Finnegan

That's a terrible call. Robbed.

I think KDH should be playing Premier League football. But I don't think he's anywhere near good enough to be too big for Leicester if we go up. For two reasons, really, firstly because he's got a fair bit of development to do if he wants to play for one of the Big Six and secondly because (and this may be arrogant and delusional perhaps) quite frankly, unless the money issues really are perilous at King Power and we are at the end of an era, I'd expect us to go back fairly promptly to challenging the top half. Maybe not immediately in the very first year back but I absolutely do think we should have ambitions to recover to where we were.

It's basically chess with some extremely massive peak athletes. I don't really have a problem with that. People call ****ing darts a sport so yknow.

Now you just go and post some detailed tactical analysis on how Boro are going to play against us and really mess with everyone.

I know man I'm only messing.

I just genuinely think he isn't playing because Enzo doesn't rate him as highly as the players that are. It's not a mystery, there's no conspiracy. It was always going to be a big ask for a guy who isn't particularly big, strong or fast to come in to English football and thrive. He might have a lot more technical ability than McAteer but Mcateer is a significantly better athlete and covers a lot of ground defensively.

You'd need this side to be managed by Kevin Kegan for extra laughs. The most attacking side ever Not only is it nearly all forwards, a few of them are amongst the laziest forwards ever for helping out defensively haha.

He's just ****ing terrible. I listen to it most weeks and the questions are like Enzo is being interviewed by a GCSE media studies student playing at football journo.

Please, please, please don't get sucked in by this shit. I'm begging you - and everyone else. There is literally no drama at all about our style of play, Enzo, the fans, he's not going to leave, he didn't threaten to leave. It's our absolutely terrible local press looking to stir up stupid drama and rubbish narratives to drive engagement and sensationalise shit. They are absolutely shameless. 99% of the fanbase are delighted with the turnaround this season and Maresca and he's a smart guy that's been in football a long time, he knows that. He just keeps getting asked stupid, stupid ****ing questions by absolutely rubbish journalists. I swear he's had a question in basically every pre match press conference this year about whether or not "the fans" will have to be patient and what he thinks of "the fans" frustrations about slow football. Just complete shit.

One thing that baffles me in football is how more teams & clubs don't just blatantly copy each other. Like Brentford have been innovating from set pieces, particularly corners, for a few years now and have been excellent at them. They've been doing it for so long you don't even need to steal their set piece coach, you can just watch hours of their footage. Yet every club is still just punting a crap floated or whipped delivery randomly somewhere near the six yard box and hoping someone gets near it. We must have been one of the worst sides in the country at set pieces for half a decade or more now and I can't get my head around the idea that you just don't do anything to address that. Even this year I think I can think of just one decent corner and it was JJ at the near post?

Yep I know

They're 12 points behind us. If they beat us, it'd be 9. Take that game away and there's 13 games left for us both. If we've beaten Boro before they play us, that's 12 and that's assuming they beat Plymouth away to maintain the gap. We've lost 4 games all season, we've only dropped points in 7 games, that's about 29% of the games we've played. If we kept that rate up, we'd drop points in roughly another 4 games and lose maybe 2. Leeds' only chance of catching us would be to go 100% winning in the remaining games or hope that we have an absolutely unprecedented collapse. It isn't going to happen. This makes their game against us basically a cup final, too, for them. If we so much as draw they probably need a point a game more than us for the rest of the season, if not more.

Ric knows that. He was just saying the fee for Yunus is peanuts and using the prize money to make a point. As in "we get five mil just for winning the league." Its having him on the books for the duration of his contract that's the problem. We need to stop being rash and impulsive in the transfer market as we have been a lot in the post title winning era.

This. Yes, he's looked good enough at times at this level but you're talking about a whole step up again. I just don't think Enzo rates him enough to want him on the books for five years.

Agent James 🫡

Especially given I think he's played 90% of this season out of position. He's got the same limitations as KDH. I think they're quite similar in some ways. McAteer is a box to box midfielder is his future I think.

Me

ooooooooh, Iwan is a Welshman

True. Helps they're shite mind.

I don't actually think that's accurate. Yes, we've definitely been let off a couple of teams this season, especially early on while we were having some teething problems. Cov at home especially was a good example of this. But a lot of these moments that people act like we were close to conceding goals, I'd say watch them back and ask, were we really? The way we're set up, I think one thing people are overlooking a lot, is that even if we DO give the ball away when we're playing matadors, there's usually people around to recover quickly. A big part of the philosophy of tiki-taka is that you're never really passing too far and you're passing in an organised block so if you do lose the ball, you've got players a short distance away to close in on whoever's taken it. Faes, JJ, Ricardo, Winks, etc, they've all gotten in last-second blocks and tackles that LOOK desperate because of the proximity to the goal but anywhere else on the pitch and you'd just go "yep, that's good recovery, that's how according to plan." Even when people do get a shot off, it's often from a ridiculous angle that's quite hard to score from, probably ranks pretty low xG and Hermansen has it completely shut down or it goes way wide because it was a hard place to shoot from because the box was well covered. As with a lot of things with our football, I think it has a habit of looking less comfortable than it really is. Of course it'll be harder in the Premier League, everything is, but I wouldn't say I'm worried.

You don't need an enormous amount of intelligence for most positions. It drives me absolutely insane listening to people overstate the complexity of American football every time a rugby player crosses codes or thinks of crossing codes. "There's so much to learn, its such a technical game, he'll never do it!" Most of the American kids didn't start playing til high school, didn't really thrive until college and then had to completely re-learn all their plays when they got to a pro team anyway. Its nonsense. Wide receivers, running backs, tight ends, sure they might need to improvise a little bit to lose a defender but ultimately they're running completely pre-planned routes according to completely pre-called plays. They don't have to think at all, they just have to study and learn the plays they're meant to run. Don't get me wrong, these guys are elite athletes in a lot of different ways but a high level of sporting IQ is not mandatory.

Yeah I've thought this. You can tell from his movement and his instincts on the ball that he's hugely changing up his general play compared to how he was under Rodgers even at his best.

**** me the Finals is addictive.

God dammit. The swifties are going to win again aren't they.

#superbowl