Finnegan

KDH isn't massive though tbf. McAteer is very aggressive and happy to throw his body around. Seems to know how to use what weight he has.

I think it suits him perfectly. He's a lot like KDH but probably more aggressive. He's fast for a centre mid but not a winger. He's got good dribbling for a centre mid but not a winger. Passes, tackles, grafts, think he's a perfect box to box mid tbh.

Was literally about to type that I think McAteer "replacing" Casadei as 8 is frankly an upgrade. And he does that.

Even the criticism is stupid a lot of the time. Someone just called him fvcking shit for not scoring that header from a Fatawu cross that was clearly just miles too far out of reach for him. Like the bar is he apparently performs near miracles or he's shit.

Few minutes ago he dropped in, took a pass from Hermansen first time brilliantly, turned and pinged an absolute beaut thirty yards to Mavididi. If Cannon did that most of this place would be wanking themselves silly calling him the next Messi.

It's just that predictable that people will chirp up about one or two players if they dare not do something perfect tbh mate.

Yeah man how dare he not grow about another six inches and extend the go go gadget neck to get that on target.

Ireland won the grand slam last night tbh. At very least the tournament. Think the grand slam match would be at Twickenham, I can maybe see England throwing up a ridiculous siege mentality performance and winning that. But I just can't see anyone other than Ireland winning the lot.

It's probably the best Italian side since they've been in the 6N and one of the worst England ones. Still feel we've been here before though. Imagine England will edge them, always happens.

Yep no question. But we could hire Michael Zorc, Txiki Begiristain, Monchi and Ralf Rangnick tomorrow and they still wouldn't be able to sell Bouba Soumare for a profit or clear out all of our dead wood without getting the club screwed by FFP / Profit & Sustain. It might sound like splitting hairs to say the problem is what we paid not that we can't sell but in terms of setting people's expectations and understanding where we are as a club it's an important distinction. The problem could actually be resolved already (to a point*) in that actually maybe Glover and Maresca are the dream team and we'll be fine now moving forward for the foreseeable future, no more crap targets identified, no more terrible coaching, only upwards. But we're still going to have to deal with yesterday's problems for another few years because squad building happens over the span of contracts, not just in overnight. *again, I accept that long term Rudkin very well may need to go. If his "talent" for hiring is so inconsistent then who's to say the next manager and the next head of recruitment won't be another Rodgers and Congerton? But he isn't a Zorc or Begiristain is he? And I don't just mean in terms of talent I mean in terms of vision. Elite, high-level DoFs have their own clear sporting vision for a club and they take it that way. Just strikes me that Rudkin is more about trying to hire the right people, delegate what he can and hope he got the right appointment. But then that is me just speculating from what we've seen.

I literally just got about 2/3rds of the way through typing out a bit of a rant in a whole new topic and had one of those "wtf am I bothering for?" moments and deleted it. I kinda wish I hadn't. The crux was that I still don't think people quite understand the relationship between Amortisation and FFP and that it really, really isn't simple to "just" sell footballers - ESPECIALLY for a loss. The problem isn't that "Rudkin can't sell players", the problem is that we as a club have signed too many players for too much money that haven't lived up to expectations. Its the amount we buy them for with the risks that we do that then make them so difficult to sell because you need to clear the entire book value of a footballer in that one year that you sell which can cause crippling losses as far as FFP is concerned. We overpaid for, for example, Soumare by so much that literally nobody wants to buy him for enough money that we wouldn't be screwed by our own amortisation if we sell him "too early." And that's ignoring the fact that because we're paying him big old Premier League wages he quite possibly doesn't want a permanent move even if clubs are interested (see Dennis Praet and formerly Yannik Vestergaard.) Now don't get me wrong, as I said earlier, that still means the buck stops with Rudkin but the problem isn't that he can't sell - Don fvcking Draper couldn't sell Bouba Soumare or Dennis Praet for a profit - the problem is that we identified these talents in the first place and signed them for inflated fees well above their market value (also see Islam Slimani, Rachid Ghezzal, Filip Benkovic, Timothy Castagne, Bartosz Kaputska, Adrien Silva and a long list of other flops.) I highly doubt Rudkin personally identified any of these targets, it isn't really his wheelhouse, but he has overseen the recruitment of a procession of extremely middle-of-the-road heads of recruitment since Walsh left and he has been involved in the negotiations of the fees of a lot of these players and he does seem to have a track record of going extremely high with fairly poor negotiations. The best two deals this club have done in the last few decades was the sales of Maguire and Fofana and its my understanding Whelan got involved to directly oversee both of those? So I'm not defending the guy entirely and I'm largely in the camp that if we want to be a world class football club then we need to start acting like one, I've said before that I do actually like our owners' valuation of loyalty and commitment but ultimately you wouldn't find Tony Bloom letting his inadequate mate stick around as the DoF for so long just because he's loyal. But I do think people are expecting water from wine when they think that anyone, and I do mean anyone, is going to easily just sell Souttar, Soumare, Kristiansen, et all. We're fvcking stuck with them for the long haul and people need to get used to it.

