Guest

If the player in question has no business being on the pitch then yeah probably. Coady is both lacking in match fitness and crap so it's not an enormous surprise that if you throw him into that situation it doesn't pay off. The mistake is his fault but it is Cooper's fault he had the opportunity to make it - that's not hard to understand either is it?

Well we've gone from sitting back at the start of games, hoping for the best and conceding to doing it at the end of the game instead so you can't say he's not willing to mix it up. Nobody can have been the least bit surprised by that ending when our plan to secure the win was to bring on ****ing Coady and Hamza and get everyone behind the ball.

Yeah and that is an argument that actually makes some sort of sense whereas saying he's out of form doesn't, that's all

I know it's not mate but I'm not sure why you're rolling your eyes given you're the one saying he's "shit out of form" based on one cup game. If you want to talk about his form you'll have to forgive me for referring to when he was actually playing regularly.

He's just been one of the key players in the team that won the Championship and since then has played 0 league minutes

I was encouraged to give WoW a try so had a crack at the free trial. I've been playing games of all sorts for a long time now and I can honestly say I can't ever remember being so bored. Presumably it livens up quite a bit once you get better gear and more powerful abilities, are doing more difficult content that requires more coordination and strategy etc. but I had so little fun I never felt even vaguely tempted to stick with it for that long. Would be interested to know if anyone else has come to it recently and really enjoyed it or if it's the sort of thing that you need some sort of previous attachment to in order to get anything out of it.

Even as someone who has never been massively into international football and was hugely underwhelmed by England at the Euros, I had a lot more fun watching the two Nations League games than I have watching Leicester's first three

Not quite what I was hoping for but it'll do

Fingers crossed someone, ideally Rice, sticks the mother of all reducers on Coleman second half

When you see that list it really is incredible people still talk about it like some guarantee of success - none of those are what you would consider good signings. Vestergaard is probably the closest and yet he's made a positive contribution in one of the three seasons he's been here. Perez was an OK-ish player but one we either overpaid or dramatically overpaid for depending on which of the reported £16m/£30m fees is accurate. Bertrand was a complete and utter waste of space and Ward was the biggest on-pitch cause of our relegation. Bennett was shit but at least he was presumably cheap and didn't stink the place out for longer than half a season.

Listened to a lot of Gorillaz this week. Last few projects have been a bit hit and miss for me but I still love Plastic Beach, which I was quite alarmed to see came out 14 and a half years ago

I've no idea whether there's any truth about him wanting out but I am personally quite tired of reading "he thinks he's better than he is" about our players, usually - but not exclusively - aimed at anyone who gives the slightest hint of not wanting to play for Leicester for the rest of their lives

There is always going to be an excuse not to use young players. We can't risk it because we need to stay up, we can't risk it because we need the prize money from finishing higher up the league, we can't risk it because we're going for Europe. You can't convince me it is somehow less risky to e.g. bring Soumaré on at no.10 against Spurs instead of someone like Alves. At some point we are just going to have to start either taking those risks or doing a better job of getting our best prospects loans at a good standard (which I accept we started to do late on in the window just gone) because I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it is utterly vital if we want to get back to where we were. Barring unprecedented levels of investment or a takeover by some oil baron/nation state I can't see how we make serious progress without a) making smart investments on upwardly mobile players from lesser leagues with a view to selling them on for big profits and b) developing young players of our own to the same end.

He's 6'2 which I would think is about average for a goalkeeper these days. Taller than Onana, Raya, Pickford, Sommer and Ederson, same height as Oblak, Ter Stegen, Lloris, Trapp and I'm sure countless others. I think he'll probably be fine. Edited to add another very obvious one he's the same height as - Schmeichel.

By way of comparison, Skipp, Winks and Ndidi have 23 goals and assists in their entire Premier League careers combined. Onana in three games for Villa has surpassed Skipp for goals and matched Winks.

