Finnegan

Yeah I get it, I understand the criticism. But I think calling De Zerbi a poor (or over rated) manager because he can't implement his style of play with a squad not equipped for it is a bit like calling Fernando Alonso shit or over rated for not winning a Championship in an Alpine. You do the best with the resources you have and De Zerbi managed sixth place last year with a fairly mediocre squad and this year is delivering comfortable mid table despite the injuries and distractions of Europe. The best modern football managers are nearly all specialists. You couldn't give Pep an extremely agricultural squad and expect him to excel, you couldn't give Klopp a team of technicians with low athleticism and expect him to excel and the new generation coming through are all similar in having very clear philosophies on how they want to play. Yeah, some pragmatist like Moyes or Allardyce could probably grind out a few more draws or shit house wins occasionally by being willing to keep it simple but they probably also wouldn't reach the heights that De Zerbi has managed when it clicks and the idea at Brighton is to have confidence in what they're building and keep adding the right type of player until it pays off. Look at us. Enzo has stuck rigidly to the game plan all season and he'll do the same next year. People were saying a year ago that the squad here wasn't technical enough to play possession football but look at what good coaching has done for the likes of Wilfred Ndidi and Hamza Choudhury. It would have been easier to play more simplistic football with those guys and maybe it'd have turned some of our bad results in to neutral ones but overall would we still have won the league?

Yeah they've been naff for months, no denying that. But I do think their squad is alarmingly average and even glaringly shit in some areas. They remind me a lot of us, for all of the praise for their recruitment because they unearth some genuine gems, they also hoard a lot of complete rubbish that they get stuck with. They've still got Lalana and Welbeck ffs, they signed an eighty year old James Milnwr, Ansu Fati is like they heard Brendan Rodgers talking about broken players and took it too literally, Igor is a literal LCFC pre relegation signing, I'm pretty sure we were actually linked to him. He's unbelievably average. So are the likes of Dunk, Gilmour, Webster etc who are just immensely mid table. They've got some genuine gems (most of whom are injured) sure but they've also got an enormous amount of pain significantly mediocre.

Yeah what a ****ing loser, can't even get a win with 7 first team players missing. Shit manager, aaaahhh.

How the **** have Forest not scored

Richarlison

There's no precedent or grounds for that.

Son

Wolves, can you just not please? Stop helping Forest.

Yeah don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Mavididi, I think he's been great. But he definitely went off the boil a little bit during the season and I am surprised his return rate isn't better. That said, he works his socks off, his defensive contributions are under rated and he's created a lot of space for others (especially KDH) because he's always occupying multiple defenders. He's been a steal frankly.

He's top of the Championship for combined goals and assists per 90 minutes of all players to have played >1000 minutes. 1. Vardy, 1.0 2. Daka, 0.99 3. Sargent, 0.91 4. Armstrong, 0.81 5. Adams, 0.78 Cannon (414 minutes) and Iheanacho (907 minutes) obviously don't quite qualify but they contributed 0.65 and 0.59 goal contributions per 90 each respectively. KDH also has 0.65, Fatawu 0.6 and Mavididi a slightly disappointing 0.46. Absolutely terrific numbers really from our forwards overall.

I just want him to retire with more Premier League goals than Michael "he's not a natural finisher" Owen.

He has the speed of thought, movement and acceleration. I'd offer him an extension if he agrees to reduced wages and we can afford it.

It's not writing them off to acknowledge Leeds and Southampton probably have a better chance of reinforcing and staying up than the side that were in League One last season and have a much smaller match day revenue and overall operating budget.

... Why? Forget sentiment, Leeds and Southampton have by far the best chance of competing to stay up next year and we are more than likely facing a points deduction. Norwich have a terrible squad and a record of not investing a great deal and Ipswich have a big task on hand to get promoted back to back and survive.

Leeds are an absolute meme team

If Joel Piroe now scores four goals, we're banning @StanSP for life right?

Three nil.

I've always liked West London

Can QPR defend any better than Boro...

I ****ing hate football, man

It's just objectively false that he's looked poor at this level. He is, comfortably, our best striker at linking up and complimenting play. He's looked after the ball well, held it up well despite previous accusations of being weak, he's contributed well defensively, he presses well, his passing has been decent, his movement has been good dropping in and then turning to run vertically. He was comfortably the first striker to really obviously "get" Enzo's system despite all of the pre season assumptions that Iheanacho would be well suited to Enzoball. The only thing Daka has done particularly wrong this season is that from Elland Road til now he has gone on a run of missing some absolutely horrible chances, particularly at a time when Vardy has really gone up a gear and started to thrive. And that's a very big thing for a striker to get wrong, regardless of how impressive his G+A/90 had been up til that point. And, for the record, Vardy has the best G+A/90 in the whole squad this year with 1 whole goal contribution per game equivalent. You know who is second with 0.99? Patson Daka. On current form he's justifiably playing second fiddle to Vards now and, as I've said, I absolutely can't defend some of his recent misses - they could have been (and maybe still could be) extremely costly, although then so could the hattrick Vardy left out on the pitch a few weeks ago when we lost. But everyone's forgotten that just as quickly as they've forgotten the goals Daka's scored. Probably the same 75% of foxestalkers that thought Maresca should be sacked a few weeks ago. ****ing mouth breathers.

In the two years Patson Daka played Premier League football he was the only Leicester City striker to match or better his expected goals across both seasons. I cannot defend some of his misses recently, he went from being absolutely superb when Enzo brought him back in to the team to really seeming to lose confidence completely since that miss at Leeds which was genuinely hideous and some of those since then. But he's still the victim of significant confirmation bias from a section of the fanbase who have been convinced he's shit since day one and are abjectly blind to anything good he does. I'd take Daka over Calvert Lewin every single day of the week, it isn't close. Daka is an objectively better footballer by basically every metric other than heading.

I think he's a really sound human being and always has been. I just think he's an extremely, aggressively competitive person and the pressure of a Premier League / Champions League match day brings out the absolute worst in him. No doubt could do with some anger management as I think sometimes it is unnecessary, it is overboard and it isn't healthy. He doesn't set a great example to those same kids on the park when it's Saturday and they're watching him scream at fourth official on the touchline that he's towering over. I can't defend that tbh. But outside the heat of the moment I think he's mostly fine other than a bit of moaning about the winter schedule but, eh, as much as I find that a bit out of touch as a fan it's not exactly surprising. It's just what he knows.

It is. Year after year he is consistently the second worst player in the Premier League for matching their xG. Neal Maupay is the only top flight striker who consistently wastes more chances.

I find the phrase "appointed permanent Watford boss" to be one of the funniest in football.