically maybe but you could apply that logic to any embargoed club - it's seemingly not stopping Wednesday selling Gassama for example. I think it's infinitely more likely that the lack of outgoings is down to the usual factors like our players being on mega wages relative to their ability and the dynamic duo of Top and JR being too busy trying to appoint a manager than us being placed under some sort of stealth embargo that neither the EFL nor anyone else has bothered to notify us of. Like with the rumours about staff not being paid, I don't believe we wouldn't have heard anything about it from anyone reputable even with how tight-lipped the club are.

Embargoes are to stop you signing players rather than selling them, aren't they? I assume that's why they get called registration embargoes/fee restrictions these days. Given they're meant to be a punishment for not fulfilling financial obligations it would be rather self-defeating to block off one of the main ways clubs can bring money in.

The pictures are awful but I can at least understand why people use them even if the end result is almost always shite. What I don't get at all are the posts that essentially boil down to "I asked AI to tell me what to think about this manager/player/topic" and then delivering it as though, because ChatGPT says it, it's objective fact when the whole point of the forum is to read and engage with other human beings and their thoughts. It's so bleak.

Yes I think that must be it

I think it's probably more the case that people just clicked on the thread to talk about the guy who is apparently the leading candidate and didn't pay too much attention to what is a really weird opening post

I think it's brilliant seeing some people talk about him like he's some obscure hipster choice that no normal person could ever realistically have heard of when not only has he spent the last two seasons in this country and the division we are now in, he's also managed against us twice