Golden Fox

Incredible catch - my son had wandered into the kitchen just as that happened, and heard me exclaim, so we watched a few replays of it! As a pretty good goalkeeper, you don't see many saves that good. Let along catching the ball one-handed. Well played to the Ticats though - 5 wins in a row for the first time since 2019. I do dislike Bo Levi Mitchell more with every game - he just has a smarmy facial expression that you just want to wipe of his face. Just had a look at the standings: the early dominance of the West had started to dissipate & its gone with those 3 road wins for Eastern teams this weekend. Suddenly, rather than the Argos looking at being 3 games back from Montreal & the Ticats & well adrift, they are only 1 back from BC as the crossover team. But it really is one of those seasons with every bit of good news followed by some bad: the story of the season has always been about it turning around once Chad Kelly came in... and having been week to week, they have just now put him on the 6 game injury list, so it looks going to have to be Arbuckle or bust.

West Ham and Forest had red and claret kits with the generic 7 series badge, the club crests weren't behind the goals and they had names like East London All Stars and Forest Reds. We were Leicester City and had (awful) Leicester City kits and the badge on full display, so we had definitely authorised it as a club whereas others hadn't. Maybe we just don't have a great social media team. Perhaps if it had been Drinkwater's birthday...

A 2nd win for my Argos!!! Not out of it yet at 2-5, but gutting to see Montreal win against the odds again to beat Calgary to go to 5-2. As a 49ers fan, one of the most frustrating games of the last few years was when some QB called P J Walker got a start for the f**king Cleveland Browns against them, and played out of his skin as the Browns won the game on a Niners missed walk off field goal. Never heard of the guy again, until he popped up as Calgary's backup when Vernon Adams went down and he's now forgotten how to throw the ball and seemed to do everything he could to ensure Calgary lost from a winning position.

Games are on DAZN - and available from last 2 nights. Its a bit of a pain to skip through and find the Leicester games (2 on each night) but thoroughly enjoyed watching them. Far more entertaining than pre season!

Unfortunately I think you're right, but we have really snookered ourselves with these dodgy deals. The FBS one was where it started going wrong. We were in a much better state as a club then, still a big name following the title win and top half premier league so could have attracted a long term blue chip sponsor. Maybe an airline or proper financial institution. But we sold our soul to the devil for that reported £40m (wonder how much of that we actually saw) and are now shopping in the basement bin with no chance of that sort of deal now.

Still just a poor design though... Can't stand messing around with collar design changing below the neck, and the apron strings were always a bad look (in other sports as well as football) which had rightly been consigned to history. It is so apparent that this need for new kits every year is driving unnecessary elements just to make the shirt different from the last one. Wish the football world would go back to every couple of years, but that ship has sailed. That said, if we had gone just blue and white like this, with white shorts it would be a refreshing look harking back to '96, but instead it just feels more of the same Adidas rubbish that I'd struggle to pick out of a line up of all our recent home shirts, so at least I'm saving £70 again this year!

100% of me really hopes they've got the message!

I was chatting to a Man Utd fan in the work kitchen yesterday... He asked "What league are you in this year again?" Sums it up for me - our awful season and record setting number of games without scoring was galling for us, but barely a story in terms of the overall Premier League. Most people couldn't care less about who's in the relegation scrap or in Championship. Basically, the football world views us as "not relevant".

Yes - I'd forgotten that was his debut. Hadn't heard the story about the shorts on the wrong way round though! Shame that footage is too grainy...

A bit of a niche one, but my first time living away from home was in Suffolk in 1996, so Ipswich away was a massive game for me: (For some context, MON had been manager just over 2 months & the infamous Sheffield United home game would be a month later) (For additional context, I thought Ian Marshall was a complete pillock flouncing around in his long hair. What a difference a hair cut can make!) To be fair, the whole team was pretty awful in that first half, but Neil Lewis was given an absolutely torrid time. Turned inside out time after time by Gus Uhlenbeek. See 1:05 of the video where Uhlenneek is just taking the p**s and strolls all the way round Lewis to pick the ball up the other side so set up their 3rd. MON wasn't against singling him out though as hoicked him off - and then what really put his performance into perspective was that Emile Heskey came on for him and then proceeded to made Uhlenbeek look like the rank amateur he was by dominating that side of the pitch as we recovered from 3-0 down & nearly salvaged something. Uhlenbeek looked like he wanted to give up football at the end of the game, so it was really some performance from Lewis to have made him look like a world beater.

What a sponsor... prety much says "Kill Bayern!" If your going to make up a company as a sponsor, a cool logo and a subliminal message against your local rivals would shift far more shirts than BC Game or KBet.