When you bring up the list of current Belgian centre backs that isn't quite the achievement it seems like it should be

Aside from the last half hour against Spurs and some brief spells in the other two I don't think we've been very good at all. It feels a bit like England at the Euros in that we play in a way that is obviously counterproductive until we're forced out of it, at which point we start to resemble an actual football team. I accept that all three opponents are objectively better than us but we start games like we're fortunate to be playing against them rather than having earned it by winning the Championship at the first attempt. I have big concerns about some of Cooper's selections - Ricardo not getting a single league minute, Mavididi benched, the Winks/Skipp/Ndidi triangle of sadness, VK being deployed as one of our primary attacking threats - and also the reactive nature of his substitutions. It is very early in the context of the season but he's been here for a couple of months now and I would have hoped at this point to have some idea of how he wants us to play, which aside from broad strokes stuff like working hard and getting it forward quickly I don't think we really do. AND YET despite all that I feel a little more positive now than I did before the season because even though I think we've been largely pretty crap, we've played two teams who you would expect to be challenging for Europe again and one who are the sort of established Premier League outfit we'd like to become, and we've not been that far away from getting points out of three games despite essentially giving our opponents a head start. I don't believe we are solid enough individually or collectively to defend our way to survival, but I do believe that in Fatawu, Mavididi, Buonanotte, El Khannouss, Ayew and Vardy (I don't really rate Edouard and have been unimpressed by Reid but if they can make contributions too then great) we have players who can hurt teams if we give them more than 20-odd minutes to do so. I think we have seen enough flashes of quality to be optimistic, and I hope Cooper has likewise seen how we played against Spurs when we got over our stage fright and Villa when we brought some creativity on to conclude that he doesn't need to be so ****ing negative. I don't think he's a particularly good manager at this level but I do like Cooper and hope he gets it right - fingers crossed he uses the break well.

The fact he admitted after the Spurs game that we started too negatively and then in our next home game did exactly the same but with an even more defensive lineup is worrying. If he ignores the mounting evidence that we aren't good enough defensively to sit back and grind out points, and that we actually do have players who can hurt teams if we create the conditions for them to do so, he won't deserve backing

I would sooner see Ayew down the middle with Fatawu and Mavididi either side. Vardy is the sort of impact sub opposition defenders will hate to see coming on but in a team that is going to create relatively few chances, I don't think he offers enough as a starter

Shock, the approach of going ultra negative to "keep us in the game" leaves us with too much to do and then when we send for our creative players with about 25 minutes left we actually start to look semi capable

Dean Smith part two - good honest bloke who I'm sure is doing his best, but is quite obviously just not very good at this level and is here because he was cheap. Hopefully he's here for about the same amount of time, ideally less

And yet they are all ahead of him so what does that tell you about how likely he is to play? Ricardo is not a young player who needs regular football to continue his development and although he's obviously not Cooper's first choice, he is at least getting in the matchday squad and played the full 90 in the cup so I don't think it's really the same. I am no fan of Cooper but that doesn't mean I think it would make any sense to keep Cannon here just in case the four or five players he's behind all get injured.

He's behind Vardy, Daka, Mavididi and Ayew in the pecking order and it wouldn't surprise me if Cooper would rather stick Reid up front as well. Who does it benefit keeping him here if his chances of playing are so remote?

He's much better on the ball than Ndidi that's for certain and was driving forward more than I expected, though maybe that was down to the level of opposition. Him, Winks and Buonanotte/El Khannouss is a decent, technical midfield three I reckon with Wilf to step in for situations when we need a bit more bite.

Job done and hopefully the dominant nature of it serves as a bit of a confidence booster albeit against a properly shit team. Impressed by Ayew, Skipp and Winks, nice to see Ricardo and Mavididi who I thought both grew into it, would have preferred Alves to get more time though he did well with the opportunity he had. Ndidi was his usual chaotic self but took his goal nicely. Not particularly impressed by Okoli or Choudhury and if Thomas ends up playing any league games this season we are in enormous trouble.