Les-TA-Jon

4 minutes ago, dmayne7 said:

Yep. So expectation is near perfection. Not sure he realises just how it's going to be yet. Drops any points in the first 10 games and he'll be getting dogs abuse 

We can’t really set expectations until deep into the window. 
 

There’s a huge turnover of players required and it remains to be seen if we’ll be able to shift who we need to, whether we even have money to reinvest in replacements and if we’re going to target new types of signings or stick with the same agent driven ‘strategy’ 

1 hour ago, StanSP said:

Gonna go out on a limb here and say he probably will get us out of the league but there's a few caveats/things to note:

 

- it's not an appointment planning for the future

- it doesn't mean it's a good one 

- it won't be pretty. Having spoken to Southampton and Rangers fans, it's not going to be an exciting way of going up

- it further emphasises the lack of direction and strategy and vision from the club to adapt. Possession football in his style isn't the way forward. It's not a novelty any more and too many sides know how to combat it. 

- the club still clearly don't give a shit what fans think; every man and his dog know Martin is not a legitimately positive appointment. 

- what do we do with him when we go up? He's not succeeded at this level and seems to be universally disliked because of how he plays his football, or due to his 'philosophy'. 

 

 

I can't say I've paid much attention to his recruitment but he's nowhere near the first person I'd look to to be in charge of a rebuild at what is such a crucial time for our club. 

He's not some guaranteed promotion specialist. He's finished mid table or worse in all his jobs bar the Southampton promotion. 

And do you mean if we go up twice? 

I hope he goes rogue and gives us tell-all stories. Unlikely though. 

8 hours ago, LCFCCHRIS said:

I hope we get a whole new starting 11. I'll find it so refreshing to never have to see them again.

 

I like Nelson of course being home grown etc but get some money for him, we'll need it. 

Problem we've got is we need a huge rebuild - but the club is so bad as medium term squad building that we're likely to either have far less of a rebuild than we need and/or just be left with the next group of overpaid average players

12 minutes ago, adamkhalifa said:

Unfortunately for us. We have an idiot of an owner. And silly yes men to around him, to pander to his out of touch football knowledge. 

We have been in free fall since obsessing over possession play. 

 

Don't think it's quite as simple as that though - given the transition occurred under Puel (great signings) and Rodgers (our best ever football for first 18 months or so?) 

The club is the pits though, for sure. 

Is Dave Challinor even a realistic option? Didn't he leave Stockport by mutual consent? Which suggest he's having a break or something? 

13 minutes ago, SB87_LCFC said:

Is he Wasserman represented as well?

SMI Sports Management apparently

He's basically just Marti Cifuentes, but british, even more wedded to philosophy and managed for 84 fewer games. 

7 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Most of those teams have spent as many years in the EPL as us. Anyone over the age of 40 shouldn't be surprised to see Man City in there, who are "new money" that were essentially on a par with ourselves in the 20th century.

Depends what you mean by 'most' 

4 hours ago, daddylonglegs said:

44 days since we knew what division we were going to be playing in during the 26/27 season. 
 

I don't want to, but you can forgive the leadership having a week off after the season to re-energise ahead of an important summer. 

 

However, that still leaves a month where we haven't even had a whiff of a rumour on a new manager. No other club of any reputation operates like this in the entire country. It's an absolute embarrassment, and to make things worse - I don't even think I care anymore.

I'm not so bothered by the radio silence on the managerial front. It's often quiet at this time of year - any managers in post are on holiday/don't want to be bothered. The industry in general slows down, especially with players away and the World Cup etc. And as discussed at length - this appointment is so important and the situation the club finds itself in makes it all the more challenging to getting it right - we need someone who can lift the feeling and morale from rock bottom, oversee a huge squad rebuild, make use of youth, instill a completely new ethos and mindset and finish top 2 at the first time of asking. 

Talking our time to get it right is no bad thing (obviously the club could be doing this, or they could be taking aging to make Yet Another Terrible AppointmentTM, or they could be doing nothing). 

What I think is unforgivable is the general radio silence over the wider situation. There should have been some sort of statement to acknowledge the failings of the last 4-5 years, the double relegation, the financial worries etc - some sort of attempt to provide assurances to the fans that there is some sort of plan and some sort of attempt to set things right. 

55 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

The book value loss in year doesn't really matter in the same way this year.

 

Buying a player for £15m, getting almost no play time out of him and selling him for £3m is all round terrible, mind.

 

I'm not sure the new spending rules mean clubs can ignore book values. The new rules are about player costs vs player income, equity injection and % of turnover. 

There's some debate as to whether book value losses count as a player cost or not. 

52 minutes ago, Tommy Fresh said:

Regardless of financial position he'd of likely gone anyway, albeit we'd of perhaps got a bit more for him.

If we were a mid-table PL team like we 'should' be? 

On 02/06/2026 at 12:01, Foxes96 said:

If we get a figure even close to that for him then can’t complain. And Arsenal would be a great move for him. One of the best in the country at bringing through young players as well at the minute. 

We absolutely should be complaining.

The club shouldn't be in the position to have to sell their best up and coming youth products just to keep the lights on. It's a disgrace that we've managed ourselves into this position. The entire point of spending £100m+ on Seagrave and it's high annual running costs was to create, develop and use players like Monga, not sell them early in their careers just to maintain cashflow and enable the signings of players with worse prospects. 

59 minutes ago, jonny_wright said:

Was talking to one of his team last weekend, Leicester cannot afford to keep him, he doesn’t have a relegation clause in his contract and will join Sheffield United in the coming weeks for a fee in the region of £3m - we aren’t in a position to negotiate for more as they know under no circumstances can he stay at Leicester due to his wages 

Currently got a book value of approx £5.5m - so a nice £2.5m loss for Topkin...

