Dan

It's over the top, yes.

That's an absolute joke IMO. I think the stupidity of doing it for what could only be a marginal gain at best deserves something. But that is completely over the top. Sporting integrity eh. This season never stops giving. This gives Cov a better chance of survival as well.

Highly doubt he holds any sort of grudge against us, but I'd imagine being at that Norwich game probably opened his eyes to some of his obvious suspicions he'd have developed over his time about the state of the club. I'd imagine he'd be advising them to not loan anyone here for the sake of their own development. Mukasa will hardly be a glowing reference either.

Conte's Chelsea? Much better I'd say. Won about 11 games in a row or something.

Weakest champions in what must be at least 15 years these.

Haha I've just watched a couple of his videos and I'm hooked. Great stuff.

Had a feeling Proper mixed feeling after that though. That Lecce goal probably sends them down.

This reminds me no end of when we went to Fulham in May 2023.

West Ham absolutely awful. Deserved relegation.

So basically pay your way out of it. Got it. They're really dreading losing a big club now.

It's how normalised it is. It's embedded into the fanbase now that this is normal. It's a ****ing joke. Wolves are a piss poor run club and even their floor is nowhere near as low as ours under these ****ing idiots.

Lost Semenyo, Huijsen, Kerkez, Zabarnyi in the last 12 months and Bournemouth have made Europe with two games to spare, with a small chance of the Champions League. Amazing effort and puts the whole "impossible to compete" shouts into perspective.

They're actually not even hiding it anymore are they?

Nearly a month since relegation. Still not a word on Rowett's position. Laughable but normal process. The decline continues.

Partizan why do we even bother boosting the coefficient? Gone out of the Europa League play-offs to St Mirren, dropped into the Conference League, gone through, drawn St Mirren again and lost again! The others are a complete joke in Europe.

Incase I haven't explained it correctly, but this is a random game I've taken from that season. In that team, the only player who was both Serbian and U22 is the right back Jovan Vojnovic (who has been superb by the way). That team according to these rules is not a legitimate XI so I've kind of forgotten that it exists, and did my transfer business without really taking it into account, meaning I've had to get a couple of inferior players on loan and promote a couple of academy players just to be able to have two in the team at all times and rotate them accordingly. What it meant was the likes of Cvetkovic and Bubanj, two absolutely key players of the season before, had to be rotated out for inferior players and didn't play that many times in the league. The easiest way around is to bring in a Serbian U22 player who gets into the first team but it's bloody hard. The Cukaricki centre half is comfortably better than Serafimovic so he would've been an easy box ticked unless he got a bad injury. All this while considering club grown players for Europe as well (home grown is a piece of piss with these due to how domestic my side has remained). That being said I don't think we exactly did badly. 3rd behind the big two is perfectly reasonable and we really did drop some silly points. haven't got the xG table now but it was ridiculous, we were miles in front of everyone but just didn't really convert it enough.

I actually took the U22 thing into account until I was given what felt like a pass with the three players last season - it's like having a rule dropped on you that you had been told and assumed to avoid after you've made all your signings. It meant for example Bubanj, golden boot winner last season, had become a rotation player when he was never meant to be. It's something I want to rectify in the summer but annoyingly, that defender at Cukaricki is the one single player so far I've found that is attainable, affordable, Serbian, U22 and actually starts for us, so for him to stick with Cukaricki is a real blow. There are other options and I'm going to have to get a bit creative, and we will still be probably having to rotate a bit, but I can mitigate against it knowing the rule exists this time around rather than constantly patching things up. I'm wondering if it's a reason we did fairly well in Europe rather than the league. Co-efficient is improving but I'm taking full credit. No thanks to the pathetic showings of the other Serbian teams. Zvezda knocked out of the Conference play-offs by Odense. Partizan knocked out of the Europa League play-off by Osijek (who we go on to beat) and then the Conference League play-off by Dinamo Bucuresti. Vojvodina knocked out of the Conference League second round play-off by Sparta Prague. So we were the only one to even make a league phase. Carrying this shitheap of a league on our backs. The others should be ashamed. Somehow we have five European places this year. I'll play on because I'm still kind of enjoying it and I need the cup, but I do fancy that Japanese save.

I reckon this'll go down as the most forgettable final of my lifetime - save for maybe 2020.

Villa making a European final the best thing of our season how unbelievably tragic is that.

Was thinking about this the other day - he won 13 of his first 14 games. We didn't win 13 games in 2025/26

We'd have simply lost to West Ham.

Rodgers is a complete phoney. His ultimate strength lies in sensing when a club is on an upwards trajectory and then kicking off when he makes a mess of it. If only he was as good at identifying potential signings as he is at identifying which clubs are on the up.

There is a world that the CL money and what comes with it does actually net us better players by default. For an agent driven recruitment club we would possibly have had better options that kept the whole thing going a bit longer. But these poor processes were always catching up with us eventually and now they're leaving us for dead. I mean look at Maresca. That was nothing to do with us. That was their camp - we fell so quickly from a strong position in the PL to the Championship that we just happened to be a perfect opportunity for someone like that.

I agree with all of this. Which probably frames this question better - should we have made this appointment, given he did win us the FA Cup? I find it extraordinary that it can even be a question, but it is very much a debate in hindsight I think.

I'd also add to the above, I think missing out on the Champions League wouldn't have saved us from a drop off. I think it would've probably delayed it somewhat, but we have inept people at the top - that's the only thing that matters. If we'd gotten Champions League money, we would simply have wasted more money.