Lillehamring

Have you seen him play before he came to us? I'm not sure as a leicester player we've seen anywhere near enough of him to appraise his overall game. The games he played were so early into maresca's tenure that the team was playing nowhere near the standard it is now and were far more limited tactically - so to judge him purely on those games is unfair. And even then, for a player who is supposedly not 'defensively astute' in those first ten and a half games he played for us we only conceded 5 goals including cardiff's worldy and hull's deflected fluke - seems pretty solid to me. Further more, I believe he'll go straight back into the first XI - as good as justin was in the last two games that was playing on the right, doyle is a better left sided player. Any shortcomings in his game, as you say, can be coached out - he's only 20 after all!

In a way it's not really their fault - they were all started in jobs way too far up the career ladder - that said, føkk 'em, they didn't have to take those jobs!

https://footystats.org/england/championship/form-table

Sure but that's a problem even if ndidi plays. Ultimately, losing these players is a situation we'd prefer to do without but not one that we shouldn't be able to ride out - especially if casadei or praet can seize the opportunity.

Yes, but the point is we haven't dropped that many points - it's not like it was a few seasons back when we simply didn't win games when he didn't play - dropping to a 50% win rate is hardly a major issue. It's also not a coincidence that the games we lost were (especially the leeds game) amongst the toughest opponents we have faced) - whereas the games he'll miss include stoke watford and wednesday - all games we should win even without him. I get that he's important but i don't think we lost those games because he didn't play - but for the woodwork we'd have got points from both. Not a major issue, for me.

I would suggest that the general sense of optimism is based on 3 things: 1. the head start that we have (and thus how far we'd have to drop off to capitulate now), 2. the quality of the chasing pack and 3. that we seem to be improving rather than just doing enough as we were earlier in the season. Anything can happen, but the reasons for optimism are clear.

No it's not 'pretty poor' but neither is it, as you say, 'far from poor' - whilst paradoxically it's arguably both; as with everything he seems to do his record stretches from the sublime to the dismal. But the overall picture (laziness accepted) doesn't tell anywhere near the full story, simply because it is comprised of massive extremes - from his first season at man city where he registered a goal every 94 minutes, to his 18/19 season with us where it was every 931 minutes. It is this wild lack of consistency that i feel justifies the claim that his record in the top flight is poor, because you don't know what you're going to get with him - a goal a game, or a goal every 10 - and i think that's why there's never been any interest in him from other clubs.

From what i've seen of ipswich (which isn't a great deal) - they seem to be very limited. Good at what they do, but that's it - and i suppose some momentum and confidence. But their fast breaking gung-ho style of play is likely to be doomed without a massive upgrade in quality. And if they started games as they did against us (nervy and sloppy in possession), PL teams will destroy them.

My feeling with the introduction of VAR is that they went in as hard and extreme as possible - hopefully this was the intention that they could then pull back the areas/processes that went too far. As such the process is far too involved and drawn out - hopefully they'll see this/have seen this and will gradually find a balance that helps prevent the shit decisions whilst allowing minimal disruption.

I think the OP is wrong to say he has a poor record (he has had some great seasons), but equally a one figure summary of his career is not an adequate representation of his form at the top level - his recent output has not been to that standard - his last PL season it dropped to 224, in 21/22 it was even worse at 316.

I wouldn't say it's a major issue. Of those 4 games, we really should have won the Boro game, or at least got a draw, even the leeds game we could have got something from it - and even then, a 50% win rate isn't bad - that would still give us 6 points from 12 even if we failed to draw the other two. it's also worth considering that in his 20 appearances he's only played 70+ minutes 8 times and 6 of his appearance he's played less than half a game - so it's not like he's been an ever-present. He also was in the squad for the Hull game, and came on as a sub in the wednesday draw - the other games where we have dropped points and underperformed - so it's no guarantee that when he plays, we play well. Contrary to popular opinion, I also think Casadei has looked much better in his last couple of appearances, maybe with a run of four games he might start to show his obvious potential. At bottom, if we can't get 6 points from coventry, ipswich, stoke and watford - then the problem is more than just missing ndidi

Yeah, i think VAR would have been much better received if they'd never committed to trying to use the lines. Linesman calls it, VAR has 30 seconds to look at it and overturns it if it is clearly visibly wrong - that way you eliminate the openly bad calls without creating new problems by trying to be perfect. Hopefully that's what we'll get to, when FIFA et al decide it was a mistake to try to be so precise.