You mean if we could all have just convinced Babs it was all Rudkin's fault we still would have been relegated? I refuse to believe.

It's not just you in fairness it's a lot of the country. It started at the turn of the century when football really started fully moving to more professional corporate structures with directors in charge of recruitment and squad building instead of Harry Redknap being able to sign whichever player whose agent paid for his extension or wife's next shopping trip. The media in this country got on board, it was all "the European model!" and acting like it was mystifying and strange that with football squads increasingly being vastly expensive assets, maybe letting one bloke with a short term contract and potentially conflicting interests manage all that wasn't smart. Football fans and even the media in this country still haven't fully caught up twenty to thirty years later, despite most working in corporate structures in their day to day lives probably vastly similar to how a football club is run.

I've said multiple times in this thread that the buck stops with Rudkin. I'm not defending him I'm just saying his role isn't impossible to understand and people claiming we don't know what he does are being a bit daft. We don't know exactly what makes up his day but we know what his responsibilities are. As for communication, not 100% sure what you mean there. If you mean communicating with the fans and the general public then, frankly, whilst it might be frustrating at times I have absolutely 0 problems with the clubs' policy on comms. I understand fans feeling entitled to an explanation, I get that. But the club can't show their hand to the fans without also showing their hand to the rest of the footballing world and it's the latter they have to do business with. It's bad enough that everyone thinks we're skint, the less we have to actually admit it the better. That's one of the worst parts of the Sensi fiasco. It's really bad optics. It would have been much better to just deny he was ever a target and say we're happy with the squad that's got us ten points clear.

You don't need an ITK to tell you what a Director is. People act like football clubs are these strange, alien worlds impossible to comprehend. Look, if you're one of these clubs with an eccentric owner constantly meddling then maybe sure but for the vast majority - definitely including us - it's just bog standard corporate structure. For most people, just look at your own places of work. Rudkin is just a director, he reports to the CEO and chairman and basically nobody else. Directors have portfolios and the Director of Football or Sporting Director at a club is in charge of all footballing operations which means it's his ultimate responsibility what players we buy and sell, what contracts we extend and how the budget for playing and coaching staff is ultimately allocated. But he's not out there playing football manager on his own with a laptop, he's managing a shit load of service managers (including Maresca and Glover) who lead the teams that do most of the front line work you think the footballing side of a club does. It's not this mystical, incomprehensible role that nobody understands it's just... management.

The truest part of your post. Come on Ric, for better or worse people listen to you. Don't start pushing that melodrama. I'm sure Maresca is disappointed but look around the footballing world. The BBC have just published an article saying January spend is down 700m this year. The bubble has burst a little in English football, clubs everywhere have been spending well beyond their means and it's going to be a bit of a culture shock for a lot of the country's clubs to try and adjust. I'm not under illusions that Enzo is going to be here forever, he seems extremely competent as a coach and I'm sure he's destined for bigger things. I said months ago I reckon he'll be our first manager in a long time to be poached not sacked. But ffs he's not going to abandon his first proper job at the top level at a decent club after getting promotion because he wasn't able to sign Sensi on loan when we don't even really need him. I mean, shit, man. We've agreed terms with him and done a medical, we can sign a pre contract agreement with him now, cut Inter out and get him for free at the end of the year if we're that fvcking keen. This is just a lot of hysteria over nothing. The club is in a tight spot financially, that isn't news. It's offensive to Maresca to suggest he had absolutely no clue at all before he joined and it's offensive to Top or Whelan to imply the opposite. What, we recruited him lying through our teeth that he'd have billions to spend just like Pep? And fvcking hell we gave him Harry fvcking Winks England international as his first signing!! It's not like he's had sod all. Go on r/Championship and see how many tiny violins the rest of the league's fans are playing for poor Leicester City running away with the league that we didn't get to sign an Italian international in his prime to play in the second tier. Some of you all need to go outside and touch grass. Look around the rest of the footballing world beyond Leicester. It really isn't just us with issues is it.

I do think we really need to stop all the bedwetting about Maresca leaving, though. The idea that a thoroughly professional and seemingly competent footballing man doesn't understand that this club, whilst having good potential, is in a bit of a bind financially at the moment is silly. It's also offensive to Maresca to suggest he's just going to down tools and run off at the slightest complication (although not as offensive as the Mercury baiting him in to making a comment about the fans and then implying he's gonna leave if Dave from Aylestone is a bit mean about passing football.)