40 minutes ago, ClaphamFox said:

Nor BDCR. This goes back to Henry Winter's comment about us being a 'manager's club'. We'd have been targeting a certain type of player under Enzo, then Cooper came in a said he wanted a completely different profile of player so we gave him what he wanted. Then we sacked Cooper a few months later and it turned out those players weren't especially suited to the way RVN wanted to play. 

 

It takes years to assemble a squad—managers can be sacked after a run of 5-6 bad results. It doesn't take a genius to understand that constantly changing your transfer policy at the behest of whoever happens to be manager at the time will result in an incoherent mess of a squad. And that's exactly what happened to us.

 

 

And I don't even think it's a 'choice' by the club either - it's simply that there's little to no football based talent and strategy in the structure, above the manager...

51 minutes ago, 1972 Fox said:

Plan you say. I wonder if they have ever thought of this?

 

And we still failed PSR which incurred a 6 point penalty and ultimately saw us relegated. Life under Aiyawatt an Rudkin, the gift that keeps on giving.

The 6 point deduction applied to the period ending 2024 (Promotion season under Enzo) so RVN sacking was irrelevant 

3 minutes ago, filbertway said:

Yeah, an announcement that he was leaving at the end of his deal would have been made the week after the final game if he wasn't up for consideration.

 

The fact they haven't decided that nearly a month later is par for the course though. It's almost a carbon copy of RVN last summer.

Think it's more to do with them not having / not finalising a plan - whilst that's the case, they 'have' to keep Rowett as an option. 

RVN delayed sacking was different because it was around figuring which accounting year could stomach the cost of doing so. 

1 hour ago, Iwebema said:

I wondered if they will be looking for a biggish name, someone that will pull in some global/commercial attention.

 

Rather than someone like Challinor, perhaps Steven Gerrard. 

 

As always there arent many leaks but I am getting a bit concerned we are in June now and all I have heard is Russell Martin, I actually dont think it will be him, I think he will try and rebuild his reputation abroad where a fan base may have less preconceptions about him.

We're in League One mate

On 29/05/2026 at 14:33, Paninistickers said:

Then, if he can't make everyday calls about how to run a business, he isn't a CEO. 

 

The same debate was discussed on the Susan Whelan thread. In her case, she either signed off on the financial mismanagement if the club, or, she was a puppet and was obliged to sign off under orders. Either way, that's behaviour unfit for the role of CEO

Sure - But I guess I'm saying if it is him signing off on 'bad stuff' then he's the target for blame. But if he gets overruled by Top all the time, and forced to do 'bad stuff' then Top's to blame. 

Either way we're splitting hairs - the club is a shambles and seems to be continuing in that vein. 

Did Jan Kerfuffle get any recognition at the game? 

7 hours ago, davieG said:

I'm fairly sure he didn't play the whole 90 was subbed and then replaced Sean St Ledger for the last few minutes.

New points deduction incoming for this illegal use of subs 

13 minutes ago, Stadt said:

It shows you they have never segmented the fanbase out at all. They're spending more on ads than they ever have to flog tickets to a loss making event - every fan that might buy a ticket already has.

 

It reflects very badly on Kevin Davies too, in my opinion. Any serious, hard-nosed CEO would have called this before it got off the ground but Mr. Happy To Be There with his finance background won't rock the boat.

Who’s to say the CEO can make that call? How do we know? Maybe he’s been suggesting that and is overruled by Top?

19 hours ago, Mike the Metal Ed said:

Having a gob like a sailor away at Braga

Us winning and waiting for the final whistle “Ref, you said 10 seconds, 40 ****ing seconds ago” 

13 hours ago, LCFCJohn said:

Not just yours, generally at the sheer volume of people who have taken exception to my post highlighting that the string of achievements by similarly sized PL clubs since illustrates it was a failure when people were calling it a positive at the time and jumping on anyone who suggested otherwise.

 

If pulling out net spend figures and who teams played isn’t making excuses, what is it? We were favourites to win the Europa League, got dumped out of the group stage and are the only English team to then not make the final of the Conference league I think unless I’m missing someone. 

Think it's just a classic multiple things can be true at once situation: 

• We were massively punching above our weight in 2019 and 2020 - at that time, non-big 6 club finishing in the top 6 in the PL era was exceedingly rare. In one of those attempts at the top 4, Man Utd spent £65m on Bruno Fernandes in Jan to get them over the line and pip us. How can we compete with that?  
• Finishing 5th both times after being in the top 4 for so long was a crumble/bottle situation, perhaps indicative of the soft mentality/underbelly that developed in the latter half of Rodger's tenure
• But finishing 5th twice was a huge achievement for the club based on an historical perspective for the club and for a non-big 6 club
• Performance in subsequent 2nd/3rd tier European competitions was poor (even if we did eventually get knocked out by Mourinho's Roma)
• 'medium' sized clubs that have done well since is largely due to 1) the PL getting more competitive; 2) those kinds of teams have upskilled; 3) 2nd/3rd tier European competitions have gotten 'easier' due to format changes

2 minutes ago, LCFCJohn said:

I think it means there started to be a decline in what had been the ‘big 6’ for a number of years (which ironically we disrupted in 2016). And other sides capitalised on that.

 

I’m sure we had the talent but not the mentality to back it up and get over the line. 

Also just totally scattergun 'strategy' too. 

We ripped up our model to try to get into the top 4, yet both times we were close we refused to spend in the Jan windows and/or brought in crap players that made no difference.