Dan

Chelsea are firmly in the United camp now of won't threaten for anything serious for a long time. Their ownership are beyond clueless.

It's got all the hallmarks of yet another crap summer. But why would anyone expect anything else. Same regime that have a track record of lack of self reflection and absolutely minimal pressure from the fans to change it.

It's genuinely a shame. Somebody on here pointed out about him and I can never unsee it. He has become a genuinely boring player. Like almost drained of confidence but I feel like it's a way he's been coached to play. 2019-2021 he was a flawed, but exciting player. Bloody hell he got an England cap. A Hungarian equivalent wouldn't be called up by them now.

It's absolutely criminal. For every criticism of the state of the squad, if I knew this was the idea for Ndidi (destroyer or nothing!!!!) and we'd do it at the expense of giving players like Alves a go in games like this then I'm out. What the **** is the point? I'd completely forgotten Alves was out of contract in a year. You're right. Very much a risk he goes for nothing on this evidence. If he can't get a proper go in a game like this what hope has he got for the real thing? Your only chance of keeping him beyond this year is a loan out where he can forget about us for a bit. I'm seriously unimpressed with just about every facet of this club. More red flags than at a Morocco game.

I'll never try and quash someone's optimism going into a new season as ultimately what good is football without a bit of it. But **** me Leicester will try their best to. Shit performances, squad is in a state.

His regression from a genuinely fun player to about the dullest nonentity on the pitch every time he plays is quite sad. It's beyond injuries.

I don't think we'll quite be as bad as them but very much Sheffield United vibes. Like an almost pointless promotion.

At least under Maresca you did see some sort of direction even if by the end he looked very one dimensional. This is basically none dimensional. Relying on a moment of magic. The squad's in a bad state (the subs will really hammer this home) but **** me it isn't good.

On what planet is that a free kick to them

I could about tolerate this if it was six weeks until the first game but it's two weeks away.

Ipswich are a problem as well. We've seen how much they can punch above their weight. I don't think they'll be anywhere near as bad as last years three. I think Southampton will drop. Forest aren't very good. Do think Brentford might be in the mix again. Very hard to not see us dropping. I think I'd back us to go down even without a deduction let alone with.

I'd be genuinely very surprised if we stayed up. Shite.

That is just sickening. Gutted.

His assist record is a bit misleading. 7 assists granted but expected assists, a more accurate measure of quality (due to it being finisher dependant) he was lucky to get that many. Anomaly.

This would work if he was a youngster. He isn't. This can't even really be classed as building. You know we'll hand out another 3 years as well.

This is just so so poor. What a disgraceful decline it really has been.

That sort of thing. I like the bottom one. Something to track.

Any good long shot RABs on Sky? I've got loads of frees to use and fancy just hitting a load of 25/1+ shots.

O'Riley or Nanasi for midfielder - both would be great. Ioannidis for striker. Bet all three move to European chasing German or French sides though.

Distinct style (unless it compromises your mates positions)

I don't even get the Prem proven argument with Ayew. He's proven to be probably in the bottom 25% of players in the league. What are we proving?

Think we're going to be the lowest scorers by a distance if this is the route we're going up.

Well if that was his and Top's idea then appointing Maresca especially would be absolutely daft, so yeah, not a gotcha.

I don't want to be too down on Okoli as he's a new signing and a youngish player who may turn out very good, but I think if we were in Atalanta's boat selling the equivalent in that position, we'd be looking at about a third of the fee maximum and that's in the rare instance we actually got a permanent move rather than a loan. Correctly pointed out by you and Finnegan. It's both a Premier League tax, the flip side of having the most resources of any league in the world but within that prism we're bad at negotiating and we've seen it over and over again now.

I think I could tolerate the flaws that surround the club if I felt that there was a real collective effort to overcome them, but I increasingly just think I'm in a minority far greater than many of us truly appreciate. I think this forum could be seen to a very large proportion of fans of ours that are not on here as complete insanity and what I mean by that is those in favour of the ownership etc... they cannot comprehend that people could feel the way many on here actually do. I just feel it's all a bit hopeless. We're a club where the majority of the good nowadays is the residue from our previously strong era which people incorrectly attribute the success of to those currently in charge. To top it off we have utterly terrible fan engagement and I think my types they would happily do away with if they could get away with it. Since covid I made more of a conscious effort to increase the social side of football and I've hit a point where that's about the only thing keeping me genuinely interested. Part of it I think is age and the fact we've seen so much that how can you ever truly entertain or stimulate our fans again? But then at the same time there are still things in football that truly get to me and I think that it hasn't completely gone for me yet. Yet there's just something with us these days, there's a hopelessness about it all. I can't really explain it. I think we're in a bad way, in a terrible vicious cycle and our fans have demonstrated they will do nothing to change this as there's simply not the acknowledgment of the issues that I think should be totally obvious. I thought it even during the friendlies. I went to both simply for the new ground but I had so little interest even by friendlies standards. Just stood chatting for the majority of it. Something's really off here. I feel a bit trapped.