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It seems pretty obvious that he doesn't particularly want to be our manager and we don't particularly want him to be our manager. If he's still here at the start of next season then I suspect it will be because we would really rather not pay him off and he's happy to wait until we have basically no choice to do so, which doesn't strike me as the ideal foundation upon which to build a promotion challenge. I think one of the reasons Enzo worked out was because it felt like a reset and something of a fresh start - barring a level of investment in the squad I doubt we can afford, that's not going to be the case if Ruud carries on having overseen a historically bad run of performances and results. As usual, more than one thing can be true at once: he was hindered by the quality of the squad and the continued ineptitude of those above him, but he is also demonstrably not good enough and not who we should be relying upon to try and turn the ship around.

My theory is that Vardy's longevity is down to some sort of occult vampirism whereby he leeches the ability/life force of any forward we sign. Surely can't be a coincidence that since he arrived we've signed a string of forwards who were either banging in the goals beforehand or went on to after they left us, but seemed physically incapable of doing so while here.

Clumsy is exactly right. He's like a big silly dog gracelessly bounding around and bumping into things, which can be endearing in a dog yet is less so in our most expensive purchase of the season. Though I accept £25m or whatever he ends up costing us doesn't go as far as it used to, for that sort of money I do still expect a player who is good at something and he seemingly just isn't. By all accounts he impressed for Norwich in their Championship win a few years ago so fingers crossed he is able to stand out next season but I will be really surprised if there ever comes a point where we can consider him a good signing.

Partly the opportunity cost we would incur by spending wages and our second PL loan spot on someone who isn't particularly good, partly him being yet another signing who wouldn't necessarily improve our first team, partly him being another wide player whose game is more about work rate than goals or creativity when we already have Ayew, Reid and McAteer. He is probably better than the last of those but I wouldn't say there's any real reason to think he's an improvement on the first two or on Buonanotte. Even in our current position I would really like to believe we can do better, which I accept might make me a fantasist but if the alternative is accepting this is the quality of signing we are pinning our hopes on then I would prefer to remain in my dream world.

I also find his teams horrific to watch and think he often comes across as a complete cock but I would absolutely say he's a good manager - impossible to take a team of Burnley's relatively meagre resources from Championship mediocrity to European qualification otherwise. They consistently punched well above their weight and though I imagine the takeover at Everton probably means his days are numbered, his job there has again been to keep a shit team in the league and he's done so despite a points deduction and Frank Lampard.

It does mean however that if you go into a match thread and ask for a link to a stream, the SAS kick down your door and shoot you

He is well within his rights to see out the contract that we decided to give him and I don't blame him at all for doing so. Some players really want to start games every week, some obviously aren't as bothered - it's their career and it's up to them to do what they want with it. Make no mistake, I think he's an utterly shocking footballer and the thought of him starting another league game for us turns my stomach, but he didn't make us sign him and then give him a new contract just as he didn't make Rodgers and now seemingly Ruud choose him ahead of Iversen (who I also think is pretty shit but not quite to the same extent). If he'd rather spend a couple of years as our 3rd/4th choice on whatever insane wage we saw fit to offer him and make sure another generation or two of his family are financially set for life than go and play in League Two, fine by me.

Peter Drury doing everything in his power to ruin it

I agree completely with your general point about how opinions on everything from the squad and players to the training ground seem to swing dramatically from one extreme to the other every week depending on whether we've won or not. On Skipp though, it's not like that's his first ever game for us or in his career though is it? No I wouldn't expect anyone to look good playing next to Choudhury against Guimaraes, Joelinton and Tonali but he's not being judged on that game alone. He looks like a completely unremarkable player because that's what he is and my frustration is less about how good he is/isn't and more that despite our financial issues and a squad with some glaring holes in it, our biggest spend of the summer is on someone who now looks fairly set as our fourth-choice midfielder.

