LCFCJohn

I’d definitely take Dyche but it’s not going to happen. Amusing people still tuning their noses up given our predicament though! He is above us now and that is the sad truth. Even if he was inclined, he’s been sacked by Forest last night! He isn’t going to turn up in another job within a few days.

Out of interest, why do you think a clause would have to specifically cover double relegation or relegation to League 1? Would it not just be a percentage reduction in the event of relegation, that would be valid based on relegation from the PL to the Championship and then the same percentage of the revised wage in the event of further relegation to L1? That would be my understanding but I could be well off.

Right, this needs to be addressed. Why then hell is Covid being used as an excuse for our situation (not aimed at you by the way but the nepo baby uses it as an excuse and his disciples fall for it). Our problem is PSR. The owners company has no impact upon this. The only way Covid affected the football clubs finances was lack of fans and that was every club. Covid don’t make us make shit signings on huge wages so they can’t be shifted. Covid didn’t make us renew contracts of the likes of Vestergaard and Thomas. Covid didn’t allow hundreds of millions worth of talent walk on free transfers. Aiyawatt is just useless full stop. I don’t think you can say he has good or bad intentions as he is too clueless to know what he wants. With Chansiri out the way, he is the worst owner in English football now along with the Venky’s. Does it really matter if his intentions were good? Hardly relevant when he’s tanking us towards financial oblivion anyway! I’m 100% convinced that by the end of next season, we will have finished in our lowest ever position in our clubs history. But yeah, Covid did that….

Basically a whose who of crap + Nigel Pearson and Ranieri for 25 years now

Adam’s is not even near the top! Allen, Cifuentes, Souza, Taylor, Levein, RVN. There’s 6 off the top of my head since 2000!

Anyone get a link to the clips? What did Begovic say?

2023..Vardy, Barnes, Maddison, Tielemans?

People need to lay off King. He knows he isn’t ready. He doesn’t even want the position. He has been thrown into a position over his head by the two absolute oxygen thief’s running this club. King has done a lot more for this club that those two combined. He is good to have in the club but should not be managing the first team quite clearly.

Wow, I was going to say this is getting embarrassing for Southampton approaching 10 minutes without breaking us and they go behind

Ouch that defence… We aren’t getting anything with Ricardo and Thomas at full back. And no Lascelles either.

So 22 on your list there. Not including Adrien Silva by the way either. 3 we made a profit on? Maddison, Maguire and Fofana. 7 sold for a loss I think? Musa, Slimani (looks like he left before his contract was due to end with us, always thought he went on a free), Kapuska, Ndidi, Soumare, Ghezzal and Castagne. 6 left on a free, Tielemans, Soyuncu, Iheanacho, Perez, Ward, Praet. 5 still here and likely to be a reduced fee as best case if not leaving for free. Obviously many of those contributed a lot whilst here but financially, still an awful record. I actually thought more went for free unless any of those are wrong. We have actually (surprisingly) managed to move more than I thought on for fees. Which is fine if they contributed like Ndidi but for the likes of Soumare, Ghezzal etc still a massive waste…

Yeah. We either sold them for silly money (my list you quoted) or they pretty much walk for free bar a few exceptions. And now the talent pool has dried up on the first of those. It all links in though. The reason we can’t shift them is the excessive fees for players not worth it (Vestergaard for £17mill, Faes £15mill, Soumare £17mill, Daka £23mill, Slimani £30mill, Silva £25mill) etc etc the list goes on. So you’re already looking at fees other clubs won’t pay to break even on the amortisation. Then add in the fact their wages are obscene for their ability, we are stuck with them. Mostly you are right with Aiyawatt but the buck stops with him. People still say ‘oh he’ll be fine if he just brings in the right people to run the club’. Well sorry, so would Chansiri and Venky’s etc. These are awful owners of clubs because they aren’t doing the right thing and Aiyawatt is no different. He is arrogant and doesn’t know how to take accountability.

