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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.

Ah I've not done much shivving yet, might have a dabble next time I play. I think all my good runs on Silent I've ended up with basically the exact same deck, loads of poison and then using draw/discard/sly to pile on the block. No idea how viable that will be at the higher ascensions but for now it seems to be doing the job.

Enjoying it despite not having played the first one or really any deckbuilders, so a steep learning curve for sure. Silent is the only one that's really clicked for me so far but I did just about scrape a win last night with Ironclad for my first non-Silent success so trying to branch out now.

Jordan AIyew looking good there

I think there are just so many things fundamentally wrong with us at the moment, and consequently it's so difficult for players to actually do well here or look anything like their best, that it's become basically impossible to tell how good (or bad) most of our players are from watching them play for us over the last couple of seasons. Choudhury doesn't look out of place in a Sheff Utd side fighting for promotion, comes back here to play at the same level - shit. Kristiansen qualifies for the Champions League with Bologna as their first choice left back, comes back here - shit. Skipp wasn't really a regular starter for Spurs but was still a decent enough squad player for a team regularly getting into Europe, comes here - shit. We have an uncanny ability to extract the very worst from players. There are so many who have either been signed or broken into the team and not only haven't really improved since then, they've visibly - in some cases dramatically - declined. I'm sure some of them are just genuinely crap but lots of them are victims of this weird malaise.

I think it's probably more the case that there are some posters who can hold two - sometimes opposing - ideas in their heads at the same time, like this: I am happy we won and kept a clean sheet, and I am unhappy with the club and its ownership. I think Oliver Skipp was a dreadful signing and has been very poor for much of his time here, and I also think that more recently, particularly yesterday, he's improved. That's not going overboard with positivity or thinking everything is suddenly great and all our problems are solved, is it? Dissatisfaction with the state of the club doesn't mean you have to sit there frowning with your arms folded every time we score a goal or win a game. If you think that's the best thing to do then great stuff but I can't see what good it's going to do you or anyone else.

Disappointed but can't say I'm hugely surprised. Knows he's here for the short-term and knows we're desperate to get some wins on the board so in come the experienced, "proven" players because we all know how reliable they are. He'll probably see it as the safe bet whereas in reality it's a huge gamble and one I really hope pays off, for his and our sakes.

If you'd told me that was a Conor Coady quote from last season I'd have believed you 100%, except obviously he'd have said football club instead of just club. What a leader, talks so well, he just gets it - honestly, who gives a shit. If it's going to be backed up by performances and results then great but we've had so many players and managers say one thing and then do another that I'm surprised anyone pays any attention to these soundbites anymore.

Yeah I've only played a little bit so far but my early impression is that Marathon is pretty great

Stoke aside, which he had about three days to prepare for, he couldn't have had a much harder start to be fair to him. Granted none of them are exactly world-beaters but Boro and Ipswich are both competing for automatic promotion and Norwich are one of the form teams in the league. Unfortunately we're not really in a position to write games like those off as free hits anymore, which isn't his fault. Maybe it depends what you were expecting him to do? The guy's not a miracle worker nor an unknown quantity. Realistically I thought he'd probably get us working a bit harder and make us more difficult to beat, which seems like basically what has happened. It was never likely to be either free-flowing stuff with us scoring goals for fun and blowing teams away or flawless defensive football with clean sheets every game. There are reasons to be concerned, of course there are. It would be nice if we could actually win a game at some point and it would be even nicer if he'd stop bringing on Ayew. Nobody is happy that we're 22nd and we're managed by Gary Rowett but it's not hard to work out why people are slightly more optimistic now than either when or before he was appointed.

Together we can endure any hardship so long as we always back the lads and make doubly sure to be careful what we wish for

My instinct is that the playoffs are inherently a pretty silly way of deciding who goes up anyway and it's not that much sillier to have the team who finish 8th going up than the team who finish 6th. Maybe it'll prove to be a slippery slope though and you could then make the same argument about it subsequently being expanded from 8th to 10th, then 10th to 12th and so on. Had a look over the last ten seasons to see what sort of impact it would have had because my assumption was that there's never really much, if any, difference in quality between 6th and about 10th - generally the team in 8th have finished four or five points behind 6th. Some outliers in both directions e.g. in 16/17 Norwich were ten points off the playoffs and more than twenty behind the automatics but would have had a chance at going up under the new system, which doesn't feel great. On the other hand in 14/15 and 22/23 there was one point between 6th and 8th.