ALC Fox

Mavididi, Fatawu, Monga and Alves would be some pretty tasty options in the Championship next season if things fall that way

Is this perhaps the point? If Ruud has been told to put him on the bench/give him a few minutes, surely this will be a factor. If he gets a few more appearances, any compensation should be increased if he's already a Premier League player. The fact that he didn't look out of place among all 22 players on the pitch will only reinforce that. From a selfish LCFC point of view, the prospect of shelling out more money will hopefully put teams off, we keep him long enough to give him a professional contract and he's part of an exciting young side that takes us back into the Prem and re-establishes the club back among the elite (I'm dreaming)

Not entirely sure why some want Dyche. Everton were probably realistic candidates for relegation under him, which, when you consider just how bad the current bottom three are, is some achievement. He'd set us up to defend, which these players can't do. So not a great deal would change at all, in my opinion.

Get Ruud out. Give it Gary O'Neil until the end of the season. He likely won't save us but it'll be better than this sh!t. He's worked miracles before so you never know. He probably wouldn't come but it's worth a try at least.

Rinse and repeat. I know we need to protect some of these young lads. But some of them are tearing it up and are full of confidence. You look at this starting XI and the match-day squad in total, and you cannot see how we're going to do anything differently in the manner that Ruud sets us up.

Just playing actual senior football should be a big boost for him. If he can come into our squad with (hopefully) better players around him, he should develop quite quickly.

Will have had a chance here next season. Instead he'll be going through their academy set-up competing with the likes of Emile Heskey's lads and all the talent they've got. Hope he doesn't get lost there but we should be keeping tabs on him in case it doesn't work out and we can bring him home. Until a deal is done, though, he's still ours. I hope we can convince him to play first-team football next season and he decides to stay.

I wonder how closely we keep tabs on the talents that do get taken away early. Obviously Nyoni has a pathway at Liverpool. But someone like Noubissie, for example. I know he was just in the same England U16 squad as Monga but it would be interesting if we made it known that we were continuing to follow his development at Man City. He may be tearing it up, I don't know. I say this based on Tyler Dibling. He left Southampton for Chelsea and returned because he didn't settle there. It happens at first-team level so there's no reason why it wouldn't happen at youth level too. Now he's suddenly Southampton's best player and is being linked with big moves again. And if there's a youth player whose big move doesn't work out, where else is better to get back to a good level than the club where you earned the big move in the first place? So, if we do start to regularly have talents pinched from us, I do wonder if it's part of the strategy to keep tabs and swoop in if things start looking less rosy for them at their new clubs

What are the rules about picking a 15-year-old? I know he can be in a squad and can play but are there restrictions on playing time and also minutes played within a certain period of time? Also mustn't there be the provision to have him change in a separate changing room? Can this provision be provided at any ground or are there some grounds where this can't happen? Plus there's the duty of care to think of when playing against fully-grown men. One crunching tackle from a Milenkovic, Maguire or Ruben Dias and he's toast. He looks ready ability-wise - and I really want to see him put some of our waste-of-space first-teamers to shame - but there are other matters that affect whether he can play or not, and for how long.

Attack attack attack. We can't defend so just try to bulldoze teams. We may end up worse but we're going down anyway. Change tack, create a bit of excitement, get the crowd onside, throw a couple of the U21s in and at the very least go down with a fight.

Tonight's performance may have been partly down to the dearth of quality in the squad as well as the recruitment (and lack of). But the manager must take a lot of responsibility. There were no coherent patterns of play at all. Everything was reactive. The players received the ball and then took a touch and had a look around and wondered 'what do I do now then?' When receiving the ball after a corner, Soumare had a look and took an age to make a decision to give it back to Ayew, the corner taker. Ayew had two men to take on, realised his only back-up was Soumare who had made no overlapping run and then Ayew made the decision to take on a run at goal. There was no forethought, no moves honed on the training ground, no one-touch football. The players didn't know where each other were going to be. The midfield was absolutely vacant at times when Ndidi joined Vardy up top and El Khannous drifted out wide with absolutely nobody else filling the gap. With Mavididi and Buonanotte on the bench, there was no pace or penetration out wide. Both players now starved of game time and looking leggy for it when they came on, unable to really get up to speed with the game. Buonanotte still looks like a real talent but is being criminally overlooked. Absolutely everything stinks of poor management, both by King Power and Van Nistelrooy. Honking.

