Dan

I'm anti 48 teams but the last two openers both involved an absolutely rubbish team as well - Qatar were as bad as South Africa, probably worse. Saudi Arabia at Russia absolute garbage.

Flew through my first season with Bochum. Here's how it went... Straight in there with the same formation I played at Vrsac and Kallithea. I'm not actually having all that much joy with much different this year which is a bit concerning and probably gets found out in a better league, but Bochum had on paper a decent team for this level, predicted to finish 7th. It couldn't have started any better with a 1-5 win at Darmstadt. We then battered Elversberg at home for a half before loanee Callum Marshall picked up a straight red card and my whole 'keep it tight' lasted a whole 5 minutes of the second half. It ends 1-1. We beat a fifth tier team 1-5 in the cup as well. Our first derby game, and the first I've played in any form for god knows how long came away at Schalke and it was a catastrophe. 3-0 down at half time and a 4th added late on. But we bounced back with four wins in a row over the rest of August and September. Kwadwo Baah joined on loan from Watford at the end of August. October was pretty brutal. The Hertha win was really impressive as we picked up yet another red card on the stroke of half time but actually managed to hold out this time. The other three performances were awful and if we'd lost all games by three goals I wouldn't have deemed it unfair. November was a slight improvement with two good home wins, but the disparity between our home and away performances were mental and this is something I haven't really suffered from a great deal. We were beneficiaries of opposition red cards in both the Magdeburg and Braunschweig games but ended up going behind to 10 men in both of them. December was more of the same, a disappointing albeit slightly unlucky draw with Bielefeld and then frankly a miracle we didn't lose at Hannover, topping the year off with our first home loss. This isn't a team getting promoted for me. I was extremely busy in January, seeing 6 players depart and 7 arrive. I really didn't trust this squad after all. Two centre halves who were out of contract and not really playing in Masovic and Loosli were sold to Saudi clubs for a combined £1.5mil which was great business. They were replaced with Georgian Saba Sazonov and Spaniard Manu Hernando on loan and for £450k respectively. The big deal this month though was our best youngster joining Porto for £9mil, Cajetan Lenz. He'd actually been very disappointing although I'd sooner have held onto him due to the home grown thing. We got him back on loan which meant no replacement was needed, and this meant we could make a few amendments elsewhere, although not after Oliver Olsen (£475k), Marcel Sobottka (£275k) and Mortiz-Broni Kwarteng (£1.3mil) had all left too. We returned to smash Darmstadt again, hilariously going 5-0 up after 15 minutes, but I could never escape this idea that we were a pretty bad team running a bit hot. Even in that we ended up outshot and conceding a couple. We drew with Elversberg again before picking up a potentially huge 1-0 win over Schalke, who were top at the time. We started February by putting away an abject Munster 1-2 (our first away win in four months) but floundered throughout the rest of February. What I have to give us credit for is we seem to deliver in most big games. We very rarely lose them and we beat nearly all of them at home. I must mention the form of loanee Francis Onyeka, who by this point frankly was carrying us. The defensive overhaul was paying dividends as we managed four clean sheets on the bounce, including away at Hertha who were clearly going to win the league by this point. We clicked just in time and ended up only losing one more game for the rest of the season which was essentially a dead rubber on the final day, having finished 2nd. We never felt overly convincing, and I do wonder if I'm a mix of too used to being in a bad league that I've lost all appreciation of a better standard and just being a bit harsh because of how used I got to winning about 85% of my games, but we did get over the line. We still have quite a bit of money left over from the Lenz sale and they've doubled our wage budget, although I did make a late discovery, after spending quite a bit of it that pretty much my entire squad have good promotion wage rises which eats into it. January was a precursor for the summer. I will be overhauling this squad because I really don't trust it much.

That budget FFS. I'm a bit of a sicko though I kind of like taking financially broken teams because I'll fix it. Not for everyone though

Last 20 have been really good. We could've scored about 8 here.

These have seriously fallen off. They used to be a decent-ish side. I'm not convinced they're any better than Lithuania now.

They need to sell him this window IMO because I think that's well over his value. If they seriously push a British record then fair play. He's a good player but I don't think he's that, personally.

We'll be right in the thick of a lot of this, both for and against. We'll have some sort of case against Man City I'd imagine. Just looking at the Championship 2023/24 - teams who could argue they missed out as a result from us. Ironically those who finished 3rd (Leeds) and 7th (Hull) are now both in the Premier League. But bring on the joy of this though. A load more legal drear and Stefan Borson's name appearing everywhere every day. Joy.

I was pretty pleasantly surprised when I saw a woman at work for the first time in about five years, a few months back, big LCFC fan, who always struck me as a little bit happy clappy suggest we need new ownership totally unprompted from me. I think more do believe this than a lot of us want to think. People have a breaking point. At the end of the day, we are literally in the lowest position in our entire history. Even those who spent so much time while the decline was obvious making excuses for it and how it had been worse can't do that anymore. The penny has definitely dropped for plenty. I mean wanting Rudkin out is pretty much unanimous at this point. Maybe a third relegation in four years on top of his own position being strengthened may be what finally did it.

