HitchinFox

I sincerely hope you appreciated your dad's with there, using the Spanish word of "one", rather than English...

**** it. I'm going to stay positive and say that I'm actually excited. Like @Ric Flair mentioned, Cifuentes will not hesitate to develop and rely on the youth. And we have plenty of talent in that department. Bringing in someone like Dyche (or Wilder to a slightly lesser extent) would, in my view, mean that we'd not utilise that pool of talent next season. With either of those two in charge, it could have even meant losing some of the younger players.

That would be the ideal scenario! Just think that we need to get promoted at pretty much any cost, in order for Top to decide it's time and to make the club more sellable. It's the only way the club can get rid of the hierarchy and move forward. Like you said, we hadn't prepared, in any way, for losing Maresca. And it derailed us. Which is unforgivable. Compare our clueless lot to Paul Barber, the Brighton CEO. He said that the day they hired Hürzeler, they started the process of planning for his successor. This was to cover two eventualities – if things didn't go well under him, they would have a plan, or if things went astonishingly well and they lost him to a bigger club, they would have someone in mind to continue his work. At any given time, he said that they have a Plan A, plan B and a plan C. That's what a well-run business does.

I see what you're saying and I agree. Yet, part of me would be happy for Cifuentes to come in and do a "Maresca" – get us promoted and go to a "big six" team. Mainly because having Prem status would help Top sell the club and we could then properly turn the corner – get rid of Rudkin etc.

You could argue that both Frank Lampard and Graham Potter (at Chelsea) were given a chance at a club that should have guaranteed success under them. The managers both before them and after them won things. You could also argue that Eddie Howe at Newcastle, with the resources he has, has been given a chance at a club that should be guaranteed success each season. But he hasn't delivered. Show me a club where success should be a "near guarantee", and I bet there is probably a historical list of managers that shows that they only started winning things when they appointed a non-English manager. *Note – non-English doesn't mean non-British. Scottish and Northern Irish managers tend to be much, much more successful than English ones too. It's a weird one, it really is. An anomaly. But English managers seem to be disproportionately rubbish at winning things at the very top level. And have been for decades.

Going by the past 30+ years of top-flight football, English managers are the worst thing you can do, if you want your club to be successful.

Röhl > Cifuentes > Carrick > GoN > Wilder > Douche > RvN In my humble opinion, out of all the ones that have "officially" been options, Marti is nowhere near the worst one.

• 0.8% of fans want Wilder. • 45% of fans know that Wilder is exactly who Rudkin and Top will appoint. Club in a nutshell at the moment.

Soooo, you're saying he'll get on with our DoF, then?

Your name is "The Year of the Fox" You said you wanted an answer option for "I dont know, and won’t know, until he’s been here 1 year". Ok, it's a bit obscure, granted. But it tickled me.

Never has a comment FT been matched so perfectly by the username making it.

This might have been mentioned already (haven't read through all the comments), but wasn't there a big junior tournament on it in June, over a couple (or even few) days? It's an annual thing? That always gives the pitch a battering. Combined with the recent hot weather, I think the ground staff have done a half-decent job to get it as good as it is. I might be completely wrong, of course, and perhaps it is a sign of the wider malaise of the club, but I do think it's just a combination of kids and hot weather and it'll all be back to normal by the start of the year.

It's not utterly baffling when you consider who our DoF is.

Betfair only offering 1/12 for Russell. Sky Sports reporting it's pretty much a done deal with "advanced talks".

Nah. There was bird poo on my lovely garden furmiture this morning when I sat down for the first coffee of the day. I blamed Rudkin for it.

Just one of Rudkin's numerous, miserable failures. Lost count of them, to be honest. So much so that I had forgotten about Edouard.

Indeed. https://www.lcfc.com/pages/en/media-article/will-alves-signs-long-term-leicester-city-contract

The stadium announcer?

Aaaaaah. Now we know where the two car park attendants who were replaced with a single mannequin in that booth have gone...

I'm already looking at League One grounds to visit in 2026-27.

Excellent - this has given us all something to follow with interest next year. Our gap to Leeds is currently 23 points. So we need Leeds' inevitable relegation next season to happen with a points total less than the gap – whatever it will be at the end of this season.

You know you're in trouble when you need to include a goal against Tranmere.

Yeah, that's the thing – the data suggests an excellent season. I've just had a bit of a read on the Brentford forum and I think fans who don't rate him, like my mate, are in the minority. Some even say he's better than Raya. They also seem to think he's off to Germany this summer - hence the link to Hermansen. https://griffinpark.org/forums/threads/mark-flekken.140430/page-31

I have a Brentford-supporting mate who says Flekken is great with his feet, but not that good at actually keeping the ball out of his net. That, apparently, is the general fan view of him. It's funny because the stats suggest otherwise (most saves in the Prem this season etc.).