murphy

Tough call. I bet you agonised over that decision.

A chance to make history. No other top flight side has lost six consecutive top flight games without scoring, let alone seven. Come on Leicester, you can do it!

The reputational damage has been colossal. After the title we were worldwide news. If you wore a City shirt anywhere in the world you would likely be stopped in the street and congratulated and for almost a decade we carefully grew our reputation. Now, if your only clean shirt was a Leicester City shirt, you'd probably stay home that day.

Well BBC give us an xg of 0.07 , so with that logic, it should take about 14 games. edit - There are only ten games left

I think a player needs to be exceptional to go straight into the first team as a young teenager. Shilton comes to mind and Heskey who had the advantage of being a brick shithouse even as a kid. That said, Thomas and Barnes were 19 when they made their first team debuts and Chilwell 20. KDH older but some players will be later developers. I think you have to be careful not to rush it if it can be detrimental. I remember when Barnes was pulling up trees for West Brom and came back into Puel's first team. He looked a bit lost at first and hence the point of sending players out on loan at lower levels. Development is not about making one massive step up, it is a series of steps. Perhaps the only advantage of going down to the Championship next year is the fact that we could blood players like Alves, Nelson ourselves. Maybe Cartwright and Braybrooke if they're good enough and I would like to see us build our team around academy graduates. I would also be telling Evans and Monga (still schoolboys remember) that they will be involved as much as possible and spelling out their pathway if they stayed.

Should have done that in August. But we bought pensioners for wingers instead.

This team is the worst 'anything' of all time.

Chelsea away. How exciting. I wonder if we'll win?

Barnes, Chilwell, Thomas, Hamza and KDH have made 500 appearances for us so we are not talking about youth players making squads and never getting on to the pitch and you know it. I feel some people are so bitter that they are queuing up to beat the club up for problems that don't even exist. Boo hoo. We never develop our youth players, except for the academy graduates that have come through and continue to com through but don't count for some reason. I have a challenge for these people: 1 - Find me a similar size club that has a better recent record on bringing through youth than we do. or 2 - Find me another era in living memory in which LCFC has developed as many youth players as we have recently or 3 - If you have to be outraged, focus that bitterness on the many, many, many failings of this club that actually exist.

This place is full of people claiming that Cannon is the new Messi. Can't move for people saying he's the new Messi. I wish people would stop going on and on about how Tom Cannon is the new Messi 🙄

'll take that bet....

If Cannon is struggling, I for one take no pleasure in it. I wish him well. Signing for us set him back and he was never really given a chance. He had a good half season with Preston in The Championship and I think he will have a good career at that level.

Bobby Smith, Steve Lynex, John O'Neil, Gary Lineker, Alan Smith, dunno, Andy Feeley. Do I get a prize?

Part of the development pathway is to go out on loan at lower levels and to learn their trade. To make the step up at different levels. You can't claim that the era of bringing thorough the likes of Chllwell and Barnes (who were exceptional btw) is over just because Alves and Nelson have been loaned out rather than immediately integrated, when Chilwell and barnes needed to be loaned themselves before they were ready. I actually think that playing Nelson and Alves this year could have been detrimental to their development. The team is broken, the atmosphere becoming toxic and the jump from academy to Premier league probably too great. I think putting them into a broken team could have broken them too. Much better off at Cardiff and Oxford this year. For the likes of Monga and Nyoni they only need look at the steady stream of academy graduates at LCFC to see a pathway but when the likes of Man City and Liverpool come calling their heads will be turned. We can't compete with them, but let's not pretend that they leave because they can't find a way through.

Well I think it likely that the lure of trophies, Champion's League football and higher wages will be the reason he goes there, none of which we can compete with, not because his development is blocked at Leicester City, Lets remember this kid is 15. He has not been blocked. The point I was making re Palace and West Ham is that they are similar sized clubs and if we are so bad, let's look at their record on youth development compared to ours.

The point I was making was to show that we have developed a lot of players from our academy amid these nonsense claims that there is no pathway. Why are we making comparisons with Man City? They are likely to pinch Monga from under our noses which just goes to show the unfair advantage they have. A better comparison would be Crystal Palace, West Ham, Forest etc. Can they match our conveyor belt? Doubt it.

Its relevant to show how our development pathway has improved. It has been a source of pride for me that in recent seasons we would regularly field three or four academy graduates in the first team. How many other clubs can say that? I hope that we build next year's Championship side around the likes of Alves and Nelson.

Braybrooke and Alves have just come back from injury which has set them back. So has Stolarcyk, who played this year and last. Those players plus Nelson are all in the early stages of breaking through. Do you really expect them to go straight into the first team without going out on loan first? The likes of Chilwell and Barnes certainly went out on loan first..

I think I mentioned 10. Some have had their development set back through injury. Well let's go 10 years before that for comparison. 2004 to 2014...

Does anybody know if there is any limit to the number of youth players a club can have, such as the 25 man first team squad limit? I mean can the biggest clubs just asset strip others with impunity and stack up the best youth players in the country?

By recent years, I mean the last PL era for 2014 to now. In roughly ten years we have had Chilwell, Barnes, Thomas, Choudhury, and KDH come through. Alves and Braybrooke have been set back by injury otherwise they would likely be further advanced. Alves is now starting to make a name for himself already at Cardiff. Add to that Nelson, McAteer and Stolarcyk coming through and your assertion that there is no pathway for our youth players is demonstrably wrong.

Couldn't give the faintest toss about Derby County.

One thing this isn't is 'fair play'. If the vultures are allowed to pick the best talents from smaller clubs (again) for virtually nothing, then what is the point? I don't care what he wants, he is our player and the rules need changing to stop this kind of daylight robbery. To say he has no pathway is ridiculous. You could almost list a full eleven of players that have come through the academy in recent years.

This is obviously where we we've been going wrong. Someone should have told our bone china fragile defence to just "be solid at the back"

I remember that game very well. We won the Filbert St leg 1-0 but we peppered them and it should have been more. After every attack came the ironic chants of "boring, boring Leicester"