Golden Fox

Bad news everyone... I just had a fox outside the office window having a poke around. It used to be a lucky omen - after finding one living in the garden just before the FA Cup semi-final against Southampton, I knew our name was on the cup. But I saw one in the run up to the Boro game & reopened an old betting account to put money on us winning. Then didn't see any until a couple of weeks ago when there were a couple of little ones chasing each other in the street in the run up to the Coventry game. So that's 2 losses following sightings this season (Although it might just mean bad luck for the rabbit who is now sitting blissfully unaware on the spot the fox was just on)

Just finished off the Niners game. Physically exhausted! Just so glad to get through after I though the game might have gone at points - Key stat: 49ers were 0-30 under Shanahan when down by 5 or more going into the 4th Qtr & they had a 7 point deficit tonight, so felt like another one of those games, but they are now 1-30. Not sure what to make of it, but I think the game was the definition of rest v rust. Green Bay started strongly and just looked more in the zone. But gradually, the Niners D got on top and the Niners Offense started moving the ball, and the Packers just seemed to fade in that 4th Qtr - having had no off game, a road game in Dallas, a flight back to Wisconsin and flight to the Bay Area, it may have been that as much as anything. But there is a hell of a good football team there. Looks like a breath of fresh air not having Rodgers around!!! (Where have I heard that before?)

No way I'm staying up until 4 or 5 am! Watching first half of Ravens game, then will watch the Niners game tomorrow avoiding the score and to hell with the rest of the games! 49ers were locked into that no1 seed about 3 weeks ago now, so it's been a long wait & will just have to wait a bit longer...

The big thing for me remains the split of Champions League money. Our league system as a whole generates 4 clubs to represent the league on the European stage. And those 4 clubs hoover up all that money which entrenches their position. Changing that so more goes to every league club would help even up FFP. Not going to happen, but that is the biggest cause of unevenness in revenues. (its the opposite of the draft system, where doing well one year gives you a competitive advantage the next)

The 70% is for the squad cost - defined as "employee benefit expenses, amortisation/impairment of player (or head coach) registration costs and agents and intermediaries’ costs". So the other 30% will be other coaches & backroom staff, travel, policing & matchday costs, stadium upkeep, overheads, cost of Seagrave & interest payments. In last year's accounts, our turnover was £215m. Admin expenses of £22m and interest of £19m comes to nearly 20%. Given there are likely non-player salaries in the £276m cost of sales and turnover will be reduced this year in the Championship, 30% doesn't look to be far off where we currently are.

Love it... trusting this team in the hands of a managerial genius. That career win % is something else... Some chap named Sven managed Ivory Coast...

Don't know what to make of the Packers this year... From 2-5 & a mess to 6-6 riding a 3 game win streak... to 2 bad losses & nearly gone at 6-8 to a great finish and this start to the Post Season. At this point, they will either flame out badly in the divisional round or go all the way!

That is great knowledge. I never knew that!

Not sure if its been posted elsewhere, but this pic is from the Arsenal v Liverpool FA Cup tie: Need to send round one of the kids to ask "can we have our ball back please?"

Looks as though Bill Belichick out the door! Would have been unfathomable a couple of years ago, but the numbers speak for themselves: After going 5-11 in his first season, they had 19 years in a row with a winning record (17 Division titles) & 6 Superbowls(!). But since then, its 3 losing records in the past 4 years & this year's train wreck of a 4-13 season & a last place finish. He is 15 wins away from overtaking Don Shula's total wins... I think he ends up tarnishing his reputation a bit further by taking another job.

Yes - there is an option to turn off scores, and one to turn off spoilers of TDs etc on individual games. I'd suggest ordering it before and playing around as from memory, it defaults to showing everything when you first get it. Niners have had a few Thu/Sun/Mon night games, so I've had to watch back a few games this year, so a couple of my experiences are: - try and avoid the BBC website altogether - they like to give headlines on the front page of sports to give away results - and sometimes on a football story, they will even have a link to video highlights. The headline saying the Ravens dominated the Niners was up on the site very quickly which put a dampener on my Boxing Day morning! - watching the games back is a 4hr video regardless of how long the actual game was. The first game I watched back I kept thinking due to the length that it had to be an overtime game and watched most the game waiting for the Niners to blow a big lead - which never happened and the game ending around the 3 hour mark and an hour of dead air afterwards! (They do have a choice of highlights, game in 40 or full game replay which is good. But I have pretty much given up with the game in 40 after the watching the Rams/Saints playoff game when the whole game revolved around a terrible pass interference - which was skipped completely in the game in 40)

Always wanted to watch a bit more college football, so have enjoyed it being on Sky. Watched the Gator Bowl last week, and first half of the Rose Bowl last night, but shame it went on so late - particularly reading up on the finish. Just another level from NFL to see such young guys with limited experience in such a big spotlight and the vast majority won't go pro, so will be the biggest event of their lives. Standout moment of the first half was the look on Harbaugh's face when they missed the extra point. He looked like he was going to kill someone. His intensity as Niners coach was legendary and you would not want to be on the wrong side of it...

Sorry - it does put your comment in a different light being more about Jackson than Purdy! But there are plenty of people out there knocking him: https://www.sportskeeda.com/nfl/news-cowboys-star-micah-parsons-fires-shots-brock-purdy-49ers-qb-s-disastrous-outing-vs-ravens But MVP irrelevant - its all about the Superbowl or nothing for the Niners. They are 1 game away from their 4th NFC Championship game in 5 years, so feel like they are due converting one! Particularly with the franchises' history. Ravens vs Niners would make a great Superbowl at this point - Ravens would be favourites after Christmas day, but that could have been different with a few different bounces of the ball & who doesn't love a recent Superbowl rematch!

