gerblod

This isn't then a discussion with any viable result. Thomas isn't Ashley Cole and you can't deal with that. So, even though, for a significant period, he was an automatic selection in a team far more effective than this current one, he's the one you single out for opprobium. You're not alone. It's a pattern that individuals get singled out when the team isn't working. Chilwell got the 'treatment' as has Kristiansen. But 70% of any sports performance is confidence. The élan of that Cup winning side was superb until Rodgers gradually stifled it. There's no such thing as a bad player at Premiership level - there's much more telling factors at work. Anyway, you don't care what I think or believe. Fair enough.

Thanks for your honesty.

You've completely ignored the fact that he played well enough to get in the team that won two honours. You're just scapegoating one player whom you feel you have a reason to pick out. If you can't reply to a reasonably thought out post without resorting to guff then you're wasting your time. Some will agree with you no doubt - but I can't respect your thinking. Sorry.

This is one of the most perceptive an accurate posts that's been made - especially appropriate to one of the major fvck-ups in allowing Rodgers to hang on way past his manage-by date. This idea of 'bad players' at Prem level is laughable. To get anywhere near this level requires almost superhuman skill, strength, determination and persistence - especially when injury intervenes. Lack of self-belief and confidence in fellow players and a succession of ineffective managers has led to this shambles. The squad and club needs a complete makeover.

What the hell kind of statistic is that? Does it reflect on him in any way? He was an FA Cup winning player as well. It's not an achievement - takes a poor squad, poor manager and poor club management to "achieve" that. He was screwed over by Rodgers' temperamental fall-out with the club and the club's failure to act. Of course, Luke became the personal scapegoat for a number of posters on here, but Madders, Evans, KDH, Vardy (even) Ward, Faes, Vestergaard, Castagne, Daka, Winks and uncle Tom Cobley have all been labelled as 'unwanted' on here by someone or other. The squad needs a total overhaul and Thomas is one of the lads to keep.

For much of his time at City he's been left wanting the kind of service Mahrez gave him in the Pearson/Ranieri era. Had he gone to Arsenal his reputation would have been international. As it is, his reputation as the greatest ever is never going to be eclipsed at City. Despite the growing numbers of detractors who've wittered on about him losing his powers and about his pay packet, in reality he's still an effective Premier striker. The club has let him down by not getting him the kind of assistance he needed - making mediocre buys at inflated wages. I suspect he's just had enough of the incompetence and self-interest of those running the club and it's resulting current demise. Shame he couldn't retire here with the club secure in the Prem.

A fresh start would have to begin with the likes of Aiyawatt Raksriaksorn relinquishing his ownership of the club and the new owner(s) ending the overlong stays of Rudkin and Whelan. Sport of any kind is about confidence, which the team have largely lost. Immediate failure on the back of the tremendous bounce back last season has crippled a team progressively shorn of its talented players. How can a manager incentify players who know they're filling places by rote, rather than competing for them? Top inherited the Club and the honorary title - he deserves neither. I have sympathy for him, but too much unearned power usually turns out a mediocre result. You've only to look at Donald Trump to see what havoc incompetence wreaks. As much as I love Jamie Vardy, I'd have welcomed some form of protest from him. His unswerving loyalty hasn't questioned how the club he has given so much to has frittered away so much of that positivity Vichai created amongst fans and Leicestershire supporters. Problem is, in English football, there are few English billionaires knocking around queuing up to own an English club. The money is in the Arabian peninsula, the States or the Far East. When you are as rich as the Saudis et al then the amount of money you can throw at success is almost limitless. We've wasted much of ours as we've wasted the rep. we earned in '15-'16. The rot started with Rodgers' impasse with the executive. Had we had decisive, proactive executives running the club, this farce wouldn't have happened. Mediocre at the top creates mediocrity all the way down. City has an institution has been badly served by those who haven't respected that institution.

OP = Original Poster - it's taken me a long while to work that out! Does that qualify me as FT village feckin' idiot? At last, an award I deserve. As for the OP, goes on a bit, dunn he?

Start believing in divine intervention.

He or she gets paid for being Statto so, unless they're chained to a screen and whipped, no, they don't have to.

The game changed when Monga and Pereira came on. We actually saw a player (Ricardo?) running at the opposition and passing them. Takes a 15 yo to bring some desire and energy to the team. Buonanotte as well and Mavididi to an extent. Nistelrooy should stop feckin about and field only those who'll treat it like a fight.

That's the most likely reason. However, he has an income that would allow the kind of assistance money can buy. If it's because of emotional issues one can understand the two-way pull, but he should understand that Spurs didn't want him and he chose to work for City. Commuting long distances has become usual these days, but I don't think it's a good idea. Driving 200 miles a day can't be good for a player's well-being. The commitment should include moving into the club's area. There are implications for the family, but plenty of blokes (trying not to be sexist here) work away and return at weekends etc. Playing for a club is more than just working for a firm. The club shows commitment to the player, he or she should be prepared to commit to the club - which includes the coaching staff.

Now we're doomed the quality of comment is becoming markedly whimsical. Like the chap who's being hanged and the trapdoor is stuck. He says to the executioner, "I think I can see where it's stuck."

Best slowly turn round and go back, firmly closing the door behind you. Have a beer and go to bed.

He's taking the piß, rat bastard.

