Dan

The players have got off very lightly here for what they've served up. As light as basically anywhere.

I spotted this as a bit of a trend in his signings at previous clubs and it does put me off him in the long run. Slightly Cooper-esque recruitment.

Just noticed that Daka played in Argentina. He's genuinely going to start Ayew.

It's just absolutely mental isn't it Italy.

I tend to agree - I'd say around what we paid, which in my head is about £14mil.

Japan are unfortunately cementing themselves as everyone's dark horse here and that never ends well.

A good job. I'd say based on the fact you were able to win the 2nd tier in surprising fashion that you could probably survive this as well as you can always bank on some of the weaker teams being a bit rubbish, and particularly given you did it with a defence first style as well. I'm having a hell of a lot of joy playing a low block 4-4-2 / 4-4-1-1 here. I didn't think it would be as effective but it really is and honestly, it's kind of refreshing to do it a different, and more realistic way than being able to just slightly tone down a gegenpress and be able to not really get punished for it by substantially better sides. What you need is to make Serbia active as you'll actually get some genuine value from there even if it's just squad players. The wages here are embarrassingly low. I can remember a situation in Greece where I had two options at centre back, a similar level, one English and one Italian, very similar level but the Italian wanted about £1.5k a week and the English wanted about £5.5k a week. The wages in Greece didn't feel big when I was there but it's dawned on me how tinpot Serbia is in comparison. I think the equivalent player to what I was describing in Serbia would literally be after about £750 a week. Even in your situation I think you just have to put yourself in a position where you aren't completely screwed if you get relegated. Providing whoever comes in is better than what you had before then any deal is really worth it.

Clearly completely jacked it in ahead of the World Cup. Shouldn't get another minute.

I really think you had 3 of the worst 10 alltime PL sides in the league at one time last year. It's just staggering we came as high as 18th.

£5mil is obviously bollocks but I fear that'll be nearer than the £40mil or so I've seen some say. It'll be "around £20mil" and then come out it's about what we paid. Which is dog shit.

We continue to have pretty hit and miss form, beating OFK Beograd late but losing to Radnicki again in a poor performance. We beat IMT in the cup on penalties before the greatest robbery against Subotica at home, losing with the last kick after totally dominating them all game. Not ideal prep going into Zvezda, again, but again, we stunt them and we go one better by beating them 2-0. November was 10 points from 4 games with the seemingly unbeatable Macva Sabac being the only dropped points. December is another mixed bag, a largely changed side pathetically lost to third tier Dinamo Jug in injury time (the number of injury time goals this season seems to have gone from 0 to every other game), we lost at IMT but then completed the double over Radnik. I still can't really decide if we'll go down or not. We have a ridiculously long winter break - 7 weeks and return looking utterly woeful, a hattrick of losses to Partizan, Vojvodina and Javor-Matis. At this point I'd err on the side of us going down and I'm forced to change my tactics. We're low blocking and countering this. It's supposedly more effective and I do have a bit of a tendency to just sign functional, physical players when I'm at a small club. Just feels right I guess and it generally works to some level. We return from another stupidly long mid season break in April to beat Radnicki Nis and OFK Beograd comfortably and somehow leave ourselves 7th going into the split, where we'll face another 6 games against the rest of the bottom 8. It's very tight though and I wouldn't consider us safe yet. That being said, I hadn't accounted for Milan Mirosavljev turning into Falcao. We thump Napredak 0-4 with Miro getting all 4 of them, draw 2-2 with Macva (what do we have to do!!!), get revenge on Subotica with a 0-4 there too (another 3 for Miro), beat Radnicki Nis 2-0, somehow make it a hattrick of 0-4 wins and send OFK Beograd down. We end up finish 7th by quite a distance in the end, though do flounder in our final two games by drawing at home to comfortably relegated Zeleznicar and losing at home to IMT which keeps them in the division. It's mission accomplished and in some style in the end. Mirosavljev scores a remarkable 27 league goals including a ridiculous 14 in the final 8 games. This mad him the highest scorer in this league since Ricardo Gomes in 2021/22 and in-fact the second highest in a season behind Gomes since 80s. The way we've finished is seriously encouraging and I think we can get into Europe next season, but I don't expect Mirosavljev to produce anything quite on that level again. Zvezda unsurprisingly got the league title back after a shock one year hiatus (Partizan). Subotica and OFK were both quite surprising relegations and even more surprising was TSC's failure to bounce back up. Cukaricki are back though and so are Mladost Lucani. 12 teams next year. Quite enjoying this now.

