Finnegan

Just realised Luke Thomas is contracted to 2029.

I expect he'll be in the squad next year but it's a big step up again and expecting him to be one of our starting CMs week in week out seems naive. Just posted in the other thread, its easy to forget that last time out in League One, Kingy had massively established pros Clemence and Oakley in the middle of the park who were both far too good for League One at the time. Maaaaybbeeeee Skipp does a part of that job for us but even if he stays and he's pretty good as a player in League One he definitely doesn't strike me as a leader on the pitch. If Sammy is going to have any impact next year he'll need hella support. Ain't gonna be JJ, is it?

I don't know how you even begin to approach this thread to be honest. We need so much. I can't think of many that will be here next year. I think the squad will be unrecognisable which isn't really a bad thing. But who knows what kind of budget we have to rebuild. We have players that should make money but we just won't be able to sell. Guys like Okoli and Kristiansen will end up on loans somewhere making us very little. We'll get absolutely mugged on a fee for Fatawu, BEK is going for a small loss, if we cash in on Monga I doubt we get any huge fee. Nelson hasn't covered himself in glory, I doubt Premier League clubs are still sniffing around who'd pay that much? If he's willing to stay he's the start of a spine I guess. Assume Stol will be behind him and Aluko probably gets his breakthrough year. Skipp is a weird one. We overpaid so insanely that nobody can afford him, he'd probably be good in League One tbh but does he want to stay and can we afford to pay his wages if he does? Might have to loan him out too. Then we need an entire midfield. Alves and Braybrooke aren't good enough, forget that right now, Page probably isn't either. We'll need an actual, quality midfield of decent, established (not ****ing ancient) players to drive that. We had Oakley and Clemence in there last time to support King and Cleverley, we need that again. There's no chance JJ is playing League One football for us next year. We need a whole attack. None of our kids are good enough (yet, if at all) - Mav 23/24 probably would be but his ghost that's lingering now definitely isn't. Pretty much everyone else is gone?

Just want to add in here, as an aside, that Jake Evans isn't making much impact at Northampton either. It's a massive ask for a teenager to get thrown in to senior football especially one so young. That's not to say that he and Monga will never make it but its not exactly damning that they're only getting bits of first team football right now, they're right at the start of their journey. KDH had his breakthrough season at 22, King was 20 and in League One, Chilwell was going on 22. It's not just learning the game, most teenagers still have loads of physical development to do, the likes of Rooney, Bale, Owen, Walcott and co are massively rare (and nearly all of them had major injury problems towards the later stage of their career.) We've got a few that are of the age we'd expect to start seeing them break through and Silko Thomas doesn't look like he'll be good enough, Alves has had a horrific injury but even so he's not having any real impact at Huddersfield in League One. The only of our young loanees that's doing particularly well is Braybrooke, who flopped in the SPL but is finding his feet in League Two but there's no hiding from the fact he's about 5ft flat and all of 6 stone dripping wet and constipated. We might never see any of these kids make it. With or without us.

Ehhh, I don't know actually. I don't know what much more we could have done with Monga. He isn't good enough to be starting every week in the Championship right now, certainly not in a team that's struggling like ours. He could have done with a season in League One at a team playing on the front foot giving him lots of time on the ball to grow his confidence against senior pros. But we can't loan him out because he's too young which is nothing we can help. He's fallen victim to the fact we're absolutely, catastrophically shit this year. If he'd been 16 and of this quality when Enzo was here, it would have done wonders for him getting regular game time in that team but he wasn't. So. I actually don't think we've done much wrong with Monga to be honest. He's just got a high ceiling, a big reputation and he's ambitious at a time when we as a club are imploding. We just can't keep him unless he's got a very, very good head on his shoulders and understands how good next season could be for him in League One as a star for us. What we have done though, in getting him to sign, is guaranteeing more than a tribunal fee. Which is about the best we could do?

Most neutral fans, the majority of journalists and even a large chunk of Leicester fans still just see our owner as the amorphous presence of "King Power." A lot of people think we have the same ownership now that we've had since Mandaric left and that they're responsible for winning the Prem and the FA Cup. You'd probably find we rank depressingly high on the reputation of owners scale for that reason. It's only very, very recently that a small handful of journalists have started acknowledging Top's incompetence.

We'll both go down whoever wins. Blackburn are safe and Oxford look the most likely to pick up points, plus they've still got Wednesday to play. As have West Brom. Pompey have probably the hardest remaining fixtures of anyone down there. They've got next to no hope.

"Tried" He limply wiggled a foot around. Just grab his ****ing shirt. It doesn't have to be subtle.

Winks, Thomas and Ricardo. Literally all three of them could and should have just swiped his legs.

And this is news?

The free kick was terrible. But about three different players could have taken a yellow card stopping that counter. What the **** guys. Just ****ing trip someone.

Yeah and how many goals have we scored

Our left side is just pointless

Jesus christ.

There's no way we'll improve in the second half. If we don't score before half time this is gone.

ffs

You ever think Patson Daka might just have lived his whole life to date and not realised he's left footed. Would explain a lot.

It's a vicious cycle though isn't it. It doesn't help. It clearly doesn't motivate them. I think, not being cheesy, the crowd can make a difference but it needs to be positive energy. Or at very least any aggression and negativity should be aimed at Swansea or the ref or something. The crowd gets up when there's a pantomime villain to get mad at. When we just yell and boo at the players nothing improves. They aren't the right personalities to try and step up to prove themselves. Just makes it worse.

It's painful how bad we've become on the counter.

Don't think so

We're not winning this. Briefly had a bit about us without creating anything. Now we've just gone timid.

Not even a corner

Oxford 😔

Commentator has just announced they haven't won here in 76 years. Why did he have to say it. Ffs.

Thanks. Will try it if this one goes down. Got one off soccers*reams7 or whatever it's called.