Finnegan

I know we've been real underdogs this season but it's the fighting spirit we've shown against the odds that's really made me proud.

Jesus christ he's still ****ing doing that? I've had him on ignore for months. Brother is thick as ****ing pigshit. Almost every elite coach in the world has their team, including keeper, play out from the back yet Year Of The Dunning-Kruger Effect here thinks he knows better than them all because he's too dim to watch a goal and recognise it's happened because a move started at the back. If I was that thick I'd be far too embarrassed to actively advertise it every week. Respect the self-confidence at least

Pick some shit, fallen giant that's floating around in League One and get them back to the Champions League.

I'd say there's two chances for hope here: The first is that some of the kids are as good as we want them to be. If even a couple of Braybrooke, Aluko, Nelson (if we don't have to sell him to raise money), Alves, Thomas (I doubt it tbh), Page or Evans have Kingesque breakthrough seasons in League One that will take an enormous strain off and most of those should be good enough to at least plug gaps. The other ray of hope is that whilst we might not have much room to move financially, it actually might not TAKE much to find players who will be good at League One level. McCarron brings in a couple of gem loans from City Group's network, couple of cheap / free young signings from his travels and all of a sudden the squad doesn't look too awful. You'd imagine we'd have the pick of players at this level. We absolutely cannot go another year in a row without finding an absolutely clear cut leading #9 capable of 20+ goals in all comps, though.

I highly doubt we have clauses like that, not release clauses. What you might find is that relegation reduction clauses aren't league specific so that those that lost a % when we came down from the Prem will lose a % more. This might encourage them to then find employment elsewhere. It honestly wouldn't surprise me with all these guys, though, that even with two wage reductions, what we pay them might still be so much better than what they'll get elsewhere that they'd still stay. I mean let's say we paid Vestergaard 60k in the Prem (it was probably more than that) and he lost 25% after each relegation, he's still going to be taking home north of 33k in League One. He's 33. Where's he going to get better money than that now? Likewise Choudhury. He's an extremely Championship player. He should probably be on about 15k somewhere lower mid table in the Champ and that's if we're being very generous. Being a bit harsh I'd probably say his level might even be top end League One. Even with back to back relegation reductions we probably still pay him north of 25k p/w. Keep in mind the average weekly wage in League One is probably about 5k these days with U21 prospects being on about half of that at most. I wasn't exaggerating when I said that if you looked at our reject bin, the guys we want rid of (the above plus Thomas, Faes, Okoli, Kristiansen, BDCR, etc) you could probably pay a full 25 man squad capable of winning League One with what they'll earn next year.

We're all one day closer to never having to watch Leicester again.

Not gonna lie whenever @Steve Earle likes one of my posts this immediately goes through my head.

It's always been my feeling that the two very much didn't see eye to eye. He was probably all too happy to let Ranieri and later Rogers divert significantly from Pearson's approach.

It's wild to me that we keep hiring people that are very much head coaches first and foremost when our business model needs a manager. Or, certainly has up til now. Even Rodgers would have been an alright hire if he'd only ever had to coach the team. The damage he did was largely all off the pitch but that was well known in advance, he was famously a terrible presence in Liverpool's recruitment. Cooper, Ruud, Enzo, all very much coaches. Enzo even super vocal about that fact.

If Top did a U turn and all of a sudden started learning, making good decisions and restructuring the club by modern standards then I'd have no problem with him owning the club. People act like it's our choice who owns the club. It isn't. It'll take an enormous amount of effort to force him out in the first place to the extent it's probably verging on impossible at the moment while so many match-going fans are passive consumers (eg Barbara above.) But then we have almost zero say in who he sells it to and there's a very high chance we're brought by either one of his Thai friends who'll run the club exactly the same way or an American investment group who'll just want us to coast without ambition so they skim as much money out of us for their own pockets as possible. The odds of a Benham or a Bloom appearing out of left field to turn Leicester in to the envy of the footballing world is next to none and as attractive as fan ownership or a consortium of local interests buying the club might be, it's also Roy of the Rovers fantasy land rubbish that isn't happening to a club of our size in 2026. Top is incompetent but he's also benign, he's not doing anything catastrophically evil and as much as people hate the corporate side of the club, the lack of comms, the match day experience, etc, all of that stuff is pretty par for every other extremely generic professional club of our size in the country and won't change with new owners. So yeah, his biggest flaw is his incompetence and his trust in equally incompetent people. Obviously if he changed that behavior I wouldn't care if he stayed. Better the devil you know, etc. Edit: to be clear, though, this is like asking would you be happy with Jordan Ayew signing a new contract if he suddenly started scoring a hattrick every game. It's not going to happen, is it?

And is still gone now anyway.