This is all very correct as well. A perfect summary of the non accountability of the club was summer 2022. We budgeted the season before for finishing in the Champions League, got nowhere near, got humiliated in both cups and the Europa League, didn't make up for it in the conference league, finished 8th which on the face of it isn't terrible but it is when you've budgeted to come 4th and frankly, were very fortunate to actually finish that high. We were tracking as a very poor team being carried by individual quality all of 2021/22 and I bet if you'd asked Aiyawatt or Rudkin where they thought we'd finish in 2022/23 they would've said top 4. 2022/23 was the season I really turned on the ownership because the incompetence was so rife it was barely believable to me what was playing out. I knew our floor was as low as it had ever been when such things were allowed to happen.

Literally play Iversen and Soyuncu and we'd have been OK. Not 'good', and the incompetence would've eventually caught us, but it wouldn't have been as quickly.

2022/23 I don't know if that's just because it was the first real catastrophe but everything else has felt kind of inevitable. 2024/25... we've seriously spent £50mil or so net in fees, and upped the wage bill by around the same amount to serve up a record breakingly bad team who were relegated with 6 games to spare. This season is a disgrace. Tbh probably even worse than 2022/23 the more I think about it. How our fans aren't angrier about this as beyond me.

- Jon Rudkin

Yep - more looking backwards, more delusion.

Even if we survive this season, we'll be comfortable favourites to drop next I'd imagine, we haven't paid for a player since Woyo Coulibaly, we'll lose Fatawu to essentially service the debt, signing James is a pipedream. It'll be a lower standard of player coming in. You see other teams in this division branching out and signing players from Europe - they're spending a fair bit themselves now, while we're just patching up our mess all of the time, invariably getting it wrong. Further decline is inevitable regardless of who owns us now. But I have no faith whatsoever, and how anybody does is beyond me, that this lot could turn this around. What'll add insult to injury is if the ownership changes, you can bet your bottom dollar that the new ones will get all of the blame for the mess that Aiyawatt and Rudkin have put us in. "You wanted them out and it's still bad" or "you wanted them out and we're still in the shit". They are Aiyawatt and King Power above all.

I just can't waste any effort looking at when we'll be 'clear' or whatever because it's going to be the same people, who don't even see themselves as doing wrong, who are overseeing the whole thing. This is just normality now. I feel sorry for people who need this club as a bit of an escape because the chances of it actually being remotely enjoyable in the next three years at best are minuscule. Consistent heavy losses and they actually promoted Rudkin. And you still have a decent number of our fans actually white-knighting them. What the **** is the way out of this?

That sounds very much like benefit of the doubt to me.

Those giving them the benefit of the doubt earlier today in here. What have they done to deserve that?

Haha I had a very similar situation as well. Time did its thing.

Heard the same. I'm sure it'll be all great though because their track record of being utter shit at everything doesn't matter.

Ah it makes sense - Usce's crowds are tiny. I wondered what was going on there.

Which game was this? I'm a saddo and down a rabbit hole of trying to work out who it was * may or may not be doing an FM save in Serbia atm and intrigued.

While that is valid, I somehow doubt Ayew or Daka could've done what Edouard's done for Lens this season which is be a first choice striker for a team that are going to at worst qualify for the Champions League. Ayew of course being another player who was signed for the Premier League. Also I'd say Ligue 1 is a tougher league than the Championship (admittedly nowhere near the Premier League) and Faes was struggling in the Championship this season.