It could be worse... you do have a week off from it this week, and although the Argos aren't quite as bad as the Elks (most power rankings have them at #8 and #9), the fact there are flashes of ability means we can build a 25-7 half time lead, making it all the more distressing to self-destruct and still lose the game. Following this sport was meant to be a bit of light relief and watching that on Friday night really ruined the weekend right from the start. Still, plenty of black humour to go round, as on top of all the current injuries, our best offensive lineman, Ryan Hunter managed to get hit by a car while riding his scooter on the way to practice. The car driver claimed to not see him. Easy to miss a 316 lb mountain on a scooter. Hopefully Ottawa can do everyone a favour tonight: starting to find out those TiCats fans don't make good winners!

Tete vs Villa.

I won't blame you for posting an away shirt in this thread... as it was this beauty I chose to immortalize as an away kit when choosing to paint a subbuteo team (as per my avatar)! But I did cheat a little with the home shirt, as I went with the first ever home shirt - the black with the light blue sash. Not sure there will be many mentions of that in this thread! (If I ever get round to finishing them, I did feel like I needed a blue team, so am half way through the 80s pinstripe one with the green & yellow away)

I picked up the horrible dishwasher gold shirt from '04 for around a tenner at the end of the season as a bit of a joke. Wore it for 5 a side for years and beach. Not quite in prime condition any more with sponsors peeled off, but still wear it and gave it a run out at football a couple of weeks ago. Its funny how bad shirt can become the most worn one. Anyway, back to the thread, no debate. This was the first ever shirt I bought, (football shirts had a bad reputation in the 80s with hooliganism) so i bought it just as I started making my way in the world awat from Leicester: Summer in California and then at university, this was part of my identity, and coincided with a rebirth of the club as relevant again:

Striker is what worries me. Last time down, we switched between Vardy, Nacho, Daka and Cannon. 3 of those have gone and we're not getting through 46 games with Daka...

Managers can adapt and change... just last year, we were saying this about Enzo, and one season later, he's taking apart the best team in world football by getting his goalkeeper to hoof it as far forward as possible!

We do need to be careful alleging money laundering, and there is also a massive difference between money laundering and playing financial games to get around some arbitrary rules put in by governing bodies. Take Chelsea for example. Abramovich was clearly money laundering as it enabled him to get his crooked millions out of Russia and spend. But their recent dealings of selling hotels and women's teams to sister companies is making a mockery of the rules, but are just really moving assets around the same group, so isn't really shady at all. Reading @HankMarvins posts on 2014, it looks like a poorly disguised way of King Power paying sponsorship but using an interim company to get money paid. Trestellar were registered in England and are still registered (although not audited). They made over £800k in their first accounting period in 2015 and profit and loss reserves still just over £800k, so this is likely an agency fee and a lot of the money flows would have been traceable. This smacks of Chelsea's recent shenanigans - being cute with the rules and getting away with it, but not money laundering. It is possible that this is just more of the same of Top paying money into the club and using KBet to cover tracks as this might be a standard service offered by these companies, and it is just about hiding flows from the football authorities rather than it being money laundering. But the fact the sponsor on the shirt doesn't exist as a genuine business and the fact the company is registered in Curacoa just takes this to another level. I would have thought if it was just about PSR, we could pursue other options (e.g. selling our own women's team) - but I can't see why we have gone down this route as a club if it wasn't due to the original source of the money being from illegitimate means.

Top or King Power might be into shady deals and have lots of cash or money on bitcoin accounts that they can't spend without triggering the authorities as to how they got the money. But if they pass this dodgy money to these companies who then pass it back as "sponsorship", then King Power or Top or LCFC (as our club is now party to this) now have a legitimate source of that money and they can now spend it. The fact that the amount of sponsorship likely exceeds the turnover of these companies is a clear sign its going on - but nobody seems to want to do anything about it.

Genius. We sponsor Forest through our Seagrave training ground for £150m. They sponsor us through The City Ground for £150m. (If the font for Ground is miniscule enough, I could live with having "The City" on our shirts). The expense is deducted from PSR calcs as it is part of infrastucture spend. However, the income is included. And if there is any argument that the sponsorship is not market rate, we point to each other's deals.

Not sure I've ever been less bothered by a pre-season friendly. The manager for the season hasn't started so has had no input in formation or tactics. No new signings to see. A fair few players playing that the club are desperate to shift (either perm or on loan) so won't play during the year, and a game that will go on and on and on.

If?? Millwall was literally his first job in English football!!

Already circled Labour Day in the calender... You'll see a very different Argos team then...

To be honest, it was a total beat down. It was men against boys, so I had to run with the limited material available!