What do you mean pay them off? If you mean a mutual termination, as in giving them a reduced lump sum and letting them move on, that pretty much never happens in football for good reason. It's a terrible idea. Firstly, it up-fronts a cost you were going to spread over multiple seasons and forces you to take the PSR hit immediately all at once. Secondly, it surrenders any future possibility you might have of making money off the player. You never know when a desperate club might come in and try and - at very least - take your player on loan. Look at us with Joe Aribo. Southampton would have been laughing all the way to the bank. It's happened for us, too, look how many times Soumaré and Praet went out. Each time reducing our costs by the loaning club paying some of the wages and/or chipping in a bit of a fee. Every little helps. Mutual terminations for players almost never happen and when they do there's usually some extreme behavioural issue. They certainly don't happen when, like us, you pay absolutely massive contracts that are hugely weighted towards basic salary with very minimal performance based add ons. Why do you think we've struggled to get rid of players during Rudkin's entire era? Our contract structure is appalling.

Well, that and the fact he got injured. Twice.

Again, what you want him to say? "This squad is crap, the lads are shit, I'm going to have to carry them all"? He's just trying to give everyone a lift and inspire a bit of confidence all round isn't he. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I think some of you on here want everything to be so literal and direct. You need a bit of room for tact, diplomacy and man management.

This is what we need. We need someone with a wide scope who is aware of more markets than just France, Belgium and Denmark and who has an eye for a deal. But we also need someone with an eye for talent and most importantly someone who values the significance of culture. The most important thing to rebuild from the Pearson era that we've lost is a culture of hard work and commitment to the team. That's the biggest thing Rodgers shat all over with his broken players nonsense. We'll have no idea where JM stands on any of this until we see him start work.

We still have too many under contract this year that we can't get rid of. Tbh even next year Faes, Vestergaard, BDCR and Choudhary don't expire til 2027 and they'll quite possibly be the four highest paid players in League One. You could probably have between 7 and maybe even 10 cracking young EFL players with loads of upwards mobility and resell value for what we pay that lot in wages. We're definitely not completely out of the woods. Especially with Kristiansen, Okoli and Skipp all here for another two to three years and all of them being paid too much to be able to sell them easily.

Tbf I like that he had that fight and determination in him. I don't hear him say that and think he's complacent or delusional. It wasn't like Madders saying everything would be fine. You obviously don't want him rolling over and giving up do you? If we had a whole squad with his attitude and confidence we'd probably be top half. I don't think he should regret what he's said, it reflects badly on the rest of the squad more than him.

Cov. He's a Midlands lad, lives out that way already and his family are presumably around about that area. He's definitely ready for a shot at the Prem and I doubt he'd cost them that much.

As much as I'm about 90% Top out at the moment, in fairness, until we see how good McCarron is and how what exactly his full remit is, it's a little hard to say. It's possible Rudkin really has been promoted completely out of the way and that JM is going to be given the freedom to rebuild. It's also possible he could be very good at his job, we just don't know yet. If both of those things are true then Top has largely done what we wanted him to. I've said before that it isn't personal for me, I don't "hate" him and I don't give a shit if he keeps owning our club as long as he learns from his **** ups and does it properly. Now personally I think if he had Davies and Rudkin would be long gone, BC Game wouldn't still be out sponsor and Whelan would have stayed instead of JR. But we'll see. The other glimmer of hope is the same thing it is every season at the moment and that's a bunch more contracts are about to expire and our wage bill is going to drop significantly again at the end of the year. Unfortunately, so is our revenue but I'm guessing the drop from Championship to League One isn't as severe as the drop from the Prem. I'm guessing our wages to revenue ratio will improve even if we do lose income getting relegated. So that's it, TLDR: we now have (supposedly) a proper sporting director and a reduced wage bill to perhaps begin rebuilding. But I'm 100% clutching at straws here and I should make it clear I'm not enthusiastic about the near future.

I have to admit I'm slowly coming to wanting Spurs to go down. Not because I think they're somehow our rivals or I especially hate them in anyway. I just think it'd be funny. I also think it's one of the few chances we'll get to see one of the greedy six go down and I'd especially like that to be Spurs because there's some horrifically undeserving about them masquerading as a member of that gang. We've literally won more than them in most of our lifetimes and certainly in the "Premier League era." Forest are circling the drain with an insane owner. They'll go down eventually. If Spurs survive this year they might never go down.

No

Brother, why are you so obsessed with this transfer I'm willing to bet a £10 donation to a charity of your choice that he never signs for us at all, even as a technicality before he's sold elsewhere. It's just not happening, let it go. I feel like you've posted more than anyone else in this thread convincing everyone we're definitely signing him because you chose to read one of Mickey's posts in a pretty selective way.

Sack the next foxestalker to even think the word Seagrave.

Narh I'm sorry but going missing all season on the pitch then giving it the big ones from the safety of a security cordon seconds before hiding on a bus is pretty much Lil Bitch behavior. I defended him loads early on but he can absolutely get ****ed.

When I first started watching City we were in the second tier and Cov had a pretty decent Prem side. They're a reasonably sized City with one club who have massively underperformed due to poor leadership which we should have some sympathy for. Lincoln are a pub team.