ClaphamFox

I'll be very disappointed if the welcome video doesn't start with a patient lying on a hospital bed wrapped head-to-toe in bandages, with mournful music in the background. Then the opening bars of post horn gallop start playing and the patient jumps up, rips off the bandages and reveals himself to be Sensi in a Leicester kit.

When you work for an online media company, clicks are everything. You need to drive traffic to the website irrespective of how strong your story is. So it's obviously in the interests of journalists to exaggerate the likelihood of a transfer happening because if they tweeted, for example, "Brighton are interested in Dewsbury Hall but it's highly unlikely to happen", hardly anybody would bother to click. Rob Tanner was up to it also yesterday - tweeting that KDH's future at Leicester was 'uncertain', then linking to a story which basically admitted that nothing had changed and Leicester aren't inclined to sell. He was just trying to generate more clicks, which is fine - he was just doing his job. But it does create a distorted picture of what's actually going on. With this story in particular, I've no doubt Brighton are interested and that Ornstein spoke to somebody there. But I suspect he deliberately used the word 'negotiations' when in reality he knew it was just a tentative offer followed by swift rejection. He needs to imply that the move is very possible otherwise he doesn't have much of a story, which is not good for an online journalist who is paid to break stories. Personally I can't see this happening unless Brighton offer silly money that is enough for us to make 2-3 signings that clearly improve the team overall, and I'd say the chances of that happening in the next three days are very slim.

Massive coup from us if we’ve loaned him with an option for a free transfer in the summer when he’s out of contract.

They reportedly bid £20m. I doubt they’d go to £30m, let alone the £40m we’d apparently demand.

Exactly. The strong implication of Ornstein’s piece was that we wanted to sell. By contrast, Dorsett’s story suggests we definitely do NOT want to sell. Very different angles.

No, it’s because Dorsett has a long track record of covering Leicester and Ornstein has none. I doubt Ornstein bothered to speak to anybody at Leicester before writing his story.

Judging from the phrasing of the story, I’d say that Dorsett has definitely spoken to someone at the club. I’m not remotely convinced that Ornstein did.

Ornstein may be reliable when it comes to other clubs, but does he have good contacts at Leicester? Maybe he sourced his story from Brighton and Dorsett has managed to get the Leicester angle…

They know how to scout quality players. Maybe they see something in him that you don’t.

I’ll say one thing though. This shitty transfer rumour has finally stopped me from brooding over Ipswich’s late equaliser on Monday…

Perfect summary of the situation.

Phew! And there was me all worried…😅

Who’s going to play in the 8 positions if KDH leaves and Ndidi is injured?

If offloading Praet meant we were able to get somebody else (eg, Sensi) in, then I'd say it was a pretty important deal. At the very least, if Praet starts tomorrow we can probably assume that a move is not imminent...

No. Starting (for us) tomorrow, according to Rob Tanner.

Well if he's starting tomorrow it suggests he's unlikely to leave this window, so we may be seeing a fair bit more of him over the rest of the season...

I think it's the same with leaving the scene of an accident if there are no other vehicles involved. If somebody is drunk and crashes their car into a tree, it's much better for them to walk away rather than stay and get breathalyzed. They can later say they were feeling dazed from the accident and wandered off in a confused state, which would carry less of a punishment than if they'd been caught over the limit.

He did indeed. https://x.com/RobTannerLCFC/status/1750879991271665679?s=20

Nonsense! In the days before the Internet and social media, transfers were concluded in just days. Since then, footballers, agents and club employees have become so distracted by their twitter, facebook and instagram accounts that transfers are now taking weeks to sort out. It's the only explanation that makes sense.

Six of their starting eleven tonight started their last league game against Southampton.

The Covid protocols did not forbid people from drinking, they were designed to prevent people from socialising in large groups. So it wasn't a drinking offence at all. Drink driving is clearly a serious issue, but this business of trying to portray Choudhury as a serial offender because he posted some daft tweets as a kid and then attended a party during Covid (which many people did, including the people who ran our country at the time) is just plain daft.

He has 2mg tablets. We have been given permission to give him two of these (ie, up to 4mg per night) at our discretion, but we've rarely done this. Even with his 2mg of melatonin, we have found he often wakes up during the night and can struggle to get back to sleep. Recently we bought some kids' sleep gummies (basically magnesium plus a few vitamins, available over the counter or via Amazon). We've found the combination of 2mg of melatonin plus the gummy helps him to get to sleep and get through the night without waking, and has already resulted in him performing better at school.

Yes it is. In this case, we're in a bit of a dilemma because we're wary of putting our son on hormone supplements over the long term because we're concerned that it might affect his development during puberty. At present there's no evidence that melatonin supplements do negatively impact a child's development, but there's no clear evidence that they don't either. This is because there has been very little research into it. Our paediatrician explained that because it is already so widely available over-the counter in the US, there's no pressure on the pharmaceutical companies to research it. If its use was restricted to prescription only in the US, they'd likely undertake a lot more research into it in the hope of proving its safety. As it is, they don't need to do that. So we're very wary about using it too much, which is a shame as it really helps our son to regulate his sleep patterns more effectively.

Exactly. He was a child. If we're going to add crass tweets made when he was a child to his rap sheet, it's starting to look like a desperate attempt to throw mud at him by implying a pattern of behaviour over many years when in reality nothing of the sort exists. It's just a witch hunt, and when the Muslim stuff is thrown in too, it starts to look like a racist witch hunt.