Finnegan

I didn't realise Declan Rice had been playing on his own, my apologies, that's pretty impressive

Declan Rice is a strong candidate for one of the most over rated players of his generation. Jude Bellingham is the actual player cockneys think Rice is.

This is a @Bert level come back. Do you really think pointing out Wales are shit is going to bother me

This is quite possibly one of the top five, all time, worst takes on this forum.

Someone has to do the less glamorous work. Claude Makelele and Didier Deschamps are recognised as two of the best midfielders of all time. Would you want Rice going forward at the expense of Foden and Bellingham?

Just don't think he's what Enzo quite wanted out of a winger really and whilst he did OK filling in as a CM in a bind it definitely isn't his natural position and I don't think he has the athleticism to do that in the Prem. People acting like the money is a bargain, it's more than we paid for Mavididi who had a lot more impact and is much more cut out for the Prem.

Not necessarily true. He has two years left on his contract with about 2.5m per year in amortisation. Firstly, we've only got to sell him for £5m to not incur a loss in the coming season. That probably shouldn't be all that hard. But loaning him out means we only eat the 2.5m he's going to cost us this year and that'll probably be offset by a nominal loan fee, although I doubt anyone's going to loan him for two and a half million personally. It still gets rid of some of that and a contribution to his wages.

Has football insider 247 ever had a link for us that wasn't complete rubbish? I swear it's just an AI trawling the internet for the most ridiculous rumours to test the theory that football fans will repost anything if you mention their team.

Would it be super suspicious if, like, one of Top's friends made a sizable donation to the Mansfield owners' favourite labradoodle's groomer or something and then the Stags mysteriously shattered their transfer record to sign Brunt for £50m?

Nice try, grandad

Do other clubs bother anymore either? Just seems to be something largely vanishing from the game. Would definitely be nice to have like a 15/16 reunion charity match in a couple go years to mark the 10 year and to have a bit of a send off given its likely going to be the last of Vards then if we he gets a two year extension.

"Broken" Player. Rodgers' forte. It said he wants to play in the Premier League, it just neglected to mention it'll be the Scottish Premier League. Watch him be the next Scott Sinclair.

Tbf that's casually overlooking that two more Benfica products in Helder Costa and Ivan Cavaleiro had turned up the year before

Mhm. I definitely think he'd have benefited from a "Pearson-like" manager over the last couple years at Leicester as opposed to Brendan Rodgers, who he clearly wouldn't and didn't suit. He has a lot of the attributes that make Hamza punch above his weight only McAteer is comfortably more technical. You can't beat good work rate, some well placed aggression and good athleticism. There'll always be a place in the Premier League for a Robbie Savage.

They were still all far, far too good for the Championship. Don't take this for a lack of self awareness, by the way, Leicester and Leeds both have players far too good for the second tier this year and have even signed some (eg Winks) since dropping. But then we also have had the whole Championship moaning about us all year. People were right to be somewhat bitter about Wolves promotion. It wasn't really "fair." It might have been legal but it wasn't even close to a level playing field just as our title win this year wasn't really "fair" on the average second tier team.

Like I just said, I agree he isn't ready for the Prem on paper but I do think it's too early to say he's not very good. He scored 6 league goals in less than 13 lots of 90 minutes last year. That's as many as Fatawu got in almost three times the time (I'm aware Fatawu contributed freakishly well in assists.) It's also a better goal return per minute than Mavididi. Overall he got a goal every 0.47 games which makes him our third most efficient player to play over 1000 minutes. He's got a lot of very positive attributes, his movement off the ball and his footballing intelligence both when Leicester are in position and when they aren't is brilliant. He makes superb runs and he continues excellently in defence too, with a lot of aggression, stamina and commitment. He definitely lacks the one thing Enzo wants the most from his wide players, he's poor in one on one take ons, but given that it's not his natural position and that Jeff Schlupp has managed 200 odd Premier League games, I think it's premature to write McAteer off. But I do think if he's going to have a future in the Prem it won't be as a conventional winger. Either some sort of pressing forward or a box to box midfielder would be better, a role that suits his athleticism and work rate, where his movement and engine are more important than searing pace (he's a slow winger but a fast midfielder.)

Not as a starter in the Premier League. Might not be a popular opinion but I honestly think he could do with a Championship loan somewhere he's going to be a starter all season and get 35+ starts under his belt tbh. For his age he hasn't actually played that much football. But I do think one of his better all round performances last year was in the middle, yeah. I'd have liked to have seen Kasey on the right and KDH on the left together in the middle a few more times last year.

Mate 99.9% of football thought that was absolutely ridiculous. You had Champions League footballers in the second tier.

Welp

I mean presumably now Usyk just gets swarmed with a constant stream of mandatories until he's got to vacate at least one or two of the belts because they won't all be possible. So beyond the rematch I doubt his next few fights (if he wins the rematch) will really be up to him at all. If WBO tells him to fight Parker, IBF tells him to fight Hrgovic, WBC tells him to fight Joshua, etc, what they going to do? Have a royal rumble? He can't beat them all at once. Hrgovic and Parker are straight up too slow for him, though, and probably don't have enough in the arm to hurt him in the few windows they'd get. Just don't see any of his obvious immediate opponents presenting all that much threat. Fury and Joshua are head and shoulders above the other threats to him in the division and he's gotten through both. Lets be clear though, Fury has every chance of beating him in a rematch.

Del Boy on the mic.

Narh, no it couldn't. Quite a few people have made this point since that fight and I agree with them completely, Usyk might have been hurt and probably was playing for a bit of time but if the ref had said it wasn't a low blow he'd have been back on his feet in a flash and would have carried on the fight. You saw Usyk got rocked a little in the middle of the fight last night, yeah he needed a round or so to recover, then he got straight back on and if anything improved. Daniel Dubois isn't beating Usyk with 50 goes at it. Edit: and Andy Ruiz isn't beating Usyk with 100 goes at it

Well, only one other man in history has been undisputed at cruiser and then heavyweight and he (Holyfield) didn't manage an Olympic gold medal while Usyk did. Nobody has been undisputed at all in his generation. He's done it beating probably the two best other heavyweights in the world and not ducking anyone, with very little time to work the rest of the field and adapt to the weight. To top it all off he's about six inches shorter than most of the current top heavyweights and he's unbeaten in his professional career. So. Probably pretty high.

Also, this has excellent meme template potential

Oof