Finnegan

Shut the front door

I mean if we're that desperate for him we might have to give up Casino Jimmy.

I expect so. The fans were desperate for Osian Roberts to come back but he's got a really good thing going at Como and I'm not surprised he wants to see it out.

The problem is that defending in modern football has been, currently at least, near enough perfected and it is much, much easier to defend than attack. You can drill a group of solid athletes with half decent attention spans to hold shape in a low block, work hard, stay focused and spoil far more easily than you can find and coach a team full of talented and skilful footballers to break that down. That's just the current stalemate football is in. But the blame seems to near universally get placed on the attacking teams and I'm just not sure what people think the alternative is. Pep's way of playing is the objective best way of breaking down a stubborn low block, it's not super exciting watching them do it but why do we always blame his team and not the team really causing it? Has anyone ever watched a Klopp team try and break down a stubborn low block? It's still a ****ing boring match, it's just his team struggles to score more. Being a fast attacking, high pressing, counter attacking, cavalier team doesn't work against someone refusing to leave their own six yard box. There isn't a way of playing that's exciting against that anti football shit and that's what we came up against most of last year. The games that were genuinely exciting weren't exciting because we did anything different, they were because the opponents did.

It's how we nearly always operate. In my lifetime, Yorath, Hughes, Speed, Giggs and Page all former Welsh internationals, all came in at the start of their careers. Generally as their first jobs or maybe after a short stint elsewhere. Unless I'm forgetting someone*, think it was only Tosh and Cookie that were established managers and arguably both had seen their careers stall, especially for Toshack's second stint. I'm happy with the appointment, Bellers is young and progressive but he's also got a shit lot of fire in him. Might end up a disaster but if the players buy in I can see the young crop we've got really getting on board and I think he's got a lot more footballing intelligence and pedigree than Page quite frankly. *Bobby who? Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about.

It's gonna be Bellers

No. This is the fundamental difference between Puelball and Enzoball. Or, early Rodgersball and late Rodgersball. Puel had us keep possession as a defensive tactic. He wanted us to just have the ball and avoid risks because if we had it the opposition didn't. Anyone accusing Enzo of that philosophy just didn't watch properly. We took a mountain of risks, we were permanently drying to bait the opposition playing tiki taka between Winks and Hermansen and even got caught our doing it a couple of times because we wanted to encourage the opposition to engage. Puel never did that, we distributed everything safely out to wide fullbacks far away from goal. We played shit loads of progressive, vertical passes under Enzo using a smart three man maneuver to get the ball up the pitch quickly. Vesty snaps it between the lines to a striker with back to goal who lays it off first time to Winks who threads it through to a forward rushing mezzala like Ndidi or KDH. It was extremely aggressive and forward thinking football with high risk passes everywhere. But we couldn't do that if the other side refused to even enter our half or press us at all. It's not our responsibility for making the game dull is it. Even when Enzo did establish control and call for patience it was very much the philosophy that we don't pass to move the ball, we pass to move the opponent and it always paid off. What is foxestalks great idea to break down teams parking the buss against us all season? Just go long and play completely in to their hands? I'm sorry but the biggest lesson from last season for me was just how much the average fan, even the average season ticket holder, just doesn't actually understand the tactics or modern football. Some of the drivel spouted was painful and idgaf how arrogant it makes me sound to say that.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. That Southampton game was 100% Enzoball at its best. The difference between that and, way, any of the dull, late 1-0 wins wasn't how we played it's how the opponent played. Southampton had the confidence to take us on head on, try and play us at our own game. We threw down a challenge and they picked it up. Two teams tried to play progressive football and we were just much, much better at the press and the counter thrust. All of which we'd have happily done against Rotherham or or whoever but those teams just refused to do anything involving leaving their own six yard box. Why should Leicester and Enzo carry the blame for making that game boring when we were the ones trying to move the ball up the pitch and score? Why does nobody blame the defending side that just played anti football for ninety minutes and hoped for a draw?

