reynard

Not sure who is overhyping him. A few posters on here rate him, Oxford fans, on the whole, thought he was decent for them. He's only played around 25 matches a this level in his career, some as a substitute. That isn't even a season. Steve Walsh didn't start his Leicester career too well but he turned out ok. It isn't just about age with the younger players, it is also about experience and how many games they have played. Nelson will find his level, in time, what that will be, we will have to wait to find out. Possibly not with us though. As you say still plenty of time. He's young, inexperienced and is going to make mistakes. it would help him if he had better defenders around him.

I'm afraid the only form of mass protest that really makes a difference is a financial one. ie people stop buying season tickets, completely boycott the club shop, don't buy any food etc at the ground and for non-season ticket holders to stop buying tickets to matches. Otherwise taunts at the matches, though they might feel good to do at the time as a sort of release probably don't make a huge difference as the fan base is always likely to be split.

This is a terrible decision and dreadful PR for the club. Can anyone confirm if the players are also getting their pay late? If they were I'd guess we would have heard about this pretty quickly. I wonder what percentage of the wage costs are taken up by the non footballing staff in comparison to the players etc. If there is a real cash flow crisis then I'd be expecting the player's wages to be delayed too. Just another stinking decision by a club that appears to be run by idiots.

Quite possibly one of the worst managers we have had in our long history. He's just clueless. Under him we have no identity, no structure and little organisation let alone attacking intent. He has to go or we will go down.

This has a similar feeling to the 0-5 defeat at home to Bolton all those years ago. A manager clearly out of his depth A side that has lost its better players, short on confidence and many not wanting to be here. And a senior management adrift and out of sync with the supporters at all levels. A complete mess that will take at least a decade to turn round in my opinion. A better example of gross mismanagement of a club at all levels is harder to think of right now. Yes, other clubs have been very poorly run but very few have seen such a decline from the heights of a decent FA Cup winning team to a side in complete shambles.

A post that perfectly sums up the me me me world we now seem to live in. Perhaps sometimes it is worth considering putting scruples and decency before profit.

Has to be Mclintock for me. The football was terrible. I think we set the record for the fewest number of goals scored in a top flight campaign at the time. The signings were poor including Roger Davies who was the club's record signing at the time. we went from being a really entertaining team to a really dull and poor one in a few weeks. He was backed as a manager with money for new signings unlike some other contenders. Taylor next though in mitigation we did finish 13th in his first season and it was the FA cup defeat to Wycombe that was the start of the spiral downhill. That and the fact we lost our best player in Lennon, very much the lynchpin of the team. But like Mcclintock, Taylor was backed in the transfer market so he's a close second for me. RVN was terrible but wasn't backed at all in the one transfer window he had.

I think that is the modern day accepted term for madhouse or lunatic asylum so perhaps fitting.

Right type of move. He's not yet good enough for the level we are at.

I do wonder if players and their agents might start to complain too. If you are or you have a player at a club who wants to leave but the club they play for won't sell for under a certain amount where is the line regarding restraint of trade? Clubs seem far more hampered now in selling players than in the past.

Depends if both the club and player are legally obligated or just the club.

The truth is none of us know exactly what the deal entails. is there a loan fee? Are they paying all his wages? Then there is the unknown about whether our manager wanted him out of the club at all costs. What if the only option would have been to have an unsettled player on the books, not really wanting to play for us but us having to cover all his wages, insurance etc etc? He's clearly ambitious and Stuggart will be just a stepping stone for him and maybe next season a bigger club will come in and offer more money? I admit it doesn't look a great deal on the surface but without the detail it is hard to be exact.

It isn't easy to make money from writing that's for sure but unless you are a celebrity writing their autobiography then the biggest money in advances and royalties lies in fiction, whether it be adult or children's fiction. To make real money though it is about publishing into what genre is hot at that particular moment. Right now that would be so-called romantasy fiction or even straightforward romance. Sales of these books can be massive driven a lot by social media such as tik-tok etc. Most writers don't make a living just from writing books though. But for some people just tog et a book professionally published is like a lifetime achievement and quite right too.

Best of luck to you. Quite a lot of authors don't ever publish their first attempt. There are books that can help you. This is a good one. Writers' & Artists' Guide to How to Write: How to plan, structure and write your novel: Writers' and Artists' William Ryan Bloomsbury Yearbooks - Bloomsbury The people behind the Artist and writers series of books also have a decent website with lots of tips and access to courses to help you. Homepage | Writers & Artists If you are serious about this then once you have written it you really need to get an agent if you want to publish properly unless you self publish on Amazon which is pretty easy. Just sending in manuscripts to publishers is a long shot. Only around 2% of books published in the UK come from what is called the slush pile, ie books just sent to publishers unsolicited. The Writers and Artists yearbook comes out every year and is the bible for helping people find relevant agents to whom you can send your book. Once you have an agent they may do some early editorial work with you but they will send out the manuscript directly to publishing editors who they think would be interested. I tried years ago and you are right about how hard it actually is. You think you have a decent idea and then you start to write and then you read it back and think well that isn't very good is it.

The first few games have illustrated so many issues we have. If we are going to play one up front and try a high press then we can't play with Ayew. He's just not able to play that role. Daka closes down better but is pretty hopeless most of the time. The midfield has serious issues. Our best midfielder appears to be a moaning type who probably wants a move away and who is only on the bench. The two stating central midfielders offer almost nothing positive either in defense or attack. I'd say as much as we need a striker this area needs new players the most. We don't have anyone who can transition the play quickly enough and we don't appear to have anyone, a bit like Lennon or Kante, who can break up the opponents attack and help to shield the back line. We are pretty much totally dependent on Fatawu and Mavididi for any creative influence, especially if BEK leaves. We have no midfielders who seem capable of breaking the line and running beyond the opponents back line. Today was pretty woeful in terms of attacking performance but at least we dug in and looked to be playing more as a team. Really need 4 or 5 new faces but not confident we will get them.

More to the point why does he play like a 36 year old plumber?

I didn't think we were honking in front of goal as we didn't really get there to be honking.

Surprised it is that high in all honesty.

Spot on. Typical of our slow dull predictable play. If Soumare releases that ball 5 seconds earlier with a decent pass for Monga to run onto we might have created something. And Soumare hasn't even been the worst player for us.

Goal kick routine. keeper to Choudhury, Choudury to centre half, centre half to keeper, rinse and repeat. Absolutely zero attacking threat. Without some new players this will be a very long season.

The shirt sponsor situation is ridiculous.

Plus add in the savings on wages, national insurance and player insurance costs etc etc. Including the 3 not retained players this must be a decent chunk of expenses saved. Still more required I would think though.

Think we'd be bottom of the lists out of the four mentioned clubs.

It is quite hard to see anything positive happening with incoming players. I know we are quite a secretive club when it comes to this sort of thing but the, almost complete, lack of any substantive rumours is a concern. There also hasn't been enough effort to clear out players either. Absolutely no rumours regarding Soumare for eg. I think it possible we still need to clear out 3 or 4 more players before the funds will be there to bring anyone in. The only chance of anyone incoming is the possibility of some final day loans from players not in premier League squads. I'd expect 2 or 3 of our younger players to go out on loan though we don't seem to be very good at arranging that either.

I don't agree with booing your own players but to start blaming the fans for the situation we find ourselves is really sweeping under the carpet the real truth. Fans cannot be blamed for the gross financial mismanagement of the past few years, a mismanagement that has seen us sign an unfortunate shirt sponsorship deal, that sees us without a shirt sponsor for the start of this season, for the disingenuous statements that the board were confident that we would not be in breach of PSR rules when we clearly were, they can't be blamed for the outrageous deals players have received which have made our financial situation so bad, cannot be blamed for the, on the whole, terrible standard of player recruitment, for the appointment of managers who were clearly wrong for the job, for the apparent total lack of communication between the club and fans. These are just some of the things that have led us to where we are today. I too recall the days at Filbert Street and I've been watching us for over 50 years. Of course there have always been fans who were disgruntled and showed their feelings whilst at the ground. But there were very few times and seasons where the players didn't appear to be giving their all even though they were not that good. Now we have a squad with a good number of overpaid charlatans who are essentially stealing a living. Paid a fortune to basically underperform week after week match after match. It isn't an "us" situation, our fans are no different to other supporters who basically want to see, first a team that tires its best and want to play for the club they support and then hopefully, one that brings some success to the club too. Fans respond to what they see on the pitch and if what they see on a consistent basis is players who don't seem to care, who off the pitch make statements through their agents that they want to leave the club when we are relegated then I'm afraid they have to expect something in return. I tend to find that goodwill is a two way street.