Because rhinos are aggressive b'stards who'll pick fights with elephants. I'd like to see City with a bit of that spirit.

Rudkhun must have gone through a similar process - he's bomb proof - making him impossible to sack, and, in addition, has rhino skin, making him impervious to criticism.

I don't know what form of misanthropy ails you, but your objectivity regarding football isn't the issue here. It seems like a personal vendetta against Vardy because of his age and that alone. The salary isn't important - it was offered and he accepted. He's been hugely loyal, but that doesn't move you either, does it? As an observer of football for many years, I can state that he has one of the best football brains in the game. Age won't take that away before he retires At his peak that, combined with his alacrity and toughness has created a hard act to follow - for him. He's disliked by a number of fans because he's not peak Vardy any longer. That's a pathetic excuse for creating these hollow reasons to move him along. He's the heart of the club.

We all 'signed on' to support a football club, not clandestine and questionable deals organised by the spivs now controlling the club. That's all we can expect of each other - to choose whether or not to support our team - the current version of which has, admittedly emerged from the mire created by said spivs. What saddens me is that it's looking as though Vichai was less than the honourable bloke I believed him to be. Buying a club can be the beginnings of a grand pastime for a millionaire - but that I may have been naive about his motives is v. disappointing. That the 'glad-handing' that went on with the Leicester support may just have been a superficial exercise in cynically getting us onside is worse than disappointing. It appears that the Prem title and the FA Cup could have been just fortuitous by-products achieved by the Pearson/Walsh team and Claude Puel's assembly of a talented squad placed v. nicely in Rodgers' spawny lap. That the development side of LCFC has placed itself in hock to Macquarie has been the subject of severe scrutiny by the 'accountants' on here. That aspect appears to have gone 'doggo' lately. Stadium expansion isn't currently going to be filling many of these potential seats the rate the team's going. There's a few heads that should be hanging in shame atm but I doubt they'll ever be locked in stocks outside the KP - I can think of a more appropriate statue to be raised there - the usual suspects in striped pyjamas linked together on a chain gang litter picking on the verges of the main thoroughfares out of the City. Out of being the appropriate phrase.

For the first time in 65 years of watching City, I lost interest in the game. I paid NOW TV £14.99 and almost instantly regretted it. I think that Sky Sports probably regretted it too. United are a nothing team at the moment, but managed to put 3 past us. We should be bottom, but Southampton are saving us that indignity - although we deserve it. The moaners on here can blame the team - even having a go at Jamie Vardy (and, pathetically, what he's paid), but the rot is higher up the tree. Nistelrooy and Cooper inherited the fallout from the mediocrity now running the club (running it into the ground, more like). That doesn't excuse either for failing to motivate the players or put a team together that's willing to fight The players have lost heart and direction. There's no leader where there should be - in midfield. Soumare typifies the apathy exactly - he should have been gone two years ago. Buying two Saint's has-beens was evidence that the Club was beginning to lose its way. Persisting with Ward was another sign of incompetence. Whatever his part in this fiasco, Rudkin should resign. He should be aware he's disliked and held accountable by the majority of fans. How does he justify staying on? He and Top maybe are colluding in the fantasy that it's not their responsibility that we are where we are. Relegation is inevitable and unless some big changes happen we're in for a period of Championship stagnation. Everything that could have gone wrong has been allowed to go wrong. The chance to achieve stability and establish a reputation as a respectable club with significant achievement has been lost. We fans have been comprehensively failed. If this was a business with shareholders, there would have been a vote of no confidence from the floor at the AGM. No more words.

Mass hallucination at work, I'm afraid. He's been piss poor since he came. Not up to English football.

Seems to me that, as the seasons progressed (?) the lack of wins/draws and relegation concerns has caused many of us to watch the games wearing shit-tinted spectacles - bringing a doom and gloom attitude to the match before it's even started. I thought the team did well enough against United All-Stars (😂) at Old Trafford, given that we all know Rudkin and Top chose the wrong bloke to replace the wrong bloke. I've been told Wilf needed to go off because he'd just come back off injury. So his subbing weakened the team and it wasn't a league game anyway. But it's not the player's/team's fault that the best starting XI aren't starting. Buonanotte is a sub, Soumare starts. RvN is just another safe manager, unwilling to risk a gamble when doing the 'correct' thing by the 'Manual of Safe Managing' saves him from a red face but little else. The players have potential - a good manager would exploit that potential. No good sending the army into battle without a general they believe in.

How many football games are decided by a chance goal against the run of play? "Deserve" is a rather judgmental word to apply to this game, where we were playing a team of expensive players in front of a 70k crowd. I thought we played, if not the best game possible, a game where they didn't overrun us and we showed that they're pretty mediocre. United certainly didn't deserve to win.

Yes - it's scapegoating JJ on here when a perceptive manager (and shouldn't managers at this level all be perceptive) would instruct someone to provide cover. Same with Chilwell when he was isolated in two games against Salah and Mahrez under Rodgers. We need a tactician who can respond quickly - on and off the field. Kanté had the speed, energy and awareness to do the fire-fighting jobs. When you see Soumare lumbering around as if he's playing in Serie B you realise the depth of the problem. Bounanotte and El Khannouss are exemplary in that quality. How we're missing Fatawu.

It's away at United. We're you expecting an easy game?