Finnegan

This is going to be a bit ranty, so TLDR: Burnley are shit (sorry not sorry, dsr-burnley) There's a lot of negativity flying around FoxesTalk at the moment and a lot of it is fairly justified. For a start, we might be about to lose our manager, for seconds we might not have any money to reinforce and what little we do spend, there's a good chance it'll be on cheap youngsters and free transfers. But one thing doing my head in really does need addressing because it's one piece of negativity we've been hearing all year from some quarters: comparisons to fvcking Burnley. All the time it's "Burnley were great in the Championship but look at them now getting smashed!" and "this style of play just won't work in the Premier League!" and other such waffle. I made a throw-away point in a thread a couple of weeks ago that Burnley probably didn't even have a team in the Premier League good enough for this season's Championship but I really do just want to take a moment to hammer home how vastly, vastly better equipped we are, right now, without signing anybody new, than Vincent Kompany's charity bin collection of "talent." Burnley lost a significant number of the players that got them promoted and were forced to start again with a lot of recruits. From the Championship: Connor Roberts, 43 games, left. Ian Maatsen, 39 games, left. Harwood-Bellis, 32 games, left. Star man Nathan Tella, 39 games, left. In the end, the average age of the Burnley regular 11 at the start of their Prem season was just 22. Kids. Ours is currently 27. Before this season began, only four players in Burnley's regular team had ever played Premier League football and only two of them had more than one Premier League campaign under their belt. By contrast, only three of ours have NEVER played in the Premier League and one of those - Stephy Mavididi - has played 116 games in Europe's top 5 leagues chalking up 32 goal contributions in the process. TOM CANNON has played more Premier League football than most of the Burnley side had before 23/24. The average number of games played across Europe's top 5 leagues by Burnley players before this season started was 40. For Leicester it's 128. With the exception of Mads Hermansen (who will imminently be capped for Denmark), Abdul Fatawu and Stephy Mavididi, every single member of Leicester's usual starting line-up is a senior capped international for one of FIFA's top 30 teams and that includes internationals for Belgium, Portugal, England and Denmark. There are a combined 133 caps for these nations in Leicester's standard starting line-up compared to 19 in Burnley's. Wout Faes and Stephy Mavididi are the only Leicester starters to have never featured in major European club competitions with the entirety of the rest of the 11 that we had starting in the ****ing second tier being players to have played in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League. Burnley have only Sander Berge, Jakub Bruun Larsen and Zeki Amdouni to have had any continental football and none of it was for Burnley because.. they're fvcking Burnley. And all of this is just taking like-for-like starting elevens, it doesn't even begin to factor in the hundreds of games played by the likes of Conor Coady, Patson Daka or potential returners like Bouba Soumare (I know, I know.) Now I know that games-played does not directly equal quality. Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy, Danny Drinkwater, Wes Morgan and countless others had never played a game in the Premier League before we were promoted last time out. Prior Premier League experience is absolutely no guarantee of success, neither is having had exposure to the Champions League or a few caps for England or Portugal. But if you cannot look at the following line-ups and see that there is a vast, vast difference between our quality and theirs? I suspect you might be an ostrich. Of course it didn't "work for Burnley." That Burnley team is absolute, 100% dogwater. (I'm aware that Vestergaard, Vardy and Ndidi are all yet to extend their contracts. I'd be very surprised if at least 2 of the 3, if not all 3, aren't retained for the Premier League.)

Next season is going to be ****ing wild. Leicester can't afford to spend, might have to sell, getting a points deduction. Might lose manager. Everton probably can't afford to spend. Forest have to sell, might get a points deduction. Ipswich unlikely to heavily reinforce, still have a lot of League One squad, almost certainly losing their manager to someone. Brentford in decline, another that might lose their manager. And if Leeds come up, I feel like Leeds are flying under the radar a bit at the moment but they spent quite a lot in the process of getting relegated and there's already talk that they're in huge trouble if not promoted. That's not magically going to go away if they win the play offs. I doubt they'll be spending huge either and may be tempted to cash in on the likes of Rutter and Summerville. Seriously it's gonna be mad.

