Sampson

The lack of subs scares me a bit. Starting to feel like we need fresh legs.

Rejoining the single market and ending hard Brexit for sure is pretty likely at some point in the not too distant future, not sure about the EU proper though. Think it will be another generation at least until that's on the agenda. Think we'll probably drift into some Norway or Switzerland like status with the EU somewhere within the next 2-15 years though.

Yeah of course there’s that, but I mean legally it’s written into the GFA already that a referendum can be automatically triggered if it looks like it will pass. There’s little the UK or Irish governments can do about it even if they did want to. I think many have come out since and said the GFA was always kind of made under the long term assumption than Ireland would eventually unