ClaphamFox

The players. A couple of senior members of the squad told Top that they were a bit upset by the the inquiry into the 2023 relegation, so the club has decided to let the players conduct it themselves this time. Preliminary findings indicate that the players have actually been extremely hard-working and committed to the cause all season, but the club keeps letting them down by appointing the wrong kind of manager.

I think they have to. It will be interesting to observe Ruud's demeanour given last Saturday's utter shambles and the club's failure to back him in the transfer market.

We got relegated in 2023 largely because our defence was so bad (we scored the same amount of goals as Villa, who finished seventh - but we conceded 22 more goals then they did). This season, our defence is even weaker than it was then apart from in the GK position. It doesn't take a genius to predict the outcome of that. The club has completely failed to address the glaring weakness in the team from our last relegation. The last opportunity to rectify that came in the transfer window that has just closed, and the club did nothing other than bring in a £2m full back who hasn't yet managed to displace Justin despite latter's catastrophic season. This is why we're going down.

It has been suggested that Top realised that Cooper was the wrong man for the job very soon after he was appointed. It would have been a very bold move to sack a newly-appointed coach before a ball was kicked, but our poor start to the season gave Top the excuse he was looking for to pull the trigger...

He's not walking and he won't get sacked, no matter how the rest of the season pans out. He will be manager when we kick-off the season in the Championship in August.

On the contrary, I suspect that he and the club have already written off this season and it's been agreed that RvN will get the chance to take us back up with his own squad next season.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Rodgers was right when he said that the squad badly needed a refresh after that FA Cup debacle at Forest. That doesn't excuse the way he managed the team from that point onwards, however.

Hamza - if you're reading this, it's a joke not an actual suggestion for a night out....

It’s weird. Ordinarily if we were two points from safety with 14 games to go, we’d still have some hope and would likely be demanding a managerial change to get us out of the mess. There would be an expectation that the club would do something to try to ensure survival. Instead, most of us are resigned to relegation - there’s no sense that the club will do anything, or even that anything can be done with this squad. We’re just waiting to go down, which feels odd given that survival would usually be regarded as very possible from our position. Strange times.

For defaulting on payments to other clubs, which we haven’t done.

I suspect we allow managers a large say in signings, hence the sudden and ill-advised shift in transfer strategy when Cooper joined.

Enzo wanted him and insisted we tie him down. Then Enzo walked out. Then Steve Cooper came in and we shifted our transfer strategy to give him the players he wanted, even though they were completely different from the kind of player we would have targeted had Enzo stayed. These Cooper purchases have largely turned out to be a complete waste of money. Then we sacked Steve Cooper and replaced him with RvN, who is more of an Enzo-type manager. And because we'd allowed Cooper to spend a lot of money on players who haven't improved the first eleven, we weren't able to give RvN any money to spend at all.

I agree - staying up this season was an absolute necessity. But Enzo's decision to quit sent the club into a decision-making tailspin that (barring a miracle) is going to send us back down. If (when) we're relegated, it will be imperative that we get straight back up to avoid the slow suffocation of falling parachute payments that you refer to.

I would rather see Faes walk on a free and take the PSR hit than suffer another season of him strolling nonchalantly around before getting caught horribly out of position then waving his arms about in an attempt to imply it's somebody else's fault...

They're both Championship players, so I'm not sure where you think they'll go.

No chance whatsoever of a transfer embargo and very little chance of a points deduction. We'll sell Hermansen for sure and a few others, but the players that remain will include a large contingent of those who won the Championship last season. We will have a sizeable budget to spend in the summer given our caution in the window that has just closed, plus the safety net of parachute payments. There is literally not a chance we will get relegated next season. The only question is whether we get promoted straight away or languish for a few years in mid-table - and that will be determined by how successfully the manager (whoever it is) is at getting rid of the deadwood and shifting the culture back to a winning one. A new director of football who can actually do the job would help, too.

On what basis are you expecting a double relegation? Is this something you've given some thought to or is it more of an (understandable) emotional response to our current dire situation in the PL?

Not a chance of getting relegated to League One. Worst case scenario next year is mid-table consolidation, but I expect us to be around the play-offs at least, and possibly top two.

Not a chance.

It won't be.

Baffled by anybody wanting Dyche. Moyes has just walked into Everton and instantly improved them to a massive degree. Dyche is a dinosaur - appointing him would only bring us more misery.

You're getting confused. That statement relates to the 2021-24 period. The EFL suspected we might breach for that period (and eventually imposed a temporary transfer embargo on us), but we know for a fact that we did not breach for that period as the PL confirmed it a few weeks ago. So there is zero possibility of the EFL punishing us for the period that ended June 2024.

They were punished for defaulting on payments to other clubs, which (as far as I'm aware) we haven't even been accused of.

On what grounds?!

No, we're not.