Dan

Been saying for years we should sign him.

Jesus what?!

Did it a year ago (5th October funnily enough) and it was piss easy - just sign up and buy. Insane idea, would never catch on here.

James & Carranza have to start. I get you tend to want signings to bed in but we are horrific in midfield and attack and they really can't do a lot worse. I like what he's done with Winks though. Rate that he hasn't just tolerated him and treated him like he's above us. I'd imagine eventually he may come back in but absolutely fine with him not for now.

Reckon it'll be a crap game and we win 0-1. Not dissimilar to Charlton. These do look pretty bad though.

My ideal plan for this is to do 4 games in 4 days. Thursday go to a European game in Bologna or Fiorentina. Now astonishingly, and this is barely believable bad luck, the rest was to get to a Cremonese home game at the weekend after but after all five European games either one of them are at home - Cremonese are away. 5 times out of 5. Genuinely unbelievable. This means to keep this plan I would have to go in March 2026 and hope that either of them finish in a particular place in Europe. I think they either need to finish 9th-16th, or finish 17th-24th but win their tie. It's a bit complicated. The ideal for me is something like... Thurs: Bologna Fri: Genoa Sat: Cremonese Sun: Atalanta There is a chance it becomes doable. I may end up dropping the European part and just going anyway. Or maybe even go somewhere else like Slovenia, Croatia etc.. for Europe. I've been to the San Siro. I'd go again to be fair but that isn't the priority. That would be very easy to tie in though. Inter v Cremonese first weekend of October would be a good one. They've already played AC Milan away (and won!). Weirdly falls the exact weekend I went to Inter last year. We're at Swansea too so it's not the best fixture for us.

I do want the match engine to be decent but graphics aren't a dealbreaker here. New leagues on it apparently are Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia and...... Lithuania.

Born 1993 and will probably overlook some of the MON team due to age at the time really, but... Schmeichel Ricardo - Evans - Fofana - Fuchs Kante - Tielemans Mahrez - Izzet - Barnes Vardy Centre halves are really hard. Fofana I think is the most talented CB I've seen at Leicester but obviously it went a bit pear shaped. Evans I think probably had to be the most rounded we've had and I think he could've played in the 2016 side. It does feel really harsh leaving out Huth though. If there was a bench of 7 it's probably Hermansen, Huth, Lennon, Cambiasso, Maddison, Albrighton, Heskey. I've almost certainly forgotten someone. Matt Elliott seems to be the one who is getting rated higher than I thought he would be - and that's absolutely not a disagreement that's again what I refer to in the first sentence.

It's just astonishing to me this team didn't only not finish bottom, but didn't even finish second bottom. I think last years PL had three of the worst ten all time PL sides. A proper anomaly.

I don't recall a manager ever who had a higher ceiling but lower floor than Rodgers.

Van Nistelrooy was set up to fail but he's ultimately secured us a record that will almost certainly never be broken in any of our lifetimes.

That's a pretty good profile from admittedly quite a small number of minutes.

It's another example of how successfully they've reduced expectations really.

I think they're doing this from next year - replacing the September break with a two week one in October. It's got to beat this. This international break is a joke - every single year it bugs everyone to have it around 3/4 games into the season. At least wait for about 7/8. As a side note, wouldn't be a jot surprised if England lose in Serbia.

The league couldn't have fallen much better for us so far. It looks extremely open and we're starting in a decent position having now strengthened somewhat too. In short yes I do think we can get promoted. Not saying it's anywhere near a given like two years ago, but it's possible.

We'll be in a better place but our squad will be pretty tiny assuming those out of contract leave. We will need double figures of incomings next summer, that's my worry.

For me I'd go around 5/10. I think the late flurry has probably blurred the lines a little. Now fair play - they've plugged for me probably our three weakest areas and I will give a bit of credit for that, as basic as it sounds - I was seeing links to goalkeepers and wingers and fearing the worst. They've also made fairly cost effective signings. Carranza, James and Ramsey are all relatively cheap deals. In our position this is the sort of thing that will tie us over for a little while - it would've been nice to have brought in a couple of young prospects on permanent deals though, low risk, high upside types, but this is another way to do it, I suppose. Departures - again, it's an improvement, but it's from an extremely low bar and I still think we have far too many players now who are going to walk away for nothing again. I still think we needed the likes of Winks, Soumare, Reid, Ayew, etc.. who didn't have much time left on their deals moving on. We've gotten good fees for McAteer, Ndidi and Justin, a pretty disappointing one for Hermansen and an absolutely abysmal deal for El Khannouss that renders the signing of him in the first place essentially pointless. We did manage to get Coady out too, which can only be a plus. I just think it should've been more drastic. I think we've made some fairly prudent moves but I think it could've been a lot more. There's still a bit too big an element of kicking the can down the road for me. I don't think we're particularly well set up for this time next year. What I will say though is in the short-term we do have a decent chance of promotion with a points deduction. The league so far has fallen excellently. As unconvincing as we've been, we have clearly made an improvement to our team upon the first four performances where we were pretty dodgy in all of them yet still managed three wins. The expected rivals have been pretty appalling for the most part - Sheffield United, Ipswich and Southampton so far have 1 win between them. Even if we were to be docked 9 points, we would be level with Sheffield United, 4 points off Ipswich, and 5 off Southampton. This is better than any of us thought would really be the case. I think things have fallen pretty well for us. An 'OK' window for me, but as ever I think there is certainly room for improvement.

We've been playing Skipp and Soumare - it's a horrid midfield even at this level. We absolutely can't rely on that despite their decent performance the other night. Winks needs to suck it up now as well.

We're incredibly thin in midfield already though.

I do think this one gets done. Dunno about Ramsey though.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Our admin is a top tier troll to be fair. A real artist.

Which is why it's nonsense that we leave it this late 'every' year. Constantly playing catchup and making rash decisions as a result. We should've maxed out loans with options this summer in our position.

I'd caveat the above however by saying I don't think Carranza and James is enough. I think 3 should be the absolute minimum and I'd probably want 4, even 5. But I'd be astounded if it was more than 3.

There'll probably be some announcements after 7pm to be fair. Often the case. I do want this one - I think this signing makes a big difference for us.