Lillehamring

Simply used Covid as an economic time stamp. It's been admitted by the club that the financial impact of covid affected the KP group - it's not difficult to infer from this that, even at that point, offloading the club might be an option. Covid, if you recall, predates any of the protests. So, no, not peddling excuses, in fact not even discussing the subject you refer to. Not sure what you think we're talking about here?

Gets me through what? delusional fans thinking a frankly rather lame protest made a billion decide to get out before it was economically too late. OK, that makes sense. Have you considered waving your banners outside of the White House?

Seeing something is not the same as registering it. I see posts on instagram for AI products but i don't register them, i pay zero attention to them. Notwithstanding, i maintain that the protest will have had zero, maybe a fraction of a % of influence on their decision to sell. Do I want them to stick around - of course not - i'm not a moron. They've clearly no wish to be here, so what any fans think or want is, if it wasn't before, entirely moot. I'm not conceding anything about the state of their business, I'm not their accountant; i'm simply suggesting that the decision to sell is purely economic and has nothing to do with what the fans want. As a caveat to that, i'd add that i HOPE that if the fans DO still mean anything then perhaps a part of their motivation is that they feel a sale is ALSO in the best interests of the club. And this is my fear, that we end up with an option worse than king power, which feels worryingly probable given the reputations and issues that most other clubs are currently experiencing.

I suspect the owners barely even registered the protests. As someone who isn't as blindly critical of the ownership, even I can see that they are incredibly insular and do exactly what they want, regardless of fan opinion or public pressure. If the protests were so influential, why does Rudkin still have a job, why do we still have BC game as sponsors., and so on? You're uutterly delusional if you think this was because of these protests; this is a decision that probably has it's roots around the covid period and is 100% economical and 0% because of anything any fan has ever said or done. Just be grateful that you're all getting what you all wanted, and may godspeed be with ye.

If we left the future of the club in the hands of the foxes trust and/or foxes talk posters - we'd be bankrupt in weeks.

Still with the OTT? Losing a few players is not 'being stripped', it is by no means 'all'.

I think a lot of these things are cyclical - i remember a few years back and we were putting out a squad in the PL with 5 or 6 ex-academy players. When things are going well, when things are stable you can do this - unfortunately, like most things in life, when you hit problems, it's the luxury elements (in this case, blooding younger players) that get sacrificed first. For the academy lads of the last few years, it's really just poor timing. And because we're still in a precarious position, it'll probably be the same this year, too - so we will see more of the likes of thomas, skipp, chaplin, cullen and burns - not because they are better players, but because the academy guys are, because of their inexperience, a type of luxury player... On their side, this season, however, is the fact that there will be a lot of football and the squad is pretty thin, so hopefully they'll start getting more and more game time as the season moves on.

no, i'm the pro-commonsense, anti-iknowbetterthantheclub brigade. the point applies to football in general - do you think we're the only club handing out 4 year deals?

Clearly you haven't. What if he is actually a good player? Would you rather we gave him 1 year and he goes for nothing to a better team next year, or two years and he goes for a free the following summer? You can't just give out contracts to suit yourself, you have to consider the player, his age, our squad; and the player, too, has certain demands. Do you really think running a football club is just a simple game?

But losing four players over that long isn't a catastrophe, especially now we seem to have got better at contracting them (compare nyoni and monga) - The very nature of the academy is one of extremes regarding success or failure for players - very few, as i'm sure you know, will actually go through any academy and stay with the club. We shouldn't be critical of seagrave for the players it's lost, but complementary of it for how many players it has attracted that would never have come to us if we'd still been at belvoir drive.

They were odds on to start given that, respectively, their alternates were a guy who's been here a week, and a guy who hasn't signed yet. Doesn't mean they're nailed on to start or even play every game.

The way we've played pre-season I wouldn't expect any of these players to be fixed to their positions - i think you'll see cullen push up, reid drop deep, alves com inside etc etc. His set up was very fluid, players switching and covering, even the FBs

"I don’t need things clearing up thank you." So this genuinely wasn't passive aggressive sarcasm? - not putting words in your mouth but apparently misinterpreting the tone of them. I, once again, apologise for the misunderstanding.

No, i meant 'cleared up what i meant by my statement' - that i had no knowledge of the drink driving thing. It felt like a misunderstanding that had upset you, so i just wanted to be clear about that. By the same token, I don't need words put into my mouth, i very clearly explained that i know nothing of him off the field and certainly would never and have never described him as a 'fantastic footballer'. i wasn't patronising you or accusing you of being part of the 'herd', i've no idea why you thought it was addressed to you? but it is true that this herd mentality exists on this forum. sadly, for every intelligent poster here there are 100 morons who just repeat what the popular posters (clearly of which I am NOT included) post so they feel like they're part of, ahem, the 'gang' -

Maybe the FT financial ITKs are wrong when they're predicting us paying new signings 20k a week

In which case, i'd expect to see: Alves - Braybrooke - Reid - Mavididi. Cullen up top. He can't repeat the experiment of playing bobby up front.

Is Alves available?

I know nothing of drink driving, but i'll wager the vast majority of FTers aren't against him for that reason - if it were so they wouldn't be saying it in the context of criticising his ability as a footballer which seems to be the case 99 times out of a 100. There is a mentality on this forum of 'group hate' where players are despised and their ability slaughtered just 'because' - for example the amount of abuse Skipp has got just in the last few weeks, despite having a great pre-season, same with thomas, guy made one mistake and the abuse is off the scale. Don't condone what hamza is alleged to have done, but i don't believe for most on here that's the reason why they hate him. FWIW, i think he's a decent player and i know nothing of him as a person, si I can't comment on what he's done off the field. No one condones drink driving, but i also refuse to condone the mindless unjustified aggression towards players that is rife on this forum. My issue is more general than with specific reference to Hamza. I hope that clears things up.

This is what excites me most - i posted elsewhere how versatile and interchangeable this squad is - the permutations at 6, 8 and the wings is insane. And even within the formations i think you'll see wingers coming inside, 8s going outside, 9s dropping deep. there were times in pre-season where Aluko was playing right back and popped up playing ARW!

Not so sure about replacing Skipp - his spot is probably the more natural position for Braybrooke and Page, rather then as #8s. throw in Hamza, and i wouldn't even rule out Aluko to play there.

no chance. doubt if Carr or Opuku even make the bench.

Because the FT-gang don't like him and you gotta follow the gang

I suspect that you suspect that based on the last few seasons, rather than how we've looked in preseason - we've shown that unlike under any of the managers since enzo we actually can create chances are score goals against a team sitting deep. I think we had xG of 2 or 3 in most games, and most of the teams we played sat deep.

If the performances from pre-season are anything to go by, pretty much any line-up he puts out should be good enough to go through.

Or maybe they're just buying the players they feel will be beneficial as and when they become available. There's a lot of window left, i'm sure we'll see ins and outs before then.