Let's make one thing perfectly clear. Unless you believe the CEO or the Chairman directly took charge of a routine loan / <£2m transfer deal, the buck stops with Jon Rudkin. He is responsible for buying, selling and managing our footballing assets. That's his portfolio as a director. If it is true that we were trying to do a deal for Sensi for as long as Fab reported it (which seems likely now) and we got so far as flying him in yesterday to do a deal and have a medical and Rudkin still wasn't sure at that point we had the necessary finances to complete the deal, that is fairly embarrassing. I dont see any incentive for Inter to let him get all the way to England only to then try and haggle an extra million they know we probably can't afford. The idea that it was them moving the goalposts at the last minute seems somewhat unlikely, unless they are equally close to an FFP breach I don't see what the angle is for them. This is almost certainly something that has gone wrong in our shop which means even if it isn't Rudkin's fault, it is his responsibility. And it's not the first time the club have been made to look silly by dealings that have happened on his watch. I think we can be quite optimistic as a fanbase that we have a head coach who is extremely competent and promising and I think we proved in the summer that we still have really good clout when it comes to talent identification. We've pulled off a blinder with Fatawu, Winks, Mavididi, Hermansen, etc and if we continue in that vein we'll be fine. But we've made a lot of very silly deals and decisions during Rudkin's tenure (in transfers in, out as well as contract negotiations) and it does start to get to a point where you have to question if we'd benefit from having a DoF with a much more substantial business background / mind.

Barnes and Maddison are a lot, lot better than fvcking Gibbs White and we got nowhere near their true value.

what? No not particularly. I do think that if you want to hold him accountable for the current state of the squad then you also have to credit him with the Premier League and FA Cup winning squads. You can't really have it both ways. The thing I say the most when it comes to transfers in football is that it's far, far too common these days to see any one individual being held accountable for success or failure in transfers. Its always "such and such manager signed this player" or this head of recruitment or this director of football is good/bad. The reality is that a club our size will have a lot of cogs in the recruitment machine. Identifying talent to come in and weaknesses in the squad, deciding on targets, agreeing on who to sale to raise funds, these aren't just decisions made by one person alone. I think if the club is to progress and take full advantage of these world class facilities we built then we need world class staff and that probably means finding a better DoF who does have a much more clear footballing vision. But I also don't think we're in a terrible place right now and I do think people wildly over-exaggerate. If Maresca really wants Sensi then he can have him for free in 6 months time and we'll get promoted without him anyway. It's not exactly like Dennis Praet, Will Alves, Sammy Braybrook or whoever else is going to cost us the league is it?

It's our window not theirs that matters.

End of the day if they can give us enough money for us not to take a loss, get him off the wage bill and sign Sensi then just do it. They're hardly rivals. If they finish above us this season I'll live off my own toenails for a month.

I know everybody hates the term but this really is "lazy journalism." Betis need a forward and we've got a reasonably high profile one we looked to be offloading in the summer. It's not exactly like this is a world class source. They can't afford to buy him for an amount that is profitable for us and Maresca is unlikely to want to loan him now that he's finally a core part of the squad and Iheanacho appears to be frozen out. Only way I see this happening is if they pay a big enough loan fee and wage contribution that it gets the Sensi deal across the line and we literally have no other way of making that happen financially without doing so. That seems likely a significant stretch.

@Ric Flair is spot on when he says a lot of Daka's problem is actually his balance. When Daka is balanced and composed in front of goal I'd back him to finish consistently. I know people (including me) bang on about his hattrick in Russia so much it's basically a meme but in all three of those goals he was well set, ice cool, poised and just tucked them away off both feet. Equally goals spring to mind against Legia home, Everton home and Brighton away that are extremely similar to his goals at Spartak not to mention Forest at home, a Vardyesque back heel, where he's been well balanced. But then he also seems to have these weird moments where he's sort of dribbling almost slightly away from goal or he's just miles off balance and swings his leg half at the ball and is having to hook it back. He's very much got an instep technique shooting and he's really accurate when he's set and it's really hideous when he's not and his general centre of gravity seems to be terrible. By contrast, you can see why Cannon draws comparisons to Nugent. He's very much got Nugent's centre of gravity, he always seems to be balanced and always seems to be set, gives him really consistent ball control. He's not Messi but he is still pretty sharp in possession and he's got a great technique for just drilling through the ball, makes him much better with a snap shot. End of the day, they're both excellent strikers for this level and I'm happy if either starts. I think Daka's pace gives the whole team an extra something. That's how many games so far that Daka has played and we've scored three or more? You can't keep putting that down to luck, we're consistently more productive and have consistently better output when he plays.