honeybradger

1 goal this season. Surely we just see this as a bullet dodged and move onto other targets.

What do you mean by 'none of the managers'. Rodgers gave him his first team debut at 16 in January 2022. He got injured in the December of that year. Maybe he could have played more games in the league cup but he was still very young. Dean Smith couldn't pick him due to injury. He only came back under Maresca for the last couple of games. Cooper is the first manager to have him available and ready and not give him a fair shake. Van Nistelrooy has had him on the bench for the last couple of games and gave him his PL debut. It feels like he's finally getting his chance. Out of all our managers Cooper is the first and only manager to seemingly not rate him based on not giving him minutes in pre season.

Cheick Konate at Clermont foot in Ligue 2. Could be worth a punt on the cheap, seemed to hold his own against world class players like Mbappe and Nuno Mendes in the video but he's a bit short.

Regarding Nottingham Forest's centrebacks I didnt mean that they were a well run club, just that there are good centrebacks available for £10mil and they were some of the examples from the PL. Regarding Fofana I think signing him for £32mil was a mistake and we got bailed out by Chelsea. The risk of having him injured (like he did) or not performing exceeded what our tolerance for risk is as a club and we would have been in deep financial trouble had we not been able to sell him. I hope we dont make transfers like him any time soon no matter how good he was for us. Regarding Coady I dont think he was good value for money at all. He's an example of our poor recruitment. We overpaid for him for guaranteed experience similar to how we may overpay for someone like Khusanov for guaranteed quality. The issue is that nothing is guaranteed in football, for example Coady's inability to hold a defensive line against Man City despite being a veteran. Khusanov may not be the great defender we thought he would be and we go down anyway. With someone like Khusanov his value is inflated because there is loads of interest in him, if we go for uncovered gems it's easier to get better value as there isnt as much competition and if they dont work out we can sell them on for a nominal loss. The spend more to win more fallacy isnt always correct. Ajax tried to start spending large amounts of money and they collapsed, they have now gone back to their academy and recruitment of unknown players and got much better. Man United and Everton are lower table teams despite spending. We collapsed after a summer of no major sales and buying multiple £20mil players. At the end of the day half the best teams in Europe are the likes of Atalanta, Sporting, Benfica, Porto, PSV, Feyenoord, Ajax, Leverkusen etc that dont spend much but have excellent scouting and youth development. That needs to be our model, not following the top 6 PL team model of overpaying for the big name of the day.

True, contradicts your point that we need to spend big for a quality player when a good scout could find one for £5mil. Not true. Forest signed both of their centre backs for £10mil each. PSV signed Ryan Flamingo for £8mil. Bournemouth signed Huijsen for £12.5mil. Porto signed Otavio for £10mil. There are loads of good and ready centrebacks in the market available for £5-£10mil. We just need to do our due diligence on our transfers. If we cant do that then £25mil being spent is an even worse idea. As above we could easily spend £15mil+ each on centrebacks/fullbacks and go down anyway. Faes, Vestergaard, Souttar and Kristiansen cost us £15mil each and none of them are good enough. A well run club such as Bologna, Porto, PSV etc would only be willing to spend £5mil or less on each of these players. None of these will be in for Khusanov for £25mil as they know there is better value to be had in the market. It will come down to how well the players were scouted, not how much was spent on them.

If I were Brighton I'd snap their hands of for £37mil. Facundo has his moments but he's nowhere near a £40mil player currently, you would just be paying for potential and there is no guarantee that he will reach that next level.

Well run clubs sign quality players in the £5-10 mil bracket all the time. Some of our worst transfers have been £20mil and over. A higher transfer fee does not guarantee quality and if it doesnt work out it means we are stuck with them for the foreseeable future. We should not be spending £25mil+ on players any time soon.

Why does he massively need to take that chance? Why is the requirement for game time so much higher for our academy players than our senior players? Cordova Reid gets given consistent minutes despite usually playing poorly for us, why does Alves need to blown the doors down just to get given a chance.

He's on loan from Juventus

We need more Moroccan ballers. We need a better left back. Salah Eddine would be perfect.

Hope he gets some proper minutes in the second half of the season.

I think we should sell while/if his stock is high. If we can get the £7mil we spent on him back that would be excellent.

In what universe does Steve Cooper take more points from the last 5? We had lost all confidence under him and the only game you would argue that the result has gone against what we expected was Wolves which was a Danny Ward disaster class, otherwise they have all been as expected. Let's just get behind Van Nistelrooy and the team, we have half the season left to go and we will get results if we keep on playing football like we did today

We've conceded 12 in 4 games but that's just a surface level analysis. Newcastle - we were forced to play Skipp and choudhury and ward because of injuries Wolves - we had to play Skipp and Ward Liverpool - best team in the world. Man City - we played well With our best XI minus Fatawu we are actually playing well enough to stay up. Cooper refused to even play our best players and we looked awful. Van Nistelrooy at least has us looking like an actual football team.

We have enough to go on a good run at the end of the season, I'm sure of it the same way I was sure we were going down this time in 22/23

I think if we have a good January window we stay up.

You know Southampton are awful when we're already desperate for them to win.

Winks isnt even that good. For £25mil we could have easily signed a clear upgrade on Winks. Skipp is 24 as well, not even particularly young

Been very disappointed with Buonanotte under Van Nistelrooy. Dont think it impacts us too much if he gets recalled.

This wasnt even that bad, it bounced in front of him and he put it to the side. Not his fault there's no defender within mile of Savinho.

Even if they saw us as their Nr 1 rivals it's still a bit much.

80 pages, the majority in the last couple years, on a club that they dont support is so weirdly obsessive. Do Birmingham/Aston Villa, Arsenal/Spurs etc have dedicated threads to talk about each other on their forums? You see them on every Leicester related Twitter post as well, considering they dont even consider us a rivalry it's strange that they seem to be enjoying our demise so much 🤔

Yh but he creates a lot of chances for the opposition by giving it away similar to Faes. If we have him in the team we need to not try and pass it out otherwise it will cause problems.

I would probably have him in the starting lineup as he's a good strong tackler but he's a bomb scare on the ball, which is not good enough for what we paid.

£35mil spent on Skipp, Okoli and Ayew is what killed us. Invest that money intelligently and we finish midtable. There is always value to be had in the market, we signed Mahrez for £400k in January. The main issue is that our transfer department is one of the most incompetent in the league.