Finnegan

I just read it that Sensi is pretty much coming in on the cheap and we'll see a couple go out, maybe on loans, but that's about it. Too many Italian sources are acting like Sensi is a done deal, including Fab, for there to be no real weight behind it and it's a transfer that makes general sense when you think about it. I'm pretty confident it's happening. We don't exactly need to free up a massive amount of budget to make it happen either.

Something something morrisons something medical medical something fish puns something something Top's jet etc etc Insert video of Maddison at Norwich here.

1. You people care far, far, far too much about this shit. It's not about disrespecting us it's just about trying to make the story they're writing as dramatic and eye catching as possible. It's called hyperbole, people do it all the time. Stop being offended by it. 2. That said, La Liga isn't what it was. If Girona had won it ten, fifteen years ago it would have been incredible but the whole league is struggling massively these days, the finances just aren't there and even Real and Barca have problems. It doesn't take a massive amount to close the gap and Girona are owned by the City Group

But they're all players we don't want, Sensi is one we do. And the aforementioned were either brought in a couple of heads of recruitment ago or came through our youth system. Sensi has great feet, a fantastic passing range, good vision, a handful of Italian caps and a decent amount of Serie A experience. He's incomparable in quality to everyone you've just listed and he's rumoured to cost us about 1/7th of what we paid for Danny Ward or Praet and about 10% of what we paid for Bouba. Just seems kinda low risk to me except for the fitness issues and they aren't as bad as I feel people are making out. Easy to forget guys like Vardy and Ndidi usually have a few spells on the sideline every year. That's why you have a squad. Bertrand was always an absolutely stupid signing. I don't think at his absolute best, at the peak of his career, he was really good enough for the team he were supposed to have when he signed. Let alone at the twilight of his career. Meanwhile, Sensi at his best isn't far off Madders and would comfortably be the most technically gifted midfielder in our current squad.

Yep. 100%. They're just negotiating. He's hardly been vital to their season so far.

To a point, you can. Plenty of examples across nearly all sports of a young athlete with the wrong attitude getting to work with the right coach and turning it around. I absolutely do believe that some people just don't have the right psychology to ever be an elite athlete, sure, but I do think it's probably too early to completely make that conclusion about Soumaré. Especially given we don't know exactly what is wrong with him.

And a couple like Iversen and Ward off the wage bill is probably enough. Be interesting to see what happens with Kel and Bouba.

It would take an unprecedented collapse for us to not go up automatically. For context, we'd need a bigger collapse than the one in 2020 in the run up to & following on from the COVID break. The points per game that we need to stay above Southampton and Leeds is pretty much just mid-table form as long as they don't somehow match our first half to the season, which they won't. Gamblers' fallacy is betting against the current trend because you think its 'due' to change. It isn't. We're not less likely to win our next game because we've already won a shit load, we're winning a shit load because we're highly likely to win each game. I can't be arsed to actually do the maths (a few of you already probably have) but seriously, mathematically, the odds of us not finishing top 2 are astronomically small for a reason.

So far this has been the season for surprising. Fatawu looked like an extreme risk and 18m seemed absurd, Harry Winks was regarded as underwhelming and uninspired, Mavididi raised a lot of eyebrows and FoxesTalk jizzed itself to death over Cesare Casadei. Haha. There's no doubting that Sensi has a fantastic amount of talent, he's a much better player than Praet has ever been. Yes, he's had a difficult history with injuries and, sure, he's not good enough for Inter Milan. But we are where we are. I can't get my head around people acting like 2m is anything other than bargain basement. Even for a Championship club these days, it's not a significant amount of money, especially given we're looking almost certainly on course to be back in the top flight again. He's an experienced pro with a lot of ability, on his day he's not far off Champions League quality. He won't be under pressure to play every minute here and he gives us a good option. I don't really see a significant issue with this transfer if I'm honest. Some of the reactions seem over the top.

I mean yeah it's obvious hyperbole, albeit that's taller than I thought he was, but we're still quite clearly not going to play him down the middle as a lone striker.

