Les-TA-Jon

Surely, based on your own logic, you should be bothered then? This gives the board another chance to mess things up?

His leaving was inevitable once Chelsea were genuinely interested. Amazed at how many people on here think his departure won't matter or affect us though. We've lost a great manager and a bunch of great coaches. But obviously we'll have to wait and see who the new guy is or how they get on.

What did he *actually* say though?

Given it was a huge contribution to our disastrous relegation…

That’s true. It’s also not what you said. you said 0 money and 8 points as if they were facts. I don’t understand why people are making such deterministic judgements on Leicester’s chances next season, or indeed Maresca’s chances to do well, given: We don’t know what the deduction will be we don’t know how much we’ll spend we don’t know who we’ll sell or buy we don’t know if incomings will be good or not

Oh did the club announce its transfer budget today? did the PL announce an 8 point deduction without right to appeal today?

This is precisely why it would be bad for him to go. The club has already had 2 very turbulent years, has tons to do this summer + the uncertainty of deductions and what finances allow or don't allow. Add on to that a managerial change is not good. Plus, every managerial change is a chance for Rudkin/Top to get it wrong.

If Leeds win the final, it’ll be hilarious watching @Pub breath trying to argue that ‘Leeds technically finished the league on 97 points, the same as Leicester’

You kind of are though. A club can only do what it can do within its level. If a club is a perpetual Championship/League 1 team, but keeps winning league titles in both divisions, should they not celebrate those achievements and trophies? You're basically saying 'only the PL, FA Cup and League cup count'. Which, by definition says all the other clubs that don't or can't compete for those trophies, have nothing to play for. It's a nonsense. With your logic we've only ever won 5 proper trophies. On the same measure Spurs are way out in front on 15. This is like some twisted ultimate version of celebration police

So there's around 70 teams in the football league that should basically just pack it all up and not bother. And Leicester City pre-2016 is just totally irrelevant. Right.

Villa have done very well. The top 4 is very hard to break into and has barely been done over the last 30 years. But it's also been a season where Spurs, Man Utd and Chelsea have all faltered.

Expectation: Closely relegated or closely stay up Hope: 12th-17th But it's all largely irrelevant right now since there's so many unknowns: What's the deduction? What's our ins and outs over the window? Who comes up with us and Ipswich? What do the other promoted and bottom 6 teams do in their windows?

Clubs are free to do it, but the PL gets to decide if it allowable as an add-back, I think. If Chelsea and the PL are in dispute, it will presumably be around this.

Hopefully we can do some clever trading, but just feels like between Vardy, Cannon and Daka + strikers being the hardest position to sign + other positions throughout the squad being a priority. Maybe we can get all the sales we hoped for before, this summer...

I've got some bad news for you...

Whittaker and Szmodics both were in the EFL team of the season

I see your point, but 'player' of the season has to have some scope to be distinct from how the 'team' performed, in order to recognise individual brilliance. Szmodics had a great season, but his team nearly got relegated. With your logic he should be completely out of the running. For example.

That's specifically the 'WhoScored.com' version. The official EFL one is far more sensible:

Most of the squad signing for Monaco this summer then, on the same basis

We joke about @Pub breath but, ironically, Leeds and Leicester both got 85 points in the final 42 games of the season. But I suppose it reinforces how farcical the overall argument was - the first 4 games still count!

I was including the Leeds game - I've got 21 points for them, 19 for us

In all seriousness though, if anyone's bottled it - it's Leeds - they did the double over us and Ipswich and very likely to finish behind both of us! Since they beat us 3-1 they've actually taken 2 points more than us, but they've had hugely costly inconsistency at key moments. Beat Ipswich 4-0 in Dec, then follow it up with defeats vs Preston and West Brom Beat us 3-1, then draw with Huddersfield 3 losses and only 1 win out of the previous 5 games right at the crunch and failing to capitalise on our double loss to Millwall and Plymouth

Funny that they keep banging on about us 'almost' bottling a 17 point lead. Well...we simply...didn't? We won the title. We might finish above 3rd place, by 4-10 points? Also, had all games been played simultaneously we were never not top of the table in the final few months of the season, so...?

Would take some checking, but I'm pretty sure, from matchday 33 onwards (start of our 'wobble' with home loss vs Middlesbrough) , we were never not top, had all games been played simultaneously/teams not have games in hand etc?