For what it's worth, if you take a step outside of our Leicester City bubble and go and look through Chelsea social media and the Chelsea itks, nearly all of the talk is about Kieran Mckenna. The consensus is that most of the club want Mckenna and it's just Joe Shields, one of their directors of recruitment, advocating for Maresca. Obviously doesn't mean Enzo isn't still a very realistic prospect for them but it doesn't look like he's their first choice.

No they don't. This gets said every time there's a managerial situation going on. The betting markets for manager changes is based almost entirely on where people are lumping on. FoxesTalk could probably get the media to start talking about a real obscure candidate for Chelsea boss just by deliberately influencing the betting odds which we could do deliberately just by having a few of us all coordinate to waste five or ten quid each on the same name. Like, idk, Andy King.

As if things weren't bad enough for Plymouth

Yeah sure but I do genuinely believe that if the club were in a completely healthy and stable place, he'd stick around to see a season in the Prem with us.

If Enzo goes, one of the main reasons is that we're in very poor financial shape. If that's the case, we aren't getting anyone exciting. People will be happier if they embrace that now.

The people who want Moyes, I absolutely guarantee, have only seen West Ham's games vs. Brendan Rodgers in recent memory and basically nothing else of West Ham.

If it's between McKenna and Maresca I can see Boehly picking Maresca purely because he's more exotic tbqh.

Alright fine but I'm warning you now I'm going to insist on picking Patson Daka.

😕

I don't know who still needs to hear this in 2024 but football media is selling a product. Fabrizio Romano is selling a product. Football fans are, by and large, tribal and sensitive. They want to be told what they want to hear. The majority support the big six, pandering to them is how you make a living in an extremely saturated market.

I don't want to actively encourage an echo chamber or censor anyone's well intentioned opinions but anyone unironically saying Moyes need to be banned.

Sure but like I said, doing an alright job in the circumstances at Chelsea would open doors. If the worst is unfolding at Leicester then he can't build anything here anyway and the trust might be gone. We don't have a clue what the situation is and we still won't for a few weeks tbf.

WE. DID. NOT. HAVE. THE. MONEY. WE. COULD. NOT. AFFORD. TO. BUY. HIM. For the ten billionth ****ing time, at the point he went to Atalanta we couldn't afford even a fraction of his fee.

To be clear, if Maresca is chosen by Chelsea I will be absolutely amazed if he stays here. Probably the only way that happens is if Top and Whelan meet with him personally, have the principal accountant and the lead counsel for the club both turn up and reassure him with complete transparency that we have a war chest and can spend to build a Premier League team and that FFP isn't going to be a problem. Given that there's about a 1% chance that's even possible, let alone happens, he'd almost certainly leave. Chelsea might be a mess but so are we and the flip side of Chelsea's lunacy is there will be plenty of people that won't write him off if it goes wrong. There'll be a whole list of clubs willing to give any manager that Chelsea thought was a good pick a job even if he can't make it work there. It's a good move. I just can't be hearing any suggestion that Chelsea aren't an absolute freak show atm.

I found myself writing an essay and deleted it because honestly I don't care that much about Liverpool and Chelsea. But Liverpool, like or loathe them, have very intelligent owners and the club is pretty well run with some excellent decision making. Chelsea have been bought by absolute idiots and have put a complete muppet in charge. They're trying to do a Real Madrid, which is kinda taking the Red Bull approach and turning it up to 11 but they're doing it like a 13 year old on Football Manager just blindly grabbing at any fancy looking player with no squad building sense at all. It looks like an absolute disaster ready to unfold personally.

Have you completely had your head in the sand since the current ownership took over?

Almost non existent. He'd played very little senior football. Dwomoh has and hasn't really set the world on fire. He's way, way too young to write off especially for 3m but it's not the most exciting signing we've ever seen. But then that's probably the reality of our financial situation.

His stats are pretty honking. We probably have a better 8 already on the books that we can't find a buyer for tbh. On current evidence I'd rather Soumaré than Dwomoh. Granted, that's assuming Enzo can get a tune out of him. If he can't convince him to even run then it's a non starter.

Pretty sure Kristof Terreur is the Romano for Belgian news tbh. Regardless, I wasn't disputing the source I was just saying it's not a new link we've been rumoured to be interested in Dwomoh before.

It's not a new name it's recycling an old rumour.

I highly doubt it tbh.