ClaphamFox

It wouldn't.

Yes, I heard Rob Tanner last night. He did indeed imply that the EFL is 'baying for blood' but he provided no details whatsoever about what the EFL can get us for and what measures they will be able to take against us. The podcasts you mention all follow the same pattern: dark hints that we're going to get 'hit hard' with something by a vengeful EFL combined with no knowledge whatsoever of exactly how this will happen. I'm pretty sure the EFL will not be able to hit us with a transfer embargo this summer because we didn't breach for the period ending 2023-24 and we won't submit our accounts for 2024-25 to them until the autumn at the earliest. A points deduction may be possible if the PL's arbitration process against us for 2020-23 (the one we escaped on a technicality) ends up being passed onto the EFL. However, as yet it's not clear whether this will happen. As for sellable assets, I disagree about BEK. I don't think we'd be able to sell him for much more than we bought him for, so selling him would have little benefit from a PSR perspective. Much better to keep him. Likewise I can't see anybody dropping big money on Fatawu until it's clear how he's recovered from his injury.

This is almost certainly it. Last year we submitted them just before the deadline and the first news stories reporting the figures were on 3 April. So we’ll likely find out in the next few days.

Slightly odd story. Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew accuser Virginia Giuffre says she has been in a serious car crash and has just days to live: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yl5vle2nmo.amp But the BBC story also says this: “It remains unclear where and when the crash occurred. “Both the Western Australia police and ambulance services told the BBC they had no records of such an accident happening in recent weeks. “The police later specified that they had located records of a "minor crash" between a bus and a car on 24 March, but that no injuries had been reported as a result.”

Leeds have had two consecutive seasons in the EFL. If we’d have failed to get promoted last season we’d also had to have reduced the wage bill further. I’m not saying we’ll have exactly the budget we had for 23/24, but in terms of resources we’ll be one of the strongest teams in the division.

There’s never been a need for it - there’s no black market in Leicester home tickets going for elevated prices. People have just been quietly sharing their season tickets with family and close friends for years with very few problems, as you say. For the club it has always been about trying to force people into the resale scheme, but it seems like a combination of pressure from the Foxes Trust and rising anxiety over the amount of non-renewals has persuaded them to rethink.

I think Faes’s status as a regular starter for Belgium combined with his relatively low book value will mean we’re able to shift him. We may also be able to offload Soumare on the continent, if only on loan. Hopefully Ayew and BDCR won’t fancy playing in the Championship and will seek moves elsewhere. I’d love to say the same about Vestergaard but that might be stretching it a bit… They will have relegation clauses that see their wages drop considerably. Without a transfer embargo, we would likely seek to offload them and replace them; with an embargo, we’d be more inclined to keep them. Thankfully this is all a bit academic as we’re not getting a transfer embargo.

Oh for the love of God not this again. Nobody has any grounds to impose a transfer ban on us - and if they did it would be a disaster because we’d just end up keeping unwanted, disinterested players who we’d otherwise be able to replace.

Would Wellens name even be mentioned if he wasn’t a former player of ours?

O’Neil is a coach, not a manager. He’s already shown he can’t control a dressing room. He would be a disastrous appointment.

I’ve spent months pooh-poohing the suggestion Martin would be considered for the job and it feels like I may have to keep doing it for a while yet Yes, he plays the football Top likes but he has just spectacularly failed with Southampton in the PL. In particular, he showed that he has no ability whatsoever to organise a defence. As stubborn and naive as our owners can be, they have never appointed somebody off the back of a spectacular failure and I can’t see them doing so now when we’re at a major crisis point and they desperately need to get the fans back onside. They won’t do it.

This is the key question. I guess we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed on this one.

That would only be an issue it it was Rudkin who appointed our next manager, and I have a feeling it won’t be.

I’d be very surprised if there aren’t. Hopefully they include Rudkin being moved to concentrate on the horses to make way for a new DoF.

Martin and O’Neil have both very recently comprehensively failed to achieve exactly the kind of job we would want them to do. Appointing either of them would mean completely ignoring those failures. RVN is far more likely to stay than one of those two being appointed.

Top allows it, and in doing so he undermines his managers.

Allowing the players to go over the manager’s head and whinge to Top probably doesn’t help in this regard.

There were numerous media reports last May/June that we were considering RVN after Maresca left.

It's partly a gut feeling that the club believes that our current problems are not of Ruud's making and that they'll want to give him a transfer window and a preseason to rebuild. But it's also partly down to the way that RVN is speaking in press conferences and the recurring reports in the Mercury etc that the club has no plans to get rid of him. I get the sense he's been told he's staying and the club is briefing journalists the same. It's not what I want - I'd prefer a fresh start. But I'd be even more depressed about our prospects with either Russell Martin or Gary O'Neil in charge than I am with RVN, which is saying something.

I don't know. Occasionally the club succeeds in pulling a good managerial appointment out of the bag, though it seems to come down more to luck than judgment. Hopefully it will be one of those lucky ones. However, I'd say that there's more chance of RVN staying than either Russell Martin or Gary O'Neil being offered the job.

It won’t be either of them.

Strasbourg are doing brilliantly and have a good chance of getting into Europe, possibly even the CL. Why would he want to go back to the Championship?

L'Equipe are reporting that we're interested in Liam Rosenior... https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/leicester-city-ligue-1-manager-10059123

Faes will surely go. Vestergaard I'm not so sure...

I absolutely agree with your first point: we have definitely had a DoF in name only, which has left us heavily dependent on individual managers to dictate transfer policy. As you say, this can sometimes work but over the long run it is likely to go badly more often than it goes well. Where I differ from you is that I have a hunch there will be changes behind the scenes and that Rudkin will not be our DoF next season. Our performances this season will have shocked the owners - they will not have been prepared for us to be this bad. No matter how obdurate and resistant to change they have been in the past, I think there will be a recognition that things need to change. Maresca was demanding a restructuring of operations behind the scenes before he left and it seems the club were willing to do what he asked, but then Chelsea came calling and those plans were shelved. I expect them to be revived this summer and Rudkin to move aside to make way for a new DoF, although it obviously remains to be seen what kind of candidate we can attract for the role.