SafewayFox

It’s simple. Enzo identified who could play his way of football either already at the club or not. Martin has hired his mates and not addressed the awful squad imbalance. Enzo (results wise) had an incredible bounce, Martin not so much 🤦🏻‍♂️

I hate to be that guy but going to anyway. @boosmanana are we still rolling out the “it’s only been two games” nonsense?! It’s almost as if you can’t judge a manager/situation before they’re appointed.

He said on Radio Leicester that “they’ve trained really well” 🤮

Not watching but welcome to Martin ball….72% possession and 1-0 down from 1 shot on target.

Whether it’s a combination of getting older/the dross of LCFC under Top but I’m the same. It will probably be sneakily put out there by our social media team that he has an ACL injury and will miss the season.

Surprised no one has suggested Adam Webster. Done his ACL within the last 12 months ✅ Free transfer ✅ Lives on the South coast, so could go for a nice little coffee with Russell ✅

What are the odds on this “striker” being played out on the wing ala Richards?

Top pod once again gents. As others said, @Ric Flair comment about Hamza as a 10 made me spit out my water at the gym. I can’t see any comments about it but think that you’ve actually listened to any feedback about how positive/negative previous pods have been. My only suggestion is for Jake not to reference those comments as much, just be your usual great/authentic selves lads.

Spot on mate. I really want to start enjoying anything remotely LCFC related but really can’t at the moment. We haven’t appeared joined up/have a clear strategy since Enzo. Compare his Summer window to any others. He binned Thomas, VK, Soumare instantly as they couldn’t play his style of football yet one of his first signings was Mads who excelled with the ball at his feet. Obviously the Coady/Winks signings didn’t turn out like hoped but there was at least an idea behind them.

I genuinely hope that I’m wrong but as @Pliskin rightfully said earlier, there are so many red flags for Martin, I’d throw in us as a club too. Martin’s persistence with his brand of football when playing Okoli and Souttar will consistently see us create “key opportunities” for anyone that we’re playing against. We have proven that we don’t actually know how to build a balanced squad and let a manager have too much influence. I’m genuinely worried that we have such limited resources yet spent over a third on a pointless signing like Cullen. We have zero athleticism across the starting 11 minus JJ. Will any of the above change whether it’s one game or 20?!

Agree. Thomas needs taking out of the squad for his own benefit. Aluko starting LB with McFarlane on the bench and pushing Aluko for a starting spot.

Aluko is definitely the quicker of the two. JJ is clearly quick but Aluko is probably one of the quickest in the squad. A big reason why I’m pretty desperate for him to get a regular spot in the starting 11!

“Careful what you wish for!” type of comment this. We’re a professional football club that should act that way in the scouting department. I’m sick to my back teeth of seeing the same dossers put in awful performances and we still trot them out.

Ok, you’re comparing clubs. You referenced Cov and Ipswich who were both clubs with managers that had already shown good football (Cov) or a lot of success/promotions (Ipswich) with their current manager in-situ. I’d encourage you to re-watch the match, we looked so far off it, it’s not out of the realms to have doubts over Martin/his style of play with the squad that we have. That’s before you mention the lack of goals, fragile defence and a crop of players not wanting to be here.

Are you comparing an Ipswich side that had proven success under McKenna to Martin? That’s a pretty big leap.

I’m going full on moan, so apologies in advance. Whenever someone says that we’ve had a “good window”, it really winds me up when you look at the obvious squad imbalance and our incomings. This has gone on for ages. We sold KDH and needed a like for like CM yet ended up with Skipp, Reid, Ayew and Okoli. This summer, we need a striker (or two minimum) yet we sign 5 wingers/AM that all are lightweight and offer similar traits, aka none will run past a player yet we sold our best winger in Abdul who could do that in spades.

He was the better one of the two CB’s yesterday. Was it just me who hated his shenanigans when he laughed in their CF’s face in the second half? Screams of misplaced arrogance to me.

Our lack of fitness always gets brought up too. 1) What are we doing wrong in pre-season. 2) You’re a new manager and identify a lack of athleticism, signing Cullen as an example, isn’t going to help. Chaplin (too early to tell) is probably likely in that camp, Watson and Howell may be decent yet the Brighton fans haven’t highlighted them for their athleticism. Why is it so obvious to see yet our board/managers seem to have such blind spots?

This is why I can’t have “it’s only been two games”. We know what we’re getting, or in our case not getting from Cullen. Let’s say that we have a very limited budget of £5m and our intelligent board have spent over 33% of it on Cullen, that’s negligence.

My biggest gripe (this happened last year too) is the lack of press. Yet in pre-season, it looks like there were signs of systematic pressing. I think Alves pressed a couple of times but was doing it all on his own, which never works. Sort it out Russell, you genuinely have no more than 6/7 games to win over any doubters before it gets extremely toxic.

Any opposition manager will see how awful his first touch is and will continue to target him. Between him and Skipp, you see more heavy touches than you do in a Sunday league game. Compare his commitment to improving physically to Chilwell, it’s night and day. Scary to think of the resources that he has to actually get into optimum shape yet appears to make zero effort at doing this.

I’ve oddly defended Skipp at times. However, yesterday was one poor performance too much. As others have stated, he had a trampoline first touch yesterday. Between him and Thomas, I genuinely saw more loose first touches than I did/do when playing football at the weekends. What do they practice in training and not see this when analysing the game?

The Bristic effect. Is he a man mountain or a mouse? Who knows 😜

With that result, are we now the lowest placed position in our history?

Cullen has played over 200 professional football matches. Can people stop saying “it’s been one game”, he’s a non eventful, non athletic luxury that we did not need. He can’t hold the ball up, can’t press….he’s going to be Ayew lite for the next three years.