ClaphamFox

Russell Martin has just proven beyond doubt that he cannot manage a club of our size in the PL. If we have any aspirations to return to the PL in the near future, why would we choose somebody who did such a terrible job as he did with Southampton? It would also be a profoundly unpopular appointment with the fans. Given that relations between the fans and the club are already at an all-time low, do you really think they'd go out of their way to piss everybody off even more?

Not a chance.

He’d be a disaster.

King is not manager material. He may turn out to be a very good coach and I hope he does, but anybody suggesting him for manager needs their head examining.

This is the reality. There's no sense in rushing to appoint a new permanent manager now and risk making the same mistake all over again. And, as you say, no caretaker manager is going to save us at this stage. The best we can hope for is that the penny has finally dropped at the club that we need major change in the summer, including a mass clear-out of the squad, a new director of football and probably a new manager. Frustratingly, it seemed like we were on the brink of making some important changes at Enzo's request before he quit. Unfortunately his departure killed that off and the club just reverted to type, with the result that now we're right back to where we were two years ago...

That seems to be a bit of a pattern with our squad though, doesn't it? Rodgers, Cooper and now RVN. The appointment of Maresca, which probably owed more to luck than judgment, was merely a temporary reprieve from a depressing sequence of managers failing to get our players to do even the basics...

Apparently he was urging them forward in the first half and then throwing his hands up in the air in disgust when they didn't make the runs, so it seems it may be this.

The only way a manager survives that is if his bosses have decided that the problem doesn't lie with him - ie, Top and Rudkin have accepted that the squad (yes, the one they assembled) is rotten to the core and that there's nothing Ruud can do about that. It wouldn't surprise me if the plan is still to have Ruud in charge of the clear out and rebuild.

I have some sympathy with Ruud because he's been handed a terrible squad to work with. But his persistence with players who do not give a shit about our club and will not break sweat to try to help us avoid relegation is wearing incredibly thin. So what if you think Faes and Soumare are the best players we have in their positions? They don't care and aren't trying, so don't pick them! Watching a team of such poor quality is bad enough without being forced to watch disinterested arseholes do the bare minimum so they can avoid injury and get a move in the summer. Surely we must still have a few players at the club who actually want to play for us?!

Let's hope Rangers get him.

It is. It reads like it was written by a Leicester-supporting sub-editor in the grip of post-match rage.

We successfully appealed against the PL's right to charge us for a PSR breach for 2020-23 on the grounds that we weren't a PL club on 30 June 2023 (because we'd just been relegated). The PL appealed our appeal and we are currently engaged in an arbitration process over that, although nobody seems to know exactly what is being discussed or when we can expect an outcome. It has been speculated in the media that if the PL can't touch us for 2020-23, the EFL might claim that it has jurisdiction for that period and try to punish us for the alleged breach. As yet it is not remotely clear whether the EFL will actually be able to do this - it's just media speculation. If the EFL tried, I've no doubt our lawyers would be contesting it vigorously. Some people seem to think the EFL will impose a transfer embargo on us when we go down, but this won't happen because they have no grounds to. Their previous embargo on us was imposed because they suspected that we might breach for 2021-24, but it was recently confirmed that we didn't breach for that period. So we won't have a transfer embargo this summer. The perception that the EFL is going to throw the book at us next season is pretty widespread but it isn't really grounded in reality. As mentioned above, the only way they might be able to get us is if they successfully argue that we came under their jurisdiction for 2020-23, but it's not clear whether they'd have any legal basis for this. Ironically the best outcome for us now would probably be for the PL to win its appeal and impose a points deduction on us for 2020-23 this season. It won't make a difference as we're going down anyway and we can't get punished twice for the same offence, so the EFL would not be able to touch us.

We’re clearly not going to recruit a new permanent manager at this stage of the season with so few options available. Far better to do it in the summer.

There is no agenda. It’s far worse than that: we got here through sheer incompetence, stretched over years. The people who run our club are not up to the job and they’ve arrogantly refused to bring in people who are. Incompetence combined with arrogance invariably ends in failure.

Homepage of the Sports section on the Times app:

4 March is next Tuesday…🤔

I’ve been exchanging a few messages with. West Ham-supporting friend. He’s a very nice guy, not at all given to ‘banter’, and has always been very positive about us in the past, even when we’ve played poorly. Tonight he texted me after the game: “Jesus Christ mate, that has to be the worst away team I’ve seen in 45 years of watching West Ham. Do your players not even WANT to stay up?” I had to explain to him that sadly, no, they don’t.

You’d actually let Faes pull on a Leicester shirt again?!

Neither.

Well quite.

I guess a mutual suicide pact would not count as foul play either.

This works quite well as modernist free-form poem: ive been supporting eliecster for 26 years and seen no improvement in the january transfer window weve had 6 games without a goal im really starting to question the amnager and im loosing hope in survial in the premier league

A month or so ago I heard Martin O'Neill being interviewed on the radio. At one point the interviewer said, "Now turning to a team close to your heart, what do you think of Forest this season?" O'Neill replied, "Why would you think they're close to my heart? I just played there for a bit." I get the impression he doesn't feel that way about us.

And their dog. The police are saying there's no indication of foul play, which I suppose would rule out murder-suicide. So either a suicide pact or a carbon monoxide leak?

Sometimes life comes at you hard. My other half had arranged to go out with a friend tonight, meaning I’d be in charge of getting the kids to bed. This process can take most of the evening as my youngest is rarely asleep before 9.30pm, meaning I likely wouldn’t be able to watch the game. I grumbled a little bit about this when she first told me a month ago, but accepted it as she doesn’t go out often. A few minutes ago my partner told me that her mate is ill and her night out has been postponed until next week, adding with a smile, “So you can watch your game if you want.” I think she was confused by the look of disappointment and horror on my face.