People so keen to knock Purdy for some reason. The fact he will finish 2nd or 3rd in the MVP vote now being used as evidence against him.

Great evening - watched the Niners into the 4th quarter seeing off Washington in relative comfort, then switched to Redzone for some great finishes. And the Cardinals dump the Eagles to hand the NFC 1 seed to the 49ers!!! Time for a bit of R&R for a couple of weeks until a home Playoff game! (and given the great list of 49er QBs, pretty incredible to see Purdy breaking the franchise record of passing yards in the regular season!)

I disagree to some extent, as I think ground size has a lot to do with perception of a club. While we are stuck at 32,000, we'll still be in the former bracket. Another reason why getting on with the expansion is so important.

Thought this thread was a joke until I clicked on it. We're over half way through the season: record number of points at this stage ever, 6 points clear at the top and 11 points clear of 3rd. The season has already been defined - even if we cool off a little!

The "Big 6" narrative is ridiculous. In the last 9 years, Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man Utd have won the league a grand total of once between them! Its fair to say Man City had a down year, but Chelsea and Liverpool have both been hot and cold in that period. That year was actually a high watermark for Arsenal and Spurs and Man Utd have just not been relevant.

Half way through the season now, so there will be a bundle of incredible stats I'm sure. Extrapolating current points, 7th place would have 68 points, so we'd need 69 points to make the play-offs... Which is 11 more than we have now. To put it into context, bottom of the table has managed 13 points. We could put together a worse half a season than any team in the league this year and still be in with a shout of promotion!

Couple of points that haven't been made yet (coming from same MO as lots of others - have been going to games for 30 years, gone to plenty of away games, had a season ticket in the past & now feels like the sort of of supporter the club doesn't want to encourage). The demand for watching Leicester play now is massive compared to the past and compared to ground size. I fully support the OP about making tickets available for general sale if unsold, but that would still be a drop in the ocean of people who want to go and it would still be very expensive and price out a lot of people. We are not alone in this position. I was speaking to a 60 odd year old from Liverpool the other day - from the city, used to go a lot, but just no chance of getting tickets anymore. So given how many on here feel disconnected, the club need to think of other ways to go about it. I know the club is a business and is in an industry that has always been first come first served and tough luck if you are at the back of the queue (memories of spending a night queuing at Filbert St for ticket office to open in the morning), but this is a chance for the club to take a lead and to do things a different way. If they held a register of LCFC supporters - possibly free - possibly a couple of quid membership fee - then they could give a section of the ground over to registered supporters - so as to commit to all members having a chance to buy tickets for a number of games each year. This would cut down on your Leeds supporters trying to get tickets, as you wouldn't know what games would be offered. I'd supplement that by reducing season tickets numbers and giving more half season tickets or third season tickets - which would be cheaper than single game tickets, but would share round getting into the fixed capacity venue. Currently, there are 23,000 season ticket holders & 3,000 in the away end (not sure where the other 6,000 go...) - but you could have a lucky 15,000 with season tickets, 5,000 sharing half season tickets, 7,500 sharing third season tickets and 3,000 available for registered members - and get so many more people into the ground and connected to the club. All the concerns about general sales and not knowing who was going would be moot, and we could become a real model for a community club. This would p*ss off a number of current season ticket holders, but tough - they would still get to go to half the games & it give someone else a chance! Not going to happen - unless we get a new Head of Fan Engagement who is keen to be a trail blazer and had actually believes the tag line of the job description "Leicester City Football Club is deeply committed to the local community".

Informed comment on the BBC website about Cooper: Apparently, sacking Brendan was the reason we went down! He left us in the relegation zone with 10 games left to play, but clearly the relegation was nothing to do with him...

The frustrating thing for me is that when he came here, we were sold on his biggest attribute being able to put the ball in the back of the net. We've seen flashes - you don't score 4 goals in a game in Europe without that ability. But he just lacked composure in front of goal last night. There was first half where he steered it well wide, the semi-stumble when he was through and should have squared it or shot, another attempt where he tried a silly backheel rather than taking it on or just shooting - and that is 3 moments that spring to mind. This is not disagreeing that he might be the best option in link up play and the amount of chances we were getting in the first place was partly due to his movement and I get that strikers work on confidence, which is likely low if he's been sat out all season - but the story of last nights game was wave after wave of attacks but we couldn't put the game away, so I don't think frustration at our main striker who we paid something like £23m for to put the ball in the net is an unreasonable view.

I played competitively a bit in the 90s - in the Leicestershire leagues. I started in Div 6, then went to the 1st team and played in Div 4, then 3, then 2 then captaining the team in Division 1 and holding my own - albeit on the lower boards, but it was quite a journey! Played a few times for Leicestershire at various levels. (also played at University - captaining the 2nd team to a promotion.) I was a good player, but being in clubs with where other players were on top boards in division 1 - I was always aware of being a step below them. But since starting work, that was it other than the odd game Like most things, its time and finding people to play against & have never found anyone in the workplace that will give me a decent game. Have never really got into playing computers or online - would prefer to play across the board from someone rather than looking at a screen, and that limits options. Still - one evening this week, I'll have a run through your game @leicsmac - I usually play the Sicilian as black and IM is a very good standard to be competing against, so will enjoy that.

Heard about that site for the first time earlier in the season https://nflscorigami.com/ . Its probably very sad that I can admit to happily spend ages trawling through it... (with https://www.gridiron-uniforms.com/GUD/controller/controller.php?action=main open on another tab of course!) To be fair, 49 points looks to be a bit of a cut-off and once you get past that, its open season - looks as though a team has only scored more than 62 points13 times in history (last night & the Dolphins 70-0 earlier in the year being the only 2 times since 1966) so it would have been more amazing to not get scorigami with that score last night!