Finnegan

Football fans get weird about this shit. Easy to lose sight of the fact that the players might be human but they just have completely different upbringings to us from a very young age. They'll look at the sport differently, they'll bond with clubs differently. End of the day, Leicester City has been a massive part of KDH's life since he was a little kid. The club is a huge part of his life, his family's life, his upbringing. If you don't think he's enormously attached to it you'd have to be wrong in the head. Doesn't really matter what club or other club/s he "supports" in his downtime it doesn't stop him bonding with Leicester. Kasper Schmeichel was getting carried round Old Trafford as a baby, his dad is one of United's most iconic players, he was born in Copenhagen, grew up in England and Portugal, came through Man City's academy and made his real breakthrough at Leeds. Didn't rock up at Leicester til he was a well established pro who probably hadn't given the club a second thought before that. Since then he's made nearly 500 appearances for the club, has won English football's biggest two trophies here and even watched the club's iconic chairman die in front of him in probably one of the most traumatic events in his life. You don't think any of that has left a mark? Don't reckon he's attached to Leicester or considers himself a "supporter?" Bet he still loves United though. Jesus, Wes Morgan and Marc Albrighton have Forest and Villa tattoos respectively, they'll still never stop supporting Leicester for the rest of their lives, guarantee that. Players are just different to fans. We pick one club and we pick it for life, it's sacrilege to change and its taboo to go cheer for anyone else, even if we uproot our lives and move. Its just different rules for players, they grow up different, they have different relationships with the clubs than we do - often way more intense - we shouldn't be so weird and needy about it.

I 100% believe the narrative Potter was dragging his heels with us because he wants the England job. If he wants it, you have to imagine he'll probably get it. It would be surprising if a better candidate showed an interest. That's not a dig at England, more just a reflection of where international football is at. There aren't exactly floods of high profile managers lining up to do it anymore.

TLDR: real life football clubs are doing cheesy transfers like it's Football Manager. ** When you buy a player, you can amortise the cost across every year of his contract. So if he costs 25m and you give him a 5 year contract, he only "costs" you 5m a year in FFP terms - including the year you buy him - and only 15m in any rolling three year FFP window. Where as if you sell a player for 25m, as long as he has no existing book value (long story short, your own academy products for example) all of that money you received goes in the income column that same season. So what's happening is that Aston Villa sell an academy player to Chelsea for 25m and Chelsea sell one back to Villa for 25m. In practical terms, neither club has really lost or gained anything. They both trade potential youngsters like an American sports team might and they both theoretically send the same money back and forth. But both clubs GAIN 20m immediately this year in net profit as far as FFP is concerned. Of course the trade off is that they then deduct 5m in every subsequent season for the next few years as well but it's a short term papering over the cracks because new laws are coming in and Villa, Newcastle, Chelsea, Everton and a whole bunch of other clubs are EXTREMELY aware they're going to be immediately in the shit if they don't very quickly dump some numbers in the win column right now. This is why we've been linked to Sean Longstaff for ages and why KDH has loads of rumours for a move. Because even if we sell Dewsbury Hall and immediately blow a bunch of the money on Longstaff, it's about making profit NOW and kicking the rest of your problems down the road. To be clear, this isn't actually smart business, you're kicking your future self in the dick and you're going to regret it next year unless you keep repeating the process indefinitely with increasing value. If you swap those players back the following season for 50m and then 100m and then 150m or whatever then sure it works forever but the league are clearly not going to allow that. What they're saying here is that they feel the existing rules about transfers in good faith already closed the loophole but we all know they'll never punish these clubs if enough of them do it, especially if Chelsea and the Saudis are involved.

Does he actually or are you referring to a photo of Marc Albrighton's leg sitting next to KDH? I'm not being facetious, asking sincerely.

"Hold my beer."

I'm sure this will be an extremely popular opinion right now ( ) but I actually think Maresca's preferred shape would be an absolute dream for England right about now. Bellingham and Foden are your absolute stars, let them be the "mezzala" 8s absolutely getting forward and terrorising teams. This way you don't need to pick one of them to be the 10, you can let them both attack at the right moments. Stones is your Vestergaard, you've got a tailor made Ricardo in TAA, Rice does the Winks bit, Saka thrives holding the width and creating space for your 8s and any of Palmer, Bowen or Eze can probably do the same other side. Kane's inclination to drop deep pulls defenders with him and gives space for Bellingham and Foden to hit and you have the security of a defensive five always waiting to block a counter.

I do think he presents a problem for a manager in the same way that Ronaldo does these days. We can laugh about comparing the three but we've had a similar issue with Iheanacho. You have to be able to completely carry their defensive work rate, or lack of it, and ask what the overall net impact of the team is. That said, Harry Kane is clearly not England's biggest problem at the moment and he is being scapegoated a bit by the media because so very few of them want to actually throw Southgate under the bus. Gary Neville stepping out and suggesting young players are being mismanaged is about the closest you'll get. Still none of them have the brass ones to sit there on the BBC or ITV and just simply say "look, he's not very good tactically." Don't think even Roy Keane has, has he?

I love the BBC trying to find a positive spin, little bit there about how great it is Jordan Pickford got another clean sheet. You'd think he'd put in a heroic turn to save the point. Slovenia had one shot on target

"Spain, Germany, Portugal and France are all on the other side of the draw and England cannot play any of the quartet before the final." How does he keep getting away with it

No offence but I really now wish Serbia had gotten an equaliser against you lot purely for the memes. This group would look hilarious

Foden is a future potential ballon dor winner currently playing for a manager so incompetent he can make him look trash.

This is comfortably the lowest scoring group in the Euros, right?

You are correct, Ipswich scored more. Yeah. Fair ****s. Although, yes, that doesn't undermine my point. As for xG, see below.

Probably got no money again tbh.

But could you pull off the short, shirt, hat combo?

Eh, wouldn't be that excited by that. It's only breaking even. He's still got a 9m book value, we'd only gain £6m on this year's books for that. If Barca are truly looking Faes then they probably don't have lots to spend but I'd still be holding out for well north of 20/25 if a club of their size are sniffing round.

I maintain that Manuel Akanji would have been an absolute disaster signing for us, he can be a complete bombscare, but he was superb for Man City. Vestergaard was terrible for us on the back foot in the Prem but when we were dominant in our games in the Championship, he was exactly what we needed. Teams that are going to dominate games need something different from their centre backs. Faes is pretty good on the ball, aggressive and moderately mobile. It won't bother Barca that he has the odd brain fart because they'll trust the team to recover, as Man City do when Akanji does something daft.

FTFY

Was he not offside anyway?

.... We had the highest xG in the league, scored the most goals in the league and the 4th highest shots on target in the league.

If anyone wondered about Brendan Rodgers impact on Scottish football.

Bit of a blast for the past for you, one of the favourites for the position is current u21 boss, ex Leicester Matty Jones.

God I hated that shit. Unbelievably cringe. Let the melodramatic sporting monologues die with Eddie Butler, god rest him.

In reality I highly doubt it.