There's absolutely zero chance of this. We've played a "false 9" for all of about 3 minutes this season out of necessity when seeing out a game we'd effectively already won. If memory serves it was one of the earlier games of the season, might even have been a cup game, and it was Praet? Talked about this in the Cannon thread recently, we don't really "do" false 9. Contrary to what people keep parroting from one another, the idea that Enzo wants and needs some deep lying striker to drop in and get heavily involved creatively is a myth. If Cannon was hurt I'd be very surprised if one of the quicker wide forwards wasn't used as a makeshift 9 for a game or so, Mavididi and McAteer seem like the most obvious by skillset. I like Akgun but no chance we use the 5ft midget who lacks a bit of pace.

This is a bit misleading though because of the numbers of minutes people have played. Whilst its true we spread the goals out around the team and our CMs get a lot of chances, you've just said it yourself - our two best performing non-strikers combined have scored less goals than we have from the ST spot. And it's not like those four you're combining have been overlapping in minutes, they almost never appear on the pitch at the same time together. Cannon, Daka, Vardy and Iheanacho have all scored more goals per 90 minutes than the rest of the squad (except Wanya, ha) - it is by far the highest performing position on the pitch for goals per 90. It's a bit of a myth that we aren't creating chances for them, that they aren't scoring or that they're underperforming. We just rotate our main number 9 more than any other "top" team in the league. There are actually only 6 players in the squad who have scored more than 2 goals this season in the league and 3 of those are strikers and two of them could very much be considered "wide forwards." In fact, I'd argue KDH is a bit of an outlier, no other central midfielder comes close and nor do Yunus and Fatawu who, when playing out wide, typically operate deeper than Mavididi and take up the role of providers as opposed to Stephy who spends a lot of time as our most advanced player given our system is a little asymmetrical. In total, Cannon, Daka, Vardy and Iheanacho combined have scored 17 goals in 2352 minutes of Championship football for a return of a goal every 138.4 minutes. KDH and Mavididi combined have also scored 17 goals but they've done so in 4132 minutes which is a goal every 243.1 minutes. Or, if you want to look at all of our 8s & wide players combined that is: Wanya, Kasey, Stephy, Fatawu, Yunus, Ndidi, KDH, Casadei, Praet and Albrighton they've played (if I've counted this up correctly) 9212 minutes in the league with combined 28 goals which is one every 329 minutes. Trust me. Our strikers are scoring goals.

Decent outcome for us that. Don't think he was ever coming here given game time was a problem for Liverpool and we just don't need him as a starter. But keeps him away from our rivals which is nice.

Jumping the proverbial queue. And it's ok to say our charge isn't faltering but what happens if KDH injures himself in training tomorrow. Realistically, mathematically, we probably have a big enough lead that we could limp over the line for automatic promotion even with some key injuries but we definitely look the most fragile at 8 in my opinion. If you'd have asked me in August where the biggest vulnerability in the team was, I'd have said having no obvious replacement for Winks. But I'm not so sure now really. I think that Ndidi KDH combo is probably what we miss the most when they aren't playing. It puts a lot of strain on the wide players and the base of the midfield to have a great game. We got away with it against Huddersfield, we didn't against Wednesday. The fewer games Casadei and Yunus have to start together as a makeshift 8 pair the better I think. Sure we'll probably still be Champions without reinforcing there but I'm not sure I'd personally want to hack the stress of doing it the hard way. We've had plenty of eventful seasons lately, lets just fvcking cruise one for once.

In fairness, Yunus IS a right winger and was probably signed to be one. I'd probably rather see a consistent 8 come in.

Holy shit it's still on the internet. Absolute fvcking classic.