It’s the wages that have killed us though. You’re right about the type of signings. I wasn’t suggesting we could still bring a Kante in for that amount for example. You can still make thought cheap, £500k from Lincoln by the way and develop them but we didn’t do that really either. Ultimately the issue is overpaying on players not good enough and paying them so much they won’t be moved on. For example, was there a clamour of clubs after Vestergaard that meant we had to spend £17 mill on him? Of course not. Did we need to spend £10 mill on Winks and £8 mill on Coady in the Championship and put them on £80k p/w? Of course we didn’t. Skipp for £25 mill? I like Skipp but we were literally competing against ourselves as these weren’t sought after players. Even with our elevated status over those years, we didn’t have to spend what we did. We could have scouted smartly but the whole club got lazy after Pearson and co left. Yeah, not all signings will work out but most of ours don’t. Not to mention the lack of due diligence on the right kind of characters. Even the talented players we have brought in over the last few years, Hermansen, Fatawu, Maddison to name a few are so so soft mentally.

True. Still massive money coming in just from transfers. The only club apart from some (probably not all, don’t Arsenal have a poor record of big sales) and maybe Brighton have caught up, to have brought that much in. Given there has been PL/TV money as well, the fact we find ourselves here today, with a point deduction for failing PSR and more importantly, the squad we have to show for it is utterly humiliating for the club and why they are arguably the worst run club in this country now (Wednesday under Chansiri aside). How accurate (probably not) it is I don’t know. But I have just looked it up and estimates suggest from PL money/TV/Europe between 2016 and now, about £1.1 billion. Add around £450mill from those notable transfers and you are talking about £1.5 billion. And we are where we are

In my office, there are 4 of us who are into football. Myself, a Sheff Weds, Blackpool and Stockport. We were talking yesterday about what chance all 4 clubs are in L1 next season. Wednesday the most likely, Blackpool next but they are quite close to the relegation zone and then a toss up as to whether our relegation or Stockport going up is more likely. We were also talking about the points deduction. They were asking about the signings of Vardy, Mahrez and Kante and agreed it’s amazing how little they cost us. When I then said we had made the following; Mahrez - £65mill Kante - £35mill Drinkwater - £35mikl Maguire - £80mill Fofana - £70mill or so Chilwell - £50mill Barnes - £40mill Maddison - £40mill KDH - £30mill ish Nearly £450mill there. Their reaction was how the f*** has that much money passed through the club just in transfer fees (not to mentioned PL revenue) and for us to be busted for breaking financial rules. How can others see it but many of our fans can’t?

Wow, bizaare. Forked out? It was a large fee for a non-league player but hardly bank breaking. The signing was Pearson and co. Vichai/KP wouldn’t have even heard of him. He has loads of interest in the football league and it was Pearson and Shakespeare who he said convinced him not to quit when it got tough. He might not have achieved what he did as it was all a perfect storm but he’d have had a good career in the leagues and wouldn’t have been ‘in a bar in Sheffield’. Where is the evidence Vardy ‘gave the word’ for managers to be sacked? He was likely one of a number of players who had too close a communication with the owners and influenced decision making but giving his word makes it sound like he was controlling things. Again, evidence they were involved in funding the court case?

Irrelevant news really. It won’t make Aiyawatt more competent. It won’t mean he suddenly understands football or has a higher IQ. It won’t change his personality and make him accountable to his mistakes. In terms of @Dan your comment above, I don’t think it will affect that. He is tanking us within the rules governing football and will continue to do so as it will not change the above factors listed.

I’m not saying it is or isn’t. The point was surely clear, I am suggesting that by the nature of him being very physically weak and mentally fragile, any benefits of being more technically superior if he dropped down the leagues would be offset by him being bullied essentially.

Only happened last week to be fair so you’re not that out of it

I’m not sure where he will find his level to be honest. Obviously he has a level of technical ability to have get where he is. That technical ability may well be too good for League 2 or even League 1. But the other side is mental and physical strength. Whilst he may be technically superior dropping down the leagues, would that balance out by him not being equipped to against lower league players who may be more physical with him?