I'm pretty lazy with set pieces. I just get the best set piece coach I can find and give them the keys. I don't really do too badly out of it. Feels like a delegation that's actually realistic as well.

This is an accurate a summary of what happens as I've read. All the signs are there for more of the same. We're pissing no league under this lot unless we absolutely fluke it with a manager like Maresca who had enough about him to really take a hold of things himself. He sussed very early what he was working with. It took a spectacular level of incompetence to get relegated in 2023. Served up one of the worst top flight sides of all time in 2025. And then somehow managed to outdo the 2023 debacle in 2026 with an even more disgraceful relegation. The worst run club in England and it genuinely isn't even close. There is no club so lacking in absolute basic fundamentals as this one. To the point our fans have become used to it and think it's normal. It's as depressing existence as imaginable. A club in complete freefall and absolutely nothing is stopping it.

Happily take that on.

It'll just be to get more money out of us. Will work as well.

You just know he'll be a prominent feature next season. Really makes my decision to not give Aiyawatt's LCFC another penny so easy that you can barely even call it a decision.

The possession figures themselves aren't actually that important, it's tempo and intent. The problem is Martin is one of those who believes possession is the be all and end all, the aim of the game rather than the by-product of what's happening. I think our average possession in 2013/14 was pretty high and we were quite a direct team. We were just better than other teams. Martin sees 75% possession as success even if he doesn't win. So does Aiyawatt.

Done with Serbia after all. The main takeaway I have from it is that everything is underpinned by their wage situation. What I mean is that Serbian players accept an absolute pittance in wages. Nobody in Serbia other than two clubs really have any money so they in theory should absolutely clean up, but with the way the game AI is they just don't. I do think you probably have to strike a balance because overhauling Zvezda if they acted effectively would be basically impossible, but they should never have been as poor as they were. Partizan weren't much better either, although their wage spend to begin with was miles off Zvezda, it did grow pretty substantially and wasn't far off theirs in the end either, I'm assuming courtesy of European money and a couple of big sales. This situation does mean that if you come into money at any point, you will fly up the pyramid. I pretty much took every chance I got at the first time of asking which ended up making things quite easy in the end. But I can imagine if I'd lost to Copenhagen in that play-off game that the save would look very different. Every aim in a league like this should be to get into a European league phase because it absolutely dwarves anything you'll get domestically. All in all it's a pretty broken league system. It could actually be pretty good with the level of intakes they get, extremely disproportionate to the wages that their players receive. I had a fun save in the league but I think it could very easily have been a bit different. As ever, and is often the case in a lot of European leagues, it's totally skewed and killed off as a competition by the Champions League and the reward for being in it. It wasn't the hardest league I managed in in the end even though I thought it would be.

Against Martin no less

We'd just bring in something else totally different, which would fail, but they'll never deviate from wanting slow football. It's their obsession.

Worrying that his name wasn't earmarked as a departure in the Percy article.

Yeah but Ric, he got lauded for his possession stats apparently.

His identity is soft, small and weak players who pass the ball around and lose. This is a team very much built in his image.

Wouldn't be surprised if their attitude was "we listened to you and you got us relegated, we'll do it our way".

That is true. However I'd put Aiyawatt and Rudkin at this point far below even him. To them, it would be seen as a coup. That's their entire ethos. Throw money we don't actually have to try and patch things up. It's never building anything up from the ground.

The way they'll pull off a 'coup' in their eyes will be offering stupid wages. I'd bet good money we'll make him the highest paid manager in third tier history. He holds all the cards over us.

This is a fan of the club where he peaked as well. There will be some cope about this appointment. Not a jot of it here. This will be a disaster.

It's not a coup in any way. Very average record at MK Dons. Lauded for possession numbers but didn't get them above the top half. Finished 13th in his first full season which is so so. Conceded 3 or more on 9 occasions. Moved to Swansea and had two full seasons there. First season finished 15th. Conceded 3 or more on 13 occasions. Second season finished 10th. Conceded 3 or more on 7 occasions (bit better). Interesting trend, happened especially in his first season at MK and his second at Swansea, was he went on a pretty good run late in the season. If you're being harsh (I am because I know he's crap) you'd say they're benefitting from playing under no real pressure and their season already being as good as over. Southampton - horrific start, pulled it back with a very good unbeaten run. Won the play-offs. Still managed to concede 3 or more on 8 occasions. Second season had them on course to be the worst Premier League team of all time. Rangers a complete disaster from the off. Absolutely smashed to pieces in Europe by Brugge. Won 1 game out of 8. With Rangers! So he's peaked at taking a team with the 2nd biggest budget in the division to the Premier League and plateaued at the Rangers debacle. Everything else in between is very middle of the road with the one trend being his teams frequently shipping goals. Budget here can only really be speculated on but this is already a fed up fanbase and squad. The only thing I would guarantee from his time here are that any popularity he has is on a knife-edge, and that we're going to have a few heavy defeats. All in all - utterly stupid appointment. The peak of the style over substance era that we're absolutely fixated on. As the club that used to be the total opposite. Utterly sickening stuff. Hopefully this is what forces those on the fence about the ownership onto the right side.