Dan

Really, really crap way to go out and a good example of why hanging onto a player for sentimental reasons is virtually never a good idea. I want to be more positive about him and remember the good times but it's very hard at the minute. He's a big part of why we've gone down this season, even though I don't think he's a bad egg.

Had 5th at that point. That came down substantially quite early on in the season. Thought after Southampton we'd go down.

To do it off the back of the first real PSR warning as well. To take that opportunity to really make some wise investments but instead gamble on survival, and be pretty much down from day one. Utter utter disgrace. It's actually sickening how normalised such ridiculously poor process is. Literally three seasons out of four should have led to a drastic overhaul. Three of the worst seasons in our history in four years.

Understatement. When dross like this and Spurs get this far.

You will never witness anything as extaordinarily bad as this again if they do win it.

How is this season real man.

Yep. Even of those we picked up there it wasn't overly convincing. I literally don't think there was a single game you could say we were comfortably better than the opposition and won it.

Our problem all season was results against the poorer teams. 14th and below... QPR - 0 points Sheff Utd - 0 points Watford - 1 point Stoke - 4 points Portsmouth - 1 point Charlton - 3 points Blackburn - max of 3 points (probably 0) West Brom - 4 points Oxford - 1 point Sheff Weds - 4 points Bodes quite badly for next season.

In-fact my best XI now is... Premovic Vojnocic N'Tamon Serafimovic Stefanovic Jankovic Cvetkovic Croes Gotea Donno Bubanj That's literally 10 new signings and Donno. So the recruitment is good.

I bought a goalkeeper from Smederevo in the 2nd tier and an Ivorian centre half from Brest - both coups. I made the Ivorian my highest paid player. Given I need to be picky with foreign players I would say he's a real steal. One of those high potential types who just tailed off a bit on this save. The sort who could probs be starting for a Ligue 1 side in another save. Hoping for pareto principle - I'm convinced we're close to being a good team.

I do think our reputation, probably even more so outside of England would be "fallen giant, I can fix them". We'd still be viewed as an opportunity. Albeit one I'd view as a big trap with this owner. But there'll be prospective managers who have less idea of this than we do.

Happily bet against that. They're both miles ahead of the other two. Atleti's defence is shit nowadays and Arsenal's has shown cracks lately.

If the rules stipulate that what happened there is worthy of the opposition having an 80% chance of a goal then the rules are wrong.

Good grief this is good.

So our newfound wealth had landed in my transfer and wage budget at last and in came 11 new signings. Most notable were two of Cukaricki's first choice defenders Vojnovic and Serafimovic - both of these had minimal interest in joining the club but were at least willing to talk to us at all and with the Serbian player wages situation, this made them quite easy to actually bring in. This really was an overhaul. Pretty substantially strengthened in all areas. Cvetkovic was a player I'd had my eye on ages, he was somehow stuck in the second tier and nobody had come and taken him off Beograd. Bubanj had scored 13 goals in that dreadful Napredak team and the likes of Gotea and Croes looked like promising youngsters as well - albeit the £1.1mil future fee for Gotea was likely to stop a permanent move. We made a pretty mixed start. Extremely disappointing to concede a last minute equaliser on the opening day at home to TSC but we followed it up with a shock 0-3 win at Partizan. It took us five games to win at home but surprisingly this arrived against Zvezda. We sat around 4th in the table after 3 months but there was something like only 3 points between the whole of the top half. it was a mad table. We were never entirely convincing which was a shame. We felt a bit too open and I always expected us to give away silly goals even though we were scoring plenty. Despite hitting top spot we went and suffered a humiliating 2-6 loss to Radnicki Nis - one of the cluster of teams around the top. You could make a case for us coming 1st or 6th, but probably not below that. The record against the Belgrade clubs was impressive though. How we didn't win at Zvezda I will never know. We sat 4th going into the winter break and I did have a bit of money to spend - with a couple more players lined up.

I agree with you by the way and I think PSR is a complete joke. I just get a bit fed up of our half way house which always seems to ensure we are lumbered with players on big contracts who offer nothing to us and this isn't happening to everybody else.

Can they not just ground share?

You even bizarrely ended up using the same sentence at the end as well

There's always some excuse trotted out about it relating to a PSR reason as to why we can't sell and then we just fail PSR anyway so we end up with the worst of both worlds, over and over again.

Very good article. Few errors including: - Rudkin getting credit for implementing the scouting originally. That was Pearson and there is no way that anybody who oversaw this initially would be capable of serving up what's happened since. - Winks contract is now expiring in 2027, no? - Fatawu PL interest after 2023/24 - maybe but we hadn't bought him by that point, maybe that means 2024/25. I'm being very picky though. The gist of it is completely correct.

Spot on. Nothing will change. Their whole attitude of "we'll be fine" isn't going to change upon the opposition becoming Leyton Orient and Stevenage. There's more to come. They will just arrogantly assume it's impossible for us to not finish above them (we've just finished below Oxford United) and plod on. Nothing to see. It'll be OK. How the **** do people blindly back this lot. It's fascinating.

Leicester City

He's been bafflingly bad all season.

I don't think we needed experience under Cooper. We had as much PL experience as any promoted team has ever had. It was a huge error to go up that route. And one they continue to go up.

Even in the 'good' days there were still some completely dumb wastes of money.