Ric Flair

What order do fans place Potter, Smith and Cooper in? Dean Smith's Brentford and Villa career wasn't too dissimilar to Cooper at Swansea and then Forest. Smith got a much better tune out of Villa in his 2nd PL season though as they went quite far in to challenging for a top 7 place until they fell away when Grealish got injured. His career has fallen now though and wouldn't be talked about in the same breath as Potter but why? Brighton weren't any better under him than Villa were. Potter also didn't do a great deal in the Championship before stepping up to the PL. Maybe we've done OK getting Cooper in, time will tell.

We've clearly needed upwards of 3-4 central midfielders this summer and now we have our manager we can look to see what type those midfielders might be. We need another defensive midfielder but if Cooper is going to play with two deep lying centre mids then I'd like to see a player who's decent at winning the ball and either creating or getting in the box on occasion to score. I think we should go back in for Ao Tanaka from Dusseldorf. His contract is up next summer, they've once again failed to get promoted and ought to be available for a reasonable fee. He's come off the back of a very good season with 8 goals and 4 assists as he's played slightly more advanced than previous. I like players who could be deployed deeper or further forward and be comfortable. He's also got 4 goals in the last year for Japan too so he's really developing going forward.

That won't work for 23/24 accounts ad the EFL don't recognise it for PSR like the PL do.

Would absolutely love a wild piece of business like Danny Ward for £60m. As in we pay someone to have him and take the points hit.

The reasons it's youth players is there's absolutely no book value. But your point still stands.

I'd be livid if we sold Nelson, would need to be £15m + to lose such a player because we can't keep a handle on our fcukin bunce.

Super Cooper, loves big Harry Souttar 6ft fcukin 6............. will no longer spend his weekends down Wickes

I think that's absolutely fine too. It's a bit remiss of people to have to be happy with the initial decision to appoint him, especially as the fan base are becoming more disillusioned with our board but once the decision is made then getting behind him is the right thing to do.

Seems a genuine, down to earth bloke who I think our fans will be able to relate to. That's refreshing. I can see the players bonding with him in his communication as opposed to tactical prowess like Enzo may have empowered them. That's not to say Cooper isn't excellent at that, I don't really know yet but on a human level I can see a lit of them liking his demeanour.

Recording today, I've had about 4 hours sleep after the puppy's had the shits and the cats brought a rat in. I'm in no mood to mince me words.

Unloading the lorry tomorrow

That's what that Daily Mail article says.

Fofana when he came here and when he left

Hughes has left Norwich.

I read this but having done the research the majority of them left when Potter did (Reid, Hamberg etc). I can only presume that like Potter they are still being paid by Chelsea until they regain employment. For coaches and assistants, taking another job on a vast wage decrease to what they got at Chelsea might be harder to immediately accept than a manager who knows they're good for several more jobs on multiple million a year.

What gets lost in a lot of this is why they don't want to leave and run their contract down - the salary they were on here. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but many were uncomfortable at the spiralling wage bill and this added to the perfect storm.

I'd be happier with Kristiansen in our squad than without him.

That's only pertinent if the club ha e a strategy to ease the financial burden and it not be a noose around our necks year on year as we try and scrabble for survival in the Prem. As I've said, give me a lean mean fighting machine that might only be an ambitious Championship club with a highly regarded academy and other qualities than a punch drunk washed up PL team ala Everton.

There were moments, but he strikes me as a more traditional full back of the Fuchs and Simpson era rather than a very dynamic attacker.

Our own website has referred to him as being our 1st team manager.

Plenty has been said about the confusion over how his style fits in with the obsession our owners have of playing the sort of football Enzo deployed. Cooper can say all he likes about wanting to play possession football but as has been pointed out he played counter attacking football at both Swansea and Forest where for parts of his tenure they'd have been expected to dominate. So I'm not sure if he's kidding himself as much as the public. You can probably find quotes from Mark Hughes and Steve Bruce saying something similar over the years too. I understand in his 1st season in the PL that rhe squad was chaos and he adapted to get the job done but last season if you look at some of the stats it's grim reading. That's with better equipped players on the ball such as Sangare, Reyna, Mangala, Dominguez, Danilo to compliment the likes of Gibbs-White. I think he'll not hesitate to deploy a low block and surrender possession with us. That may well be required for us to be competitive, but it's going to be a huge shift from what we would have seen under Maresca and it's very confusing we've opted for this appointment. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't want us to stay up just for the sake of it playing attritional football and scrabbling about for players. I want to see something I can identify with, I want to see us rebuilt on sensible wages, with young talented players who play an exciting style of football that's flexible and dynamic. If Steve Cooper is part of that vision then good luck to him. I like his credentials from his time at Liverpool and England and he really impressed me at Swansea with the players he improved there. I hope his priority is being brave enough to bring Alves, Braybrooke, Nelson and others in to the 1st team next season. I want to see that belief and he'll get my support if he does. Stranger things have happened, this might be a modicum of success either short term or longer term but right now it does seem odd.

Probably the end of Mavididi and Fatawu though, which would be classic Leicester.

That's quite clear in his goals and assists, quite a poor return so far. I'd rather he was used as an LCB.

If we were to go 3-4-1-2 then he's one of the best strikers to play in a pair I've seen in recent years. Him and Haller at Frankfurt were unplayable. But he is like many strikers we sign, he isn't anywhere near as good as a lone striker. He also needs a big physical striker alongside him (something Cooper has had at Forest) but we don't have one of those either.

U21 manager?