CUJimmy

Can I just add that my wife and I are both 60 this year and chose our season ticket seats in the full knowledge of it being a ‘standing tolerated’ area. We can sit before the game and at half-time if we want to as do plenty of people around us. I know that at some point in the future we will have to move to a seated area but we will cross that bridge when we come to it. The key for me is to give people the choice, there was a survey about the singing section so why not one about safe standing?

Cardiff was my first experience of it and I have to say it seemed to work OK. It was pretty much the same as standing in the singing section but with a bar in front of you for safety so difficult to see how anybody could object.

A few years back a mate and I went for a wine tasting road trip in the Loire Valley. We had stayed in a nice hotel in Sancerre and were on our way to Nantes when my wife phoned to say that she had had a call from a French lady to say (cue best ‘Allo ‘Allo accent) - ”Your husband has left ‘is passport in my bedroom”. What really pìssed me off is that at no time did she think I had been up to no good.

During my daughter’s first year at Uni one of her flatmates mistook a plastic chopping board for a baking tray. It didn’t end well 🤣

Looking at it from our perspective and on recent form no but if he got injured or someone else took his spot and did well then it might come into play. He might not have wanted to take the risk. My guess is he had an honest conversation with the Ghana coaching team about how much he was likely to play and if it would affect his chances in the future if he didn’t go. Houghton seems like a decent guy so quite possibly told him to keep learning from Enzo, get a contract in the EPL and take it from there. It’s all speculation of course but I am fairly confident Enzo will have had a word in his ear, he was the Master’s Apprentice after all.

Any early thoughts? Diane has clearly clocked Harry so unless she is chosen as the fourth Traitor she will be pushing for him to be banished. Whether she is persuasive enough at the Round Table though remains to be seen. Paul is a bit too full of himself so I suspect will get over-confident, talk too much and give himself away sooner rather than later. Ash is very wisely keeping herself under the radar so she is my early tip to do well. Obviously we are totally at the mercy of the editing team so what we see might not be the reality.

Good point. 27 is the number that is usually quoted so either others had forgotten that he didn’t sign until late or it does include cups. Either way, barring a serious injury it’s not going to be an issue.

It was reported as 60% of matches which would be 27 or 28 (depending on rounding) if it’s league only. 30 if it includes cups (more if we progress).

Glad it turned out ok for you. The two lads in between my wife and son have been happy to shuffle up so we will probably try to formalise that next season. I know they get a lot of stick but I have found the ticket office to be very helpful. On a couple of occasions we have brought my Mum who is in a wheelchair and they have been able to do swaps on the phone without any problems at all.

I seem to remember the January recruits had relegation clauses but I don’t know if that applied to the longer serving squad members as the club didn’t seem to consider relegation as a possibility. We also don’t know if last summer’s signings had a promotion clause so there might not be as much wriggle room as we would hope. The ridiculous contracts handed out in the Rogers/Congerton era might take a while to unwind unfortunately.

Just catching up on this thread. I had forgotten about Soumare. He is on (apparently) a massive wedge and his contract runs until June ‘26 so we really must offload him permanently this summer otherwise his wages will shaft us.

My lad was in a pretty much identical situation. Turned out that he had been sent an email but it was in the Junk folder. I think he just got in by a point or 2 and luckily got a seat just a couple of spots down from the rest of us.

An observation more than an accusation and borne out of the frustration as an England fan in the 90’s of seeing players pulled out of squads late. You are 100% right though about the need to manage small injuries to stop them becoming bigger ones, we know better than most how keeping on playing with a minor injury or coming back too soon can make things worse. Particularly a player with Wilf’s history. What is slightly surprising is that Nigeria could have got him to join up, put the other guy on standby and taken 10 days to make a decision. The loyalty question is also interesting. Growing up we were always told it was ‘Club before Country’ and while that makes a lot of sense for the class of ‘92 I wonder if it’s the case for players nowadays who have often moved around more? What I don’t know is who made the decision about Wilf. Was it our medical staff, the Nigerian medics or the player himself? Anyway, let’s just hope it isn’t anything serious and we can have him back sooner rather than later. We were expecting to have him out for 5/6 weeks so anything less than that is a bonus.

I agree what Enzo has said does seem to contradict with his use of the word ‘option’. Unless he was implying that if he had gone to AFCON he could not be sure of walking back into the team so might not make the 60%. By keeping him on his toes I just meant that he needs to keep getting picked if he wants a contract so shouldn’t take anything for granted.

True but tournaments for European players are outside of the league season and if you think back to that Man Utd team of the 90’s the majority were English.

Ferguson and Wenger both used to do this all the time. Players would pull out of International with a niggle then after an extra weeks rest be magically fit again for the next league fixture.

If Enzo is sure he is Prem quality it makes sense to sign him permanently now to free up the third loanee slot. I can’t see Sporting complaining. If not then keep him on his toes.

If he is 3 weeks away from being able to play Nigeria might not want to tie up a squad place I suppose. They have already called up a replacement according to the Nigerian press.

Keep him out of Saturday for the sake of appearances then back in for Cov or Ipswich at the latest and watch the Twitter meltdown.

That must be where I am going wrong 😂.

I use public transport around Leicester a lot for work and compared with other similar sized cities it is shockingly bad. Even just focusing on match days we would love to use P&R but the best one for us drops off in the middle of town so is a 30 min walk to the stadium and the last bus out is at 7 so limited chance to grab a pint or something to eat after the match. Its quicker to join the traffic getting out of Freemans Wharf or grabbing a cheekie Nandos first then driving straight out.

I was one of those who was delighted that he stayed and thought he would tear up the championship but for whatever reason this has not happened. I am sure the club would sell in January but two things would need to be in place: 1. There needs to be a club that would buy him. Villa doesn’t make any sense to me but maybe a Palace or Wolves level. 2. The player has to want the move. He might be quite happy with limited game time then pocket a tidy signing on fee.

My renewal quote went up from £270 to £540 even before they knew I had an accident last month (hit from behind so clearly not at fault and not even on my insurance but I declared it anyway). Eventually found a deal that insured both cars for less than £500 - maybe 10% up on last year due to a big (>20%) multi-vehicle discount. It’s with a known name insurer too, I have done the cheap-as-chips option before and that was fine until I was absolutely stung for changing the vehicle on the policy. Went online to cancel the renewal and it came up with a message saying that they might be able to offer me a better price. No. If you could do a better price for an existing customer but have chosen not to then you can eff off.

We were talking about this on the way back last night. Every team apart from Ipswich, Southampton and Leeds will see us as a Free Hit home or away. It’s a small step from there to seeing it as an opportunity to rest their better players. Cardiff last night were definitely in damage limitation mode after the second goal went in.

Just got in after the long trip back from Cardiff. As others have said it was a thoroughly enjoyable end and lots of humour from our fans. Interesting to hear a Cardiff fan on Talkshite saying that they were played off the park and out-sung on the terraces for the entire 90 mins. He was full of praise for our players and fans. It seemed to me to go quiet only a couple of times as though we needed to conserve energy during a busy period the same as the players do. They were clearly appreciative of the support - has anyone got a video of Stephy at the end conducting us singing “Enzo went to Europe …”? One final point, it was my first experience of safe standing and I thought it worked really well. To me it would be an obvious next step for the singing section and/or L1 and I can’t believe it would be very expensive.