Like all wingers he'll drift in and out of games. Sounds like he was decent. Feels like he's on the cusp. Once he was one barnstorming game, he'll be their go-to guy.

Some selfish so-and-so on the M6 tonight not only hogging lane three of four at 60-65 mph but also having a very obvious FaceTime on a mounted phone and very clearly paying most of his attention to the call he was on

How good is Josh King in comparison?

Wondering if there will ever again be a stadium that doesn't play Freed From Desire after a home win

It's a fair point. It's also a risk to go into the second tier. If Parker doesn't fancy him for whatever reason, then he's failed to get into a Championship side which, you could argue, could be more detrimental for his reputation than failing to turn around a club that is currently a car crash on multiple fronts.

Marcus Edwards is an insane signing for the Championship. I know he hasn't been used that much for Sporting this season, but he was ripping it up the other season. Surely he can't have dropped off enough not to get a PL move? Should've been a no-brainer for a team like us.

Hopefully this is the Barnes to West Brom loan that indicates he's ready for us next season.

Send Edouard back. Get Rashford in. Just a six-month loan. No obligation. No option. Just work with Ruud again (who picked him consistently in his short interim spell in charge of Man Utd). Re-assess at the end of the season. Maybe another 12-month loan if we stay up, Ruud stays on and Rashford enjoyed it. Only a semi-serious suggestion because of wage issues, etc. but if no other move (for him or us) materialises before the end of the window, it could be a move that works for all parties.

Three managers didn't fancy him at two different levels (winning the Championship and fighting relegation back to it). He does look quite limited but he also does look like a very good, clean finisher. If he can develop certain sides of his game, he'll be a regular at the top end of the Championship and at the level we currently find ourselves at. But he's not there yet. We do need goalscorers but I think it's worth the risk to use the money and improve the squad in a couple of areas, including up top if possible.

Fulham's second goal was as atrocious a goal I've ever seen us concede. For a split second we actually look like we're in a pretty decent shape with the back four but some extremely simple passing and they're all doing their own thing, they're not alive to anything and the backline is being pulled around by actually nothing particularly special. And then Traore is free at the back post. Woeful. There's absolutely no doubt that these make up the worst defence I've ever seen from us in the Premier League.

The weird thing about Okoli is that Cooper seemed to like him and started him in several games, rotating him in and out - and he's been called up for Italy. It seems van Nistelrooy either doesn't like him or doesn't think he's ready to play Premier League football and prefers Coady, Vestergaard and Faes over him. But, the kicker is that - as a unit - we've been incredibly poor defensively whoever has been in the team. I think there's potential there, but I guess the smart play may well be to sell now while we can recoup a decent fee for him as his stock hasn't fallen much since he's been here. If we wait until we're relegated, then we could be stuck with a Soumare situation where we have to send him out on loan because his wages are too high and teams will try to lowball us on a fee knowing that we have to sell. I do like him, though. Not fitting RVN's blueprint might be a bit shortsighted as he could be a beast under a different manager, but if we're relegated and need to sell him anyway then I guess it makes sense to get rid now since having him in the side never really improved us in the first place. Tough call either way really.

King and Onanaye were notable absences. They injured or potentially could we see them in the squad today? Any others missing that anybody has noticed?

I don't like them. But coming so soon after our title win, it's good to see any team outside of the traditional elite challenging the established order. Their owner is a right whopper but fair play to them. They're upsetting the apple cart and hopefully more clubs like Brighton and Bournemouth can do the same (and us again one day!). The exception, for me, would be Newcastle. They can get in the bin.

People who don't clear their cars of snow before they head out on the road. Saw one car with snow covering the entire rear windscreen and another just dump a big pile of snow on the road from its roof, creating an unexpected hazard on an otherwise clear and ice-free road.