Shot in the dark here but I'm guessing it's because they would rather teams around us didn't pick up points

In that case even if we assume we're willing and able to send Edouard packing to facilitate it, it's the one loan signing we can make from a PL team with us presumably paying a fair chunk of his wages in the process, so again I would really rather we target someone who is going to be a definite starter in a position of more urgent need. As for guaranteed quality, we do know he can be a good player but his one outstanding season for us was a) in the division below and b) in a role that at this point there is no reason to believe Ruud has any great use for. Far be it from me to stop people being sentimental about a player they like but if we're honest that's what the enthusiasm about him potentially returning is about, rather than him being an especially brilliant player at this level or one who fits in with the new manager's system.

You could say that about any position though. Depending on how Stolarczyk is getting on we are potentially a Hermansen injury away from Wardageddon but that doesn't mean we should be prioritising signing a keeper. As much as I think everyone would be happy to have KDH back, if we're spending the £30m+ the (almost certainly bullshit) article claims Chelsea want then it really needs to be on a player who undisputedly improves the first eleven and looking at how we set up so far under Ruud, I don't think he necessarily does.

He's having a pretty decent loan spell and for the first time in his career seems to be nailed-on as first choice at Stoke so unless we think we can sell for a decent profit in Jan or we have our eye on a really good Prem loan and are able to sack Edouard off, leave him where he is. His development is not going to be served particularly well by dragging him back here to be our third choice.

If Cooper is in that neck of the woods for a job then I would think it's more likely Corberan is off to Wolves and he's the replacement at West Brom. Surely even the shittest Premier League teams aren't going to be looking at someone with two sackings under his belt in less than a year

Or West Brom for that matter. Spells at Saudi-owned Newcastle and the chaos that is INEOS Utd with their legions of directors and executives are probably not indicative of how he would perform here, though of course it's all academic because there is seemingly no chance Rudkin leaves or sees his power diluted

Pleased for him. Much as I never like to go all armchair psychologist/body language expert, his reaction to the equaliser doesn't seem like that of a player who isn't arsed and doesn't want to be here. Of course it will take a lot more decent performances to win people round but it's a start. I think with him we probably just have to accept that there will always be those inexplicable moments where he seems to forget he's participating in a football match and hope they're outweighed by the moments he turns into part Vieira part Zidane.

Personally if getting home a bit earlier was more important to me than seeing the game in its entirety, I would probably just not go in the first place. Never mind avoiding the worst of the traffic, you get to avoid all of the traffic and also don't have to spend loads of money on tickets and travel. In the same way a lot of our fans seem to go every week not because they actually enjoy it but just because it's part of their routine, I imagine many of those leaving early don't really have anywhere to be, they just leave early because they have always left early. Obviously if you want to do that every week irrespective of how the game is going then that's your right but it's also everyone else's right to think that doing so makes you a bit of a bellend.

Yeah same, just about to enter the last area of the first act. Went Monk and though it's a lot of fun I am tempted to start over as either Witch or Sorceress which I think are slightly less hard work

I find it quite hard to believe that they've found out for certain they're getting relegated without it subsequently being leaked anywhere

Say what you like about him but the man loves an inquest

They were rank against Bournemouth and if you support them the inconsistency must be maddening and depressing in equal measure but are Spurs actually that far off where you would expect them to be? Their squad it seems to me is much closer to e.g. Newcastle, Villa and Brighton than it is to Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. 6th would be about par and though it looks bad being below some of the teams above them, they're two points off and that's with a pretty heavily depleted squad that isn't exactly stacked with quality to begin with. Their fans are understandably desperate for trophies and success but Levy and co. either don't give a shit about that or have no idea how to attain it - unless they bring in someone genuinely world class, what is a new manager realistically going to produce that all the others under that ownership haven't? Maybe that is all nonsense and the equivalent of when thicko pundits/neutrals give us the "well what do they expect? Be careful what you wish for" treatment but they're always talked about as a team who should obviously be Champions League regulars and trophy winners and I can't see it.

I have a suspicion that video is probably the result of something being wrong with the roof/drainage rather than a sudden and dramatic rise in sea level

Well yeah obviously when he scored he was a terrific signing but now he's put one in his own net he's a total dosser

Because a cross hit him and went in?

People always talk about the importance of succession planning and that's part of it. Be pretty stupid to sack a manager without having any idea whether or not the replacements you've got in mind are actually interested.