Detroit Blues

Yeah, also factor in the difference in places you might finish for prize money by keeping the high earning / more valuable players. Relegation aside, the difference between 17th and 12th would have been enough to pay for Tielemans annual wages. That said, he actually has to be a difference maker, and clearly by the end of his Leicester City stint, he wasn't. But the original vision of letting him run down his wages probably factored in a forecast of the revenue they'd get based on finishing in higher positions due to playing top quality players top dollars.

A unified NATO response (or threat thereof) would probably shift the dynamic where the Russian military high leadership and Russian oligarchs would see Putin's continued leadership being more dangerous to them personally than their fear of his reprisal.

Putin wouldn't do it, because he wouldnt risk pushing NATO into the conflict. I think if the Russians actually used tactical nuclear bombs in Ukraine, NATO would respond with an overwhelming conventional response. This is just posturing.

This is correct. It's not that King Power doesn't have enough money to support the overspending / investment into the football club. It's just that PSR limits investment to spending that can be supported by revenue. By sponsoring random bs like training facilities, King Power increases the revenue of the football club and thereby increases the amount the club is allowed to spend. Anyone who thinks we should not be doing this is naive. King Power should be looking into every legal avenue to increase the football club's revenue. Every extra pound earned or saved is going to be crucial. We need to trim all of the fat, and get rid of any player whose contracted wages outpace their on-field value. We need to put together a squad capable of getting 40-45 points next year depending on the points deduction. This is the make or break season. Leicester either does enough to survive the gauntlet of promotion/points deductions and re-establish itself as an ambitious premier league club, or it sinks back into the championship which could have disastrous financial effects.

He should start. It will be as close to a testimonial as he's likely to get.

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Must win

Really nice first touch by Fatawu and through ball to Yunus to set up the goal.

You summoned him

Inflatable dinosaur sighting!

Yeah... any way i look at it is bad: 1) They knowingly hit the car and then skedaddled, only contacting the driver after it turns out that the person they backed into had enough connections and clout for it to go viral and the police to be on the lookout. 2) They were unable to get out of the car park without smashing into another car, and their vehicle is already in such a dreadful state that they can't tell a car wreck from its normal operation. 3) They were unable to get out of the car park without smashing into another car, and their hearing is so poor they literally couldn't tell that they had hit Matty's car. What i will say is Piper seems like a genuinely good human being, and has offered far more grace and dignity to the offender than most would be willing to.

I think being younger also has some advantages. Xabi Alonso was quite recently a player, and can relate to what players of this generation encounter. He understands the tactics from a player's point of view, and can likely articulate them in ways players can better understand. He might lack the experience of a David Moyes, but he has other advantages to make up for it. I think one thing we can understand given the season we've gone through, is how quickly the game evolves. Maresca's system under Pep might have been the "best" tactical system in 2022-2023, but since then even Pep has needed to evolve his game. The longer your managerial career lasts, the more evolutions you will need to make. Time will tell if Xabi Alonso is really a great manager who can change with the times, or if he was just the right manager at the right time (like Ranieri for Leicester).

Yes, I really thought Dom was an excellent guest on the show. He really broke down Maresca's tactics and help articulate why we are struggling now vs earlier in the season. I thought Pipes did a good job of asking questions to help him dumb it down to my level of understanding

Yunus is probably the most "creative" #10 Leicester has, and would be the best fit in that CAM role. That said, I would fully expect KDH to be played there for work rate, leadership, set piece delivery, etc. Cannon would excite me to be played there, but not even in my wildest dreams does Maresca start two strikers The more I think about the alternatives to Maresca's preferred formation, the more I realize we are actually pretty thin in a lot of areas. We don't have really anyone I feel comfortable playing wingback, let alone two of them. We don't have much in the creative attacking midfielder role that can unlock a defense. We don't have anyone good in the air to throw on as a second striker when chasing a game. I don't understand how these pieces fit together. It's like someone went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of expensive ingredients but they don't fit together.

That's exactly it. Ricky is a CDM now. He doesn't have the legs anymore to be a fullback, wingback, etc. He can't get up and down the pitch for 90 minutes. The inverted fullback role has gotten the most out of him this season, but perhaps it's time to see if him and winks can be a double pivot in a 4-2-3-1.

This is embarrassing. Coady for Faes at half, Cannon for Daka, Atgun for Ndidi.

Perfect encapsulation of the last 11 games. Complete domination without scoring, give up a soft goal on the counter.

Honestly im just glad he found the back of the net.

Put Vestergard up top

Yeah. I think that is the case. Large portion of the support never took to him, or his style of play even when his team was winning. Disastrous financial situation behind the scenes including an inability to strengthen the squad in January. Now the results are not going his way and he is straight up not having a good time

If you look at our XG since Middlesborough, it has basically been a perfect storm of underperforming and bad luck. We've created an avg xG of 1.5 (down 0.4 xG from the prior 31 league games). This should be the main criticism against Enzo - the team is creating fewer chances. Yet the players do have a lot of blame to share. The team has been brutally bad in front of goal. in the last 10 games, we've only scored 11 goals, when we were expected to score 15. However, we've actually given up fewer chances in the last 10 games with an avg xGA of 0.84 (1.0 from the prior 31 league games). Yet that has not materialized on the pitch either, because we've actually conceded 13 goals when we were expected to concede only 8 or 9. Is that bad goalkeeping? Bad defense? Bad Luck? I don't know, probably a little bit of all 3. Just to wrap it all up - over the last 10 games, stats say we should have been winning on avg by 0.7 goals per game. Instead we've actually lost by 0.2, a total difference of 0.9 goals per game actual vs expected. I agree that the main focus needs to be on finding the right players who will score goals. We cannot rely entirely on a winger and a box to box midfielder to score goals.

I mean, yes we can't change the full starting 11. But if you look at our bench, we have 4-5 guys on any particular match that would start for the opposition. I think that's how much rotation I would expect given the fixture congestion. Anything less and you're just saying you don't trust your squad.

That is fair. I just think there's not a big drop off in some of the key areas we'd rotate. If there's not a sizable difference between the players (for example LB, striker, etc.) then why not just play the fresher guy?

We have the deepest squad in the league. To not rotate some of the squad would be very disappointing. We should take advantage of our depth of quality and be more well rested than our competitors when it comes down to the wire.

If i were him, i would be looking for the exits after this season no matter the outcome. What's the most optimistic outcome? We claw our way to promotion, go into the summer transfer window with dark clouds hanging over our heads financially, have to sell KDH and other key assets, cannot improve the team in any meaningful way and then have to compete with a worse squad in the Premier League? Toxic fan atmosphere even when we were successful in the championship because people haven't bought into his style of play, and then he wont even be able to field a team capable of playing that style against superior competition in the Prem. He'd be the favorite to be sacked by the bookmakers, and that's if Top even has the money to fire him and hire a replacement. If i were him, I would mutually agree to part ways and void the rest of his contract. Look for a new job, hopefully on the back of a successful promotion campaign when his stock is still pretty high.