Or alternatively,

Narborough - ROAD Evington - ROAD Granby Street & the one by McDonald's #PutSomeCheeseOnIt

Oh look a draw against a mid table side in our own league I am so shocked

I dont give that much of a shit about Derby either if I'm honest. Maybe I'm the wrong person to give an opinion on this, I largely don't give much of a shit about local rivalries all that much. First clubs I can ever remember disliking as a kid were Forest, Birmingham, Millwall and Leeds because their fans seemed to be the ones most likely to start singing "town full of P****" and generally being absolute trash back at Filbo. Cov and Derby just seem pretty benign to me. I could give a handful of reasons I dislike most fanbase in English football tbh, I'm a petty, judgemental, ill tempered **** who holds grudges. I've just never been that bothered by geography. I dislike Notts Forest fans more for the general scummy racism and their clinging-to-the-past delusion than because they happen to be from just down the road in the little town of West Bridgeford, Nottinghamshire.

He's an alright manager tbh. Had some stupid sackings. Sunderland were moronic to get rid, their fans are upset and they're pretty jealous of Brum who are made up.

I'm not playing any card. I legitimately don't give a shit about Coventry. Growing up in North Leics I had no idea Coventry were even supposed to be our rivals until probably at least my late teens. Took going to uni in London with a Cov fan to realise they gave a shit about us and even then they care far more about other West Mids clubs than us as far as I could tell. Then we got stuck in the second tier with them, Forest had gone down (btw anyone ever notice they only started "not caring about Leicester" sometime in like their 57573637475th season in the League One wilderness), Villa in the Prem, suddenly Sky and everyone got to pump a narrative and find a "dErBy" for everyone to get pumped up and give a shit about. Honestly, any of the old crew give a shit about Coventry or it just a new thing? I care far more about us beating Leeds and Sunderland than Cov and that's just because those two have really weirdly annoying fanbases that think they're massive, not because I think it's any kind of rivalry.

I'll be honest, I feel like the "Maresca wants a striker who will drop deep" stuff largely came from people putting two and two together themselves and imagining a creator in that role. It started before we'd even played a game and anyone had seen how we line up. Everyone making out like the thing he values most is a striker to get involved in build up like some sort of false 9. Yet actually, we've got four strikers at the club, three of them specialise in getting behind the defence and that, for all the world, looks like something Maresca values and wants to get out of them. Enzo is a manager that understands space. You don't get to work with Pep Guardiola unless you have the ability to read and interpret space and understand movement on a football pitch. What's the quote? "We don't pass to move the ball, we pass to move the opponent." For me you can apply that to the way he deploys our strikers. Yes, Vardy, Cannon and Daka have clearly all had instructions to drop deeper to be a receiver, often from as far back as Vestergaard or Hermansen, but they're not being expected to do anything in terms of complex build up play. Usually, it's just to lay the ball off with a first time pass to a midfielder in space and then to turn and get on their bike. The point isn't for the strikers to be creative or help fashion chances in the sense that people usually think of a striker "dropping deep." The point is to move the defence. Centre backs are forced to decide whether to follow or stay, defensive midfielders have an extra body to decide to pick up or not, you're forcing the opposition out of their comfort zone and making them make decisions quickly under pressure instead of safely sitting in their block. It's not a coincidence we've looked better over the last few games with Daka and Cannon who have the fitness, work rate and mobility to go from dropping in to receive a pass in our own half to spinning, running and getting in behind a few seconds later. It's not a coincidence that we were struggling more to create with Iheanacho in the side despite the fact everyone perceiving him to be more Enzo's type of striker because Nacho doesn't have the work rate or pace to stretch the game both ways. Cannon and Daka drag the defence up and then quickly stretch them back again. It's constant movement that I don't actually think Piroe was particularly well suited for if I'm honest. TLDR: I personally think Daka, Vardy and Cannon are exactly the "type" of striker we need and that Maresca values. They don't need extensive ball skills or great ability to do the "dropping in" we need, they just need a bit of coaching to tweak some of their natural instincts which Maresca seems to thrive on (see Wilf, Ricardo, JJ and Hama.) It's a shame we don't still have peak Jamie Vardy. He'd have absolutely thrived.