leicesterseddon

Hard to tell I suppose. I don’t think we’d have appointed Smith in January, he always came across as a panic decision. I think we may have appointed another stop-gap manager, before then appointing someone else as a longer-term option this summer if we finished below 15th or so.

A lot to agree with here. But also Top has to take a share of the blame too. He failed to sack Rodgers early enough in the season when it would have made a difference (maybe in January). Having backed him, he then panicked and sacked him way too late in the season, leaving us managerless before two winnable home games. Not that they are to blame as such, but the fanbase had a role in enabling a general culture of passivity as we hurtled towards relegation. It’s easy to forget now, but there was a huge amount of hostility towards anti-Rodgers fans in the autumn/winter. I imagine quite a lot of those same fans will be in the pub on Saturday saying we didn’t sack him early enough. Funny old world.

Priority ins: a winger, another winger, a forward and one more centre-half. Priority outs: Castagne, Soumare, Ward, Iversen

No VAR, and more Saturday kick-offs. I think everything else is worse mind (including opposition fans btw).

Went to the game. If the reality of relegation hadn’t hit home yet it certainly did today. Pretty much everything about that game was Championship. Four turnstiles for £2K fans, I mean really? And about two guys pulling pints. Same goes for what was on the pitch. We were rubbish really, didn’t create much at all and our goal was fortunate. Just got to get the points on the board though I suppose.

Leicester fans: “…you made us sing that” Huddersfield fans, mishearing: “we’ve won it three times” Leicester fans, saving face: “you weren’t even born” Almost guaranteed

Good win but thought we were pretty lucky to be honest. I was quite encouraged by the first half but thought we were poor in the 2nd. Couple of observations: 1. Why is Doyle (a young loanee) starting ahead of Justin (an England international)? Wasn’t that impressed with him tbh…surprisingly slow too 2. Thought Winks was really good in the first half, although he dropped off a bit after the break 3. I’m encouraged he left Soumare out of the squad. Hopefully we can sell him, although doubt it 4. The passing out from goal kicks is still a bit of a highwire act. It worked once in the first half but needs working on.

Personally I think adding on more time isn’t clamping down on time wasting, it’s indulging it. Would be better IMO if referees used their existing powers to book players for doing it.

Fair enough. It does seem broadly the same to me, but I’m sure there are probably some tactical niceties going over my head! I do worry about the way he wants to play though, particularly if we don’t start the season well. The whole thing seems to depend on players being high on confidence and presenting themselves for the ball. When that’s not the case it just falls apart, as we saw under Rodgers. I think fans will have to be patient in the early days. But it’s a two-way street: Maresca has been hired to get us back up ultimately, so he needs to show this is actually going to work with the team we actually have.

Personally I'm not buying this line that playing out from the back is a "new style of play" that these players need to be given time to learn. Playing out from the back is what we did under Rodgers (albeit not under Smith), and in any case how most PL teams play these days. Hard to summarise given the lack of game time, but these things have jumped out at me during pre-season: 1. Maresca seems to prefer Vestergaard over Souttar (can't really see why) 2. Winks, Ricardo, KDH, Coady are probably the nearest thing we have to guaranteed starters 3. We really need to buy some wingers 4. I've been surprised by how much Castagne has played given the likelihood he goes

Under late-stage Rodgers we only really had three ways of penetrating an opposition defence: a good ball from Tielemans, a good ball from Maddison or a run from Barnes. All of those options are gone now, and personally I'm not really sure we've got an answer on what replaces them. I suppose in theory it should be creating "overloads" down the sides using wing-backs...but hard to see that working when it's failed before with largely the same personnel...

That line-up is honking IMO. Zero creativity.

I’ll believe it when I see it…

What’s the solution though? The reason we can’t move our deadwood on is because other clubs won’t/can’t match their wages. Only option to get rid of them at the moment is to pay them out or pay a share of their wages whilst they go on loan. Maybe that’s what we end up doing, I dunno. But feels a bit premature when it’s only mid-July...

Absolutely. Without new signings I just can’t really see where the goals are coming from right now. Much pontificating about “philosophy” and “systems” under the new manager, but let’s not lose sight of the simple fact that winning games means scoring goals!

Reasonably happy with Coady, although think we’ve overpaid. Not really sure why we’ve signed Winks to be honest. Maddison and Barnes were always going to leave. But I think we’re being short-changed on both. My two big concerns so far are A) we haven’t yet managed to move on people like Vestergaard and B) a lack of links to attacking players. I’m also a bit concerned by the club having talks with Evans; he’s been a great servant but extending his contract would be the wrong move IMO. So it’s a 5/10 so far from me, but still time to go of course.

There’s no pressure on the board, because a decent chunk of our fanbase basically believe we’re a Championship club and won’t ever criticise the owners.

I have long suspected this. They think they are giving people what they want. I still think it is very difficult in reality to tell who exactly is “celebrating” with the music, and who isn’t. It’s not really the point though. The point is whether you think celebrating a goal should be spontaneous or not.

Yes it’s just irritating more than anything Almost everything they do is tinpot rubbish that just makes us look like a League One club

Cowards

What the **** is Smith thinking? We can’t guarantee a home win on Sunday and Everton are surely in with a good chance of beating Bournemouth Need to go for it, not wasting time

Yep. Not his fault we’re going down of course, but this is a shambles I was Rodgers out by mid-autumn. To be clear, we should have sacked him in January at the latest or, ideally, before the World Cup But I wonder if, having decided not to sack him by March, Top might have been better keeping him and at least having a manager motivated to keep a relegation off his CV rather than this aimless drift

This is a disgrace. Just ballwatching and ambling around

There are very few UK commentators capable of referring to Trent Alexander-Arnold by his surname

I've not really questioned the players' motivation that much this season, even when we've been awful. But I went to Fulham and I have to say I was genuinely shocked. After the Everton game I fully expected us to be right in their faces, chasing balls down, probably a few yellow cards. There was nothing.