Lillehamring

nah, one more game and then thump em at wembley.

If yunus had finished the way vesty did, he'd have scored

Especially as we aren't always brilliant against the press and bournemouth, apparently, are one of the best pressing teams in the prem. I know stoly struggled but he's no hermansen, and raiky is no winks.

I'm not sure my supermarket accepts them.

Thought he was alright tonight. No 'bad' decisions, and a lot of tactical fouling that he had to punish,

I have a travellers cheque from 2003 for 50 dollars. NO idea what to do with it.

Whilst i appreciate you've looked into this deeper than me, i'm afraid i'll still have to trust that the club have a plan for us not going up - given that the odds on an immediate return with a totally untested manager must have been pretty high. If an immediate return was an absolute necessity, surely they'd have played (theoretically) safer by going for someone like farke or scott parker? Also, since summer of 2022 they've been obsessively cautious about FFP, why would they suddenly have gambled everything on having to go straight back up, after being so parsimonious in 2022 and the recent transfer window? I'm sure they're living on the edge and that if we don't go up, then next season we could be right back to the start, that we may even end up down for a few years. But predicting economic doom seems a little excessive.

This is true, and even then we still created a ridiculous amount of chances. The reason we lost that game has nothing to do with hull as Iancognito suggests (certainly not that they worked out how to beat us), but everything to do with us misfiring.

If a team allow their opposition to have 21 shots, that's, by any standard, really bad and not what you would expect from a team that have 'figured out' their opponent. That we only had 2 on target says nothing about Hull's tactics. If they'd figured us out they'd have nullified our attack, which clearly they didn't . As for figuring out that "attacking was a better option than parking the bus." - that's not figuring a team out, that's just a game plan that may or may not work - other teams have came at as way more than Hull did and still not won. Besides, they didn't come out 'attacking' they had 35% of the ball and just 7 shots, also this (below) is their heat map - hardly the picture of team coming out all guns blazing. They parked the bus and risked the odd counter which resulted in a lucky goal, whilst relying on our finishing being atrocious - hardly a masterplan of 'figuring out'

I think the realistic argument to this 'feast or famine' scenario is that we're often in games with very tight scorlines - which seems to be a gamble that maresca fancies and, too be fair, was going pretty well. Factor in that 8 of those points are from the leeds game (deflected goals), the ipswich game (deflected goal) and the coventry game (10 men) - Maresca is playing the percentages and they've generally paid off, but you're always at risk of something unplanned or uncontrollable beating the odds.

I think you'll find 'long term plan' and 'potential' are synonymous, or certainly carry the same implication. Beyond this, given that this is maresca's first real job, any kind of appraisal of his ability is intrinsically tied into what he is capable of when he develops, again, the implication is clearly about his 'potential'. Sorry if that was ambiguous.

Thus why we were trying to get Sensei in on a loan. It really isn't just about the funds - bringing in a loan player in January is notoriously difficult, even if you can find someone available that fit's your system, not every club is going to agree to sending out a player in january. I'm sure there are dozens of other factors. And even if you get someone, they're not necessarily going to be match fit, and to play that #8 role in this system is not something a player can instantly adjust too.

If memory serves, he had a run in the team that coincided with the pre-xmas 'good run' Also, I'm not sure he was ever really played in the right position for us. I can see him being a better #8 than the deep holding mid/box to box mid rodgers tried him as.

I'm no expert but i feel like we'll only have a few players left under contract that would be on 'significant' salaries, most of the high paid lot (nacho, vardy, vestergaard et al.) are all out of contract. I'm sure daka could be sold, maybe even coady. I can't imagine mavididi is on loads, or hermansen. Worst case is we have to sell them, but i'm sure there's be a few buyers for hermansen and winks at the very least after the season they've had. There's no way they'd not have prepared for us not going up when they started the season, Maresca was too much of an unknown and the competition for promotion spots was always likely to be tough. I'm not, therefore, what you are basing the 'extremely high chance' on?

Not that i want this to happen, but there are some benefits to this outcome - we'd be able to lose the last of the overpaid players and have a fairly clean slate to go out and buy cheap young promising players that are more natural playing the type of football enzo wants to play. The only perhaps 'too expensive players' we'd be left with would be those bought this summer, who were bought to play in enzo's system. It would not be good, but never catastrophic. People were saying relegation was catastrophic and it's actually been, on the whole, rather enjoyable.

They can't predict the weather or injuries, either It's not gospel, it's just a guide where all things beyond form are considered to remain equal

I'm simply not thinking about what might happen if we go up - there are far too many unknowns to waste any thought on. I do believe he was hired for his style of football, but i suspect that they also liked the nature of his managerial education and how that could filter through the entire club. I like enzo and i feel more confident (based on how quickly he's turned the team onto his way of thinking) with him as our manager than if we had Farke.

I think the difference was Leeds scoring. Psychologically it changes everything - suddenly their players have a new energy whereas our players are suddenly feeling a downhill run turn into an uphill run. We've benefitted from this many times this season, no surprise that finally it bites back.

You say that as though we simply refused the option to bring players in - we all (should) know that isn't the case. We just didn't have the financials to do it - do you think they planned for casadei to go, no, is it easy to replace a loan player and acclimatise him into the system in january, no. do you think we could afford to sign a player just to cover ndidi's injury . of course not. Your expectations of what we were capable of seem to be utter fantasy.

You said they worked us out, which is bollocks.

And did he even really complain? He seemed to know exactly what the situation was from the first: 'sell to buy'. Sure he was disappointed by the sensei deal falling through but that seems to have been as much the Milan's fault as ours. I think he knows the squad he has is good enough, and nothing has really changed, yes we've had two poor results (without really playing badly) and the four league games since the end of january were all emphatic wins.

I'm simply pointing out what I saw in our game - that if you play them right they are bang average. I don't know what has happened in previous games. We scored twice, even if one was wrongly disallowed they still conceded it with some piss poor defending. And for us to not have scored another two is down to our finishing rather than their defending. We don't know what will happen in their next games, but I don't see them as some invincible monster.

Not at all (the clue is in the word 'potential') - i'm saying that they feel in Maresca that the potential to do something special is there, that this is a man who can revitalise and change the direction of the club from top to bottom - no it's not a given, but the early signs are very promising. As opposed to.... Farke, who has failed on two separate occasions in the PL. The point is, Leeds hired a manager with a track record for getting promoted, so Leeds winning the league or being promoted shouldn't be that much of a surprise.

The trouble with that logic is that when we were 1-0 up we were playing superb, we didn't need to launch the ball into row Z because we were consistently playing through Leeds as though they weren't there. And the moment they equalised, we had to keep playing for a winner, so we had to try to continue to play to our strengths - which is passing our way out of defence.

But people don't seem to be able to factor this in - it was a bad result sure, but not through playing poorly, and we didn't play poorly against boro, we created 24 shots, and the 5 games before that we won by an aggregate of 15-2. The talk is as though we are a shit team playing shit. But i think the confidence is still there, the tactics are still spot on and the performances are of a high standard - Sometimes you just don't get the results.