filbertway

The whole having Salah in his pocket was a ridiculous thing though wasn't it. We played a back 10 that game and Salah had limited space and 2 or 3 players to contend with regularly. It was a fine team defensive display but that wasn't down to Thomas doing a Kaamark style man marking job.

Ah yeah just seen your post Given the stats its even more shocking that he's in ahead of them in the whoscored one

Whittaker and Szmodics both had statisically better seasons than Rutter, very odd decision. Not sure how a man who's banged in 27 league goals isn't making team of the season.

Just made me think of this scene from curb your enthusiasm Greg - The Flamboyant Kid on Curb Your Enthusiasm (youtube.com)

Would it have been much different? We'd have been stuck with essentially the same squad and had very little maneuverability in the market. The only difference is that we'd need to be able to juggle an extra 6+ games. We've given massive long contracts to players not worthy of them - Champions league football likely wouldn't have altered our trajectory a great deal. Proabably would have brought in an extra 30-40 milllion (depending on how we did) going in as 4th seeds I can't imagine we'd have fared too well. Let's be conservative and say we signed 3 players for a combined 60 million and gave them all 80k a week for 4 years. That's an extra 27million a season we're committing to for 4 years. Given our awful financial management I genuinely think that getting into the champions league would probably have been more detrimental to us 4/5 years down the line.

We've been renewing Hamza's contract under the same pretense for what feels like an eternity

Feels like he hit his full potential at 17. Seen almost no growth from the lad since he came in. Still think he can forge himself a career as a steady full back in the 2nd tier. This seems like a good move.

Rangers have giftwrapped the title this season. They've not showed up to one of the 732 games against Celtic this season. Even against 10 men that weren't trying to score - Celtic still managed to make hard work of it. Classic Rodgers. I still hold hope that they'll fold and lose the next 2

Investing in infrastructure doesn't count towards FFP. Got to admire how brainwashed the apologists are.

Watched the tnt sports cars tonight. Denzel Bentley was on form. Fight of the night was the fight before though. Garner v Dilton was a proper slug fest. Onto next week now. Moses itauma and Joe cordina title fights. Opetia v bredis promises to be a classic. Then of course the big one. I love watching this sport!

Basically. Celebrating a success isn't a terrible thing.

We held an open top bus parade for winning a league we shouldn't have been in to be fair.

Nothing game and limped to victory against one of the worst teams in the league. Im shocked it wasn't buzzing

Are you forgetting Ryan Bertrand?!

All the fans and stewards I spoke to were incredibly friendly I really enjoyed my visit to be fair. Did the 10am start on the beers help? Probably

We (Coalville) nearly got caught out by this in the trophy this season - luckily the ineligible player was injured so missed the game anyway. It can't be hard for the FA to have a central bank of player data where suspensions are stored and visible to clubs. When the suspension starts they enter x league/cup games. Secretary of club should have full visibility and be able to check the night before a game day and see which players are available and feed that back to the manager if anyone is suspended. Once the game has passed they can mark them down as missing the game through suspension and the number goes down by 1.

There's always been "abuse" but it's generally been playful tongue in cheek banter and the unwritten law is that at the end of the game you give the player a clap and wish them well if they've been singled out for a bit of stick. Since covid and people sacking off the pro game - you get a lot of people that seem to be pure raging and angry about nothing. I absolutely cringe whenever I hear "wanchor wanchor wanchor". Same pre-packaged angry chant each time. Where's the wit lads? Then at the end of the game they carry on the verbal abuse instead of letting it just be a bit of banter. Like Lako says - some people that are used to hiding in numbers and seem to carry some weird anger now coming to games where there are a few hundred people and acting the same. It stands out massively. It's not endemic and happening all the time, but there's a very definite change to pre covid times.

Clear that for all his natural ability Kel really isn't that arsed about making the most of his career. More than happy to be 2nd or 3rd choice here and looks like he'll be happy to go and be 2nd/3rd choice at Villa. He's gonna make a tonne of money from his career, but you do wonder how much he could have achieved if he had the same mentality as King or Albrighton who have absolutely maximised their ability to the limit.

You'd imagine that's a by product of being given too many instructions though - you overthink what you need to do, panic and then go into safety first mode.

Anecdotally his man management seems a real weak point. However you can't really argue with the squad he left us with and the fact he left us with a team where the players were comfortable with the football. He left us in an incredibly good position. On the pitch he made some questionable decisions and played some pretty turgid stuff. Although he never really got much chance to play with his new toy Tielemans who was a major upgrade on Mendy. And yeah, as said above, anecdotally it sounds like his man management wasn't great. But to honest - to do the job he needed to do he didn't need to have the squad rimming him, he was never going to be popular. There's no way Rodgers could have done what Puel had to do as he has a pathological need to be adored by people he meets. You need to remember how awful we were when he joined though. When Shakespeare left we looked a pitiful team. Could barely string 5 passes together and looked like a team on the way down. From where he took over the club to the time he left - he undeniably improved us and left us in a much better position. The only other manager in recent history to do that is Pearson. Even Ranieri left us on a downward spiral.

When loads of people had a lob on over the idea of having 5 subs, they all pretty unanimously said it's a great opportunity to blood young players. As a club for the past few years we seem to actively try and keep youth away from the team, even picking 2 goalkeepers on a 9 man bench instead of bringing in promising youngsters. I'd like to say I have high hopes that Braybrooke and Alves will get a good amount of minutes for us but I can't see it.

Only one that had the balls to break up the old boys club. If they reacted to it petulantly, then that's on the players rather than Puel. Him and Macia did some excellent work laying the foundations that Rodgers (and Congerton) took the credit for and then destroyed.

It's not really a joke More a point that clubs are welcome to dream and hope for the best. I doubt any of them are calling be calling for McKenna's head if he's not got them top of the league by christmas.

Leicester City: Billionaire owner 'will spend £180m' to make top five - BBC Sport

Had to go back and double check this as people seem to have read this as "Leverkusen winning the Bundesliga is better than Leicester winning the Premier League". But no I was right, you did say that them going unbeaten all season whilst winning the German cup and the Europa league would arguably surpass our achievement.