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That is not true

Yeah go on then. We obviously have no interest at all in being a serious football club anymore so might as well just try and lean right into the absurdity. Dropping into the Championship with a points deduction courtesy of the authorities and then a second, self-imposed one in the shape of Russell Martin is the ideal start

I personally thought the authorities were well out of line when they forced us to spend £20m+ on Oliver Skipp for Steve Cooper, who they also made us appoint

Even aside from his character, Coady was also presumably recruited to be the one at the centre of the back three we settled into when we had the ball under Enzo. I don't think many people would have expected that he would then get what was seemingly the first injury of his career in pre-season, or that Vestergaard would seize the opportunity to come from nowhere and establish himself as a key player. I can't stand him but there was definitely at least some sense behind signing him, if not in the amount of money he's supposedly on.

I sympathise with him to a degree because the squad is clearly not great and the people above him aren't either. From the sounds of it he's still well and truly in the dark about his future a month on from relegation which can't be helpful. Unfortunately, he has given us so little reason to believe he is up to the task, or that if there is to be something like a rebuild he is the person we would want helming it. The way we operate seems to place a disproportionate amount of responsibility on the manager to steer the ship, and a couple of wins against two of the least capable, least arsed teams in the history of the competition is not enough to make me enjoy the thought of him doing so. I find it very difficult to imagine we wouldn't be better off next season with a new face, someone who doesn't have the stench of failure and the memory of those horrific runs of form following them around. I also find it hard to imagine his compensation would amount to so much money that keeping him on and spending it on players instead would markedly improve our chances of going up - I don't think that argument works at all.

He did also create the goal by winning the ball back, carrying it about 40 yards up the pitch and playing Vardy in so shall we maybe leave him be?

I broadly agree and I'm also pretty sick of every game turning into an opportunity to have a dig at the officials, but coming out your box to slap the ball away from a striker who essentially has an open goal comes under cynical foul for me. I think it's pretty extraordinary they've looked at that and concluded it's not a clear goalscoring opportunity apparently on the basis that he's not going in a straight line towards the goal.

His teams are usually quite good at that to be fair

It is about long-term progress as opposed to short-term. The only realistic way I can see of us getting back to, or anywhere close to, where we were is harnessing the potential of the academy and training ground, which means providing a clear pathway to the first team for young players. That doesn't have to mean starting them every game or never signing anyone over the age of 21, but it does mean giving opportunities and squad places to players like Alves, Monga and Evans - players who we can reasonably expect to improve and give us some return on our investment in them. I don't really see why anyone would not want that.

I reckon they'll be invigorated with Joel Ward on the overlap and some big lump of shit target man to play off

I yearn, as ever, for the sweet chevrons of Hummel. Macron do some nice stuff too. I've always had Umbro down as a bit plain but some of their away and third numbers this year have been very jazzy

Danny Ings would probably be quite good if he could stay fit and if he didn't want paying much, which unfortunately are two of the biggest ifs in human history

It's poor in that it's notoriously scrappy and there's usually a clear gap in quality between the rotating cast of Premier League dropouts and the rest, which is what makes getting into the playoffs worth shouting about. Doubly so for a team who have spent hardly anything over the past decade or so and who I would guess are comfortably in the bottom half in terms of wages. Gus Hamer cost more than Bristol City's starting eleven last night and I doubt he's the only Sheff Utd player that's true of. To be clear, I have no particular desire for Manning to come here - I know next to nothing about him and prior to yesterday I doubt I could have picked him out of a lineup. Getting Bristol City to the playoffs is just obviously a good achievement and the sort that will naturally get a manager, especially a young one, linked to better jobs. As far as I can tell it's the second time in their entire history they've made the second tier playoffs, so I would suggest the size of the city doesn't exactly make it a given. If it's not too late for your mam to get her coaching badges sorted then she ought to get cracking because she'll be in demand.

Well yeah that's presumably why

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.