I know you don't mean it to be but I do take that as a compliment

I disagree massively. It's not and never has been the likes of Pep, Enzo and Co that make football boring it's the knuckle draggers who don't know how to respond to it without playing anti football that is the problem. Barcelona at their best were amazing to watch just as Leicester last season at their best were amazing to watch. But people afraid to lose see these teams coming and know the path of least resistance is parking the bus and never engaging. Everyone sneers when Pep and Rodri and Co complain about teams refusing to play against them and from a financial point or view I do understand that but that doesn't mean they're wrong. Bielsa is a puritan. He'd usually rather his teams get battered at least trying and taking risks than being pragmatic. He's definitely not the problem.

My eyes saw him get 12 direct goal contributions in just 15 starts.

Okazaki would be ashamed of this.

You can't use net seasonal results, you need to look at per lots of 90 minutes. And over his two seasons in the Premier League, Patson Daka was the only Leicester striker to match or out perform his xG in both seasons, bettering both Vardy and Iheanacho over that period. He missed a couple of absolute sitters between Elland Road and the end of the season last year. I'm not suggesting he's perfect, I couldn't defend some of those misses in high stakes moments. But you equally can't argue with his output, it's been excellent. He's a scruffy looking footballer and he fails the eye test but so have plenty of other players in history, someone like Thomas Muller is a classic example (and before anyone starts, no I'm obviously not suggesting Daka is on that level.) But he is probably in the top five most under rated players by our own fanbase in the last twenty years.

We have literally zero squad depth. Reid is just a rotation option that can play in multupl positions. Mavididi and Fatawu almost certainly first choice next year left and right.

They also completely over look just how good a season Daka just had relative to his minutes played. Yes, he got out performed by Vardy in the end but only just and there's not much shame in that. Of players to play over a 1000 minutes in the league last year, only Jamie Vardy (1.02) had more goal contributions (combined goals and assists) per 90 minutes last season than Patson Daka (0.99) in the entire Championship, of players in any position. That's not nothing. For comparison, Summerville and Szmodics both had 0.72. It's also completely overlooking how much better the team looked collectively when he played.

Is the odd reason the fact that Daka is a significantly better striker than Tom Cannon at this point in his career? You're right, that's straight up spooky weird.

Madders is Cov. Actual Cov. Born in Coventry, raised in Coventry, a Cov academy graduate. O'Hare is from Solihull and is a Villa academy product who was at Villa from the age of like 6 or some shit. He's very Villa. He's just played for Cov for a few years.

I find it really odd to the point of disappointing that Trump is in the news again for being named in a fresh batch of Epstein documents and being accused of raping a twelve year old, sex trafficked girl and yet the BBC is still just obsessing over Biden being a bit shit and old in interviews. Like, I understand Fox news having it's bias but the BBC was once globally respected for its impartiality, particularly on international news stories. It's ****ing painful how much of a conservative mouthpiece it's become under this tory government.

He's 29, he's had one good season and he's under a long enough contract that Blackburn want a billion pounds.

@Sir Fynwy and @lisoh are never going to read this, they quit foxestalk a long, long time ago I think. But years ago they recommended Rothenburg ob der Tauber to me. It is a small Bavarian town that you'd ideally need to rent a car to get to but it's unbelievably picture-esque, the whole thing is a mostly pedestrianised walled town in the classic bavarian style. They go mad for Christmas, there's even a Christmas museum (as well as a medieval torture museum.) Its pretty much THE German Christmas Market if you want quaint and traditional instead of size. Can't recommend the place highly enough.

So is this basically just a dodgy company that Top gives a massive wedge of money to, they take a cut for themselves and they use the rest to advertise on our shirts for a very PSR helpful sum that let's us spend more this window?

Don't be daft man. McAteer needs a Championship loan at least, Marcal was out of his depth last year and Alves has barely kicked a ball in senior football. Oh and I'm not sure any of them are natural wingers. De Cordova Reid is exactly the sort of signing we need on the cheap to give Premier quality depth to back up Fatawu and Mavididi.

Yeah pretty much man tbh.

What's that, fresh off the back of a crap season? Has Brendan returned?

Don't you threaten me with a good time