What fan unrest? The reaction to our sharp decline from the fanbase has been and continues to be completely pathetic. Most are actively happy with how things are going and Aiyawatt/KP as more important than the club. If another owner came in and didn’t miraculously sort us out, you know they’d all be on that new owners case saying how we should have been careful what we wished for etc etc. Not just financially, but from this perspective as well, it absolutely makes sense for any interested parties to sit back, not jump in now and bide their time. Waiting until we fall into administration will be much more logical as they will get us cheaper and the reputation of KP will be in the gutter with more people by then. Don’t underestimate the latter point as being important for a new person coming in.

You just…..discuss contrary options As above, it got me thinking as well. I think that summer, Kapuska was definitely a club signing based off him being a young player doing well at the Euro’s. Mendy I feel was Ranieri based on him wanting him the year before when the club target, I.e Walsh and Pearson wanted Kante. Hard to know with the others. Musa was an odd one. Zieler and Hernandez as well…. Slimani at least made sense and hindsight is easy admittedly. But yeah, nobody was displacing Vardy and perhaps we could have scouted more smartly for a younger gem in Europe who could have backed Vardy up and played in European games.

I get you think I am just bashing Vichai for everything and defending him. That’s not the intention. A big part of the problem we have is that too many supporters put KP, so Vichai and Aiyawatt, on a pedestal and won’t hear a word said otherwise. I am just highlighting that not all was rosy in the past. It is not to absolve any blame or responsibility from others. I haven’t referenced Rodgers at all in the context of Vichai as he was afterwards. Who knows if he’d have brought him in. But clearly as a club, there has always been a reliance on the manager at the time and not a continuous club led approach. This seems clear enough (to me) from the managerial appointments and transfer strategy. None of us know whose choices the summer of 2016 transfers were but it was a poor summer at our peak. I think Kapuska was from that summers Euros so that was a club signing. Mendy was Ranieri right as it was said he wanted him the year before but Walsh convinced him to go for Kante (thank god). So we went back to Mendy once Kante left. Yeah, the others we don’t know. I never said Walsh wasn’t immune to mistakes, I just said the approach is manager led. Perhaps Pearson and Walsh targets were different to Ranieri and Walsh targets? And we were hardly going to be signing £1mill players from non-league of £400k from the French second tier at that point. A shame but just reality. I get what you are saying in your last paragraph but few outside have reached the level we did. Probably Villa now to be fair as they are having a sustained run. What has happened isn’t the natural cycle and we have fallen much further and faster due to the foundations being weaker than other club in my opinion of course. The likes of Brighton haven’t reached the level we did but I would be amazed if other clubs would fall as much as we have done.

I’m not the one who made a sweeping statement that the signings were on Walsh’s list. Maybe they were. Doesn’t seem a ‘Pearson signing’ (Slimani) but maybe post Pearson Walsh was different… Whoever it was, it was sanctioned and it was a high fee given Vardy was first choice. Probably a younger striker who learn from Vardy was the better option.

I think respectfully, you are completely missing the point. Let me just ask you this, how strong a foundation could the club have had for it all to crumble in record quick time? Clubs like Brighton and Brentford, it all comes from the owners, Bloom and Benham. Our success and direction of style, transfers etc has always been led by the manager. Under Pearson it worked. Under Puel to an extent. It set up for some further success. Under Rodgers it unravelled. Where was Vichai after 14 second gate? Where was the effort to at least try and replace Mahrez with someone capable? How do you know who and who wasn’t in Walsh’s mind? You think £30 odd million on Slimani was a Pearson/Walsh type signing? I said he deserves credit for listening to advisors (the Birch being a much better advisor than Rudkin) and admitting mistakes by bringing Pearson back. But it doesn’t really change the weak foundations everything has been on since they arrived to all come apart so quickly. Maybe we would still be a PL club if he was here. Maybe not. Every year after the title until after he passed actually, we flirted with relegation. 2017 under Ranieri and Shakespeare came in. Shakespeare went the next season after we were awful and in the drop zone. Puel steadied us but had us heading towards trouble again. I tend to think our luck would have run out either way, as it did, albeit after some more historic moments.