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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.

Jordan Ayew bargain of the summer

Ayew and Ndidi the new Bergkamp and Henry

On what basis is he better than Daka, out of interest? His record for goals+assists relative to his minutes played for Burnley and Union is much worse than Daka's for us even if you leave out the latter's Championship stats

I'm not having that we don't have the players to play out. Better opposition yes but Hermansen, Vestergaard and Winks are all very good at receiving and passing the ball under pressure, as is Ricardo if he ever gets let out of Cooper's dungeon. The only one who you would say categorically does not suit it is Wilf but with Skipp coming in for big money maybe that's about to stop being a problem. I have no doubt we would concede goals doing it but we are also going to concede goals if we're constantly launching it to nobody in particular and having it come straight back at us. Speaking of which, if anything I would say we don't have the players to go long because we have very little in the way of physical presence to hold the ball up, and if we're going over the top who is chasing it exactly, 37-year-old Vardy or the lightning pace of Ayew and Reid?

Can we really afford to lose our joint top scorer?

What really concerns me is that irrespective of the increased quality of the opposition, I'm 100% convinced we are a worse team now than we were last year. Part of that is down to our transfer business as we've somehow spent upwards of £50m without really improving the first eleven, but part of it is on Cooper dropping two of our better players from last season and having a plan that doesn't seem to go any further than sitting deep and seeing if we can steal a goal on the break. I think we are probably only a handful of bad results, or maybe one or two proper hammerings, from him just saying **** it and resorting to full on 5 at the back sufferball like he did at Forest.

Mavididi was still on the bench

Who cares about winning when the manager is a good honest bloke and the team has less of the ball than our opponents? We've got our Leicester back

We've appointed the cheap option and then spent tens of millions bringing in bang average cloggers with his precious Premier League experience. What's the point? Like Rodgers in 22/23, he might not have been dealt the ideal hand but that's no excuse to play it poorly. It is so jarring going from last season, having a team who visibly knew and bought into exactly what their manager wanted them to do, to this. Everything on and off the pitch feels so aimless.

Not necessarily. If he contributes very little e.g. he gets a bad injury or is just totally shit (which I don't think he will be but it's not impossible) and yet we stay up regardless, it will still be a bad use of £8m

If you don't know how to pronounce someone's name correctly then that's fair enough, nobody is familiar with every language and their respective quirks. If you learn/are told how it's meant to be said and still deliberately get it wrong then that is pretty ****ing stupid