But even subjective calls, it should still be down to the ref - i assume you mean in the context of penalties? - in which case: the ref makes a call on the pitch, VAR has x amount of time to look at it - if there's no contact or it's ball to hand or for whatever reason it's wrong - they overturn it - if they can't make a decision in the time or they agree with the ref, the decision stands - it's that easy. The problem comes from VAR taking 4 minutes to make up it's own mind regardless of what the ref called on the pitch.

We have to remember that VAR is still very much in it's infancy, to expect it to be 'perfect' from the off is lunacy. Other sports that are using video review have been doing so since the 70s, hawkeye has been around since 2006. Given the nature of this sport it is probably going to take a decade before they work out how best to run the programme.

They didn't walk to the games!

Credit where it's due is fine - but how many times have we actually been able to say good things about him. That we can only really pick out one moment in the 370+ minutes of football since he last scored kind of emphasises how mediocre the guy is. And that one moment wasn't exactly sublime football, just a well weighted pace into acres of space.

I think it's probably more that we don't have squad space rather than money - 5 or 10M is nothing compared to what we'll earn if we go up, but if we buy someone new without selling, someone will have to be cut. Also, i know we look better when wilf plays but equally some of our worst outings have involved him too - he was on the pitch for most of the Hull game (including when we conceded), he came on against wednesday where we then threw away points, and played 90 minutes in the millwall and birmingham games - so your suggestion regarding the drop-off in our performances without him being frightening is nonsense - basically, other than an unlucky dropped point to ipswich and the leeds and boro games (again the boro game we were the better team), whenever he's not played we've won.

I think you owe us a statistical analysis based on this statement - i very much doubt that nacho is ahead of daka in many metrics if you look at time played. Especially this season - daka has a goal every 91.5 minutes, nacho every 171.8 minutes; daka has an assist every 183 minutes, nacho every 859 minutes.

Checks should definitely have a time limit - if it takes longer than 30-60 seconds it, by definition, isn't a clear and obvious error. The reason it takes so long is that VAR isn't 'checking', it's 'deciding' and therein lies the flaw. By law the ref adds on x amount of time after a goal (not to mention the delay if the conceding side believe something is wrong and start haranguing the ref), this should be amble time for a VAR check. But, as i say, VAR has been instructed to look for issues rather than to confirm the ref's decision. Before VAR we still had delays when the ref might go over and talk to a linesman, time shouldn't be an issue if VAR is done sensibly.

The loss of spontaneous celebration (amongst players) is a complete myth -

You say that, but with the amount of 'injuries' and diving for free kicks - football is hardly the free flowing experience people make it out to be these days - but that's another issue.

Except his first touch sends the ball into his own knee then bounces off a west brom player - it wasn't great, he just reacted quickly to win it back. The rest of the move is great, but as safewayfox says - it's just a nice pass, not that difficult. I think it also emphasises the frustration about him - his floor and ceiling are just too far apart, he can be wonderful and dreadful in the same move.

I think the mistake they made was letting VAR make decisions rather than just verifying the ref's decision. Not sure about the sports you mention, but in baseball the officials make a call and if the review can't prove it to be otherwise the decision on the field stands. In football, it's a case of 'don't raise your flag' we'll make the decision - and nobody wants that. If they just had on field decisions and VAR has say 30 seconds to review an offside (no lines), 60 seconds for a penalty, and if it can't see anything incorrect in that time, ref's decisions stands. easy.

I don't think we'll be any more susceptible to fatigue than cardiff and huddersfield. If we're resting players then sure as shit those two teams are, and i'd fancy our squad depth over theirs any day.

I don't think it's quite like that. Neither player is excelling at the moment (for polar opposite reasons) - so either way it was a bit of a punt. However, given the situation, i'd rather have seen Cannon (who has at least shown a willingness to run) than nacho who, as really does seem the case, just hasn't got his heart in it. Nacho's one decent pass is scant compensation for the other 14 inconsequential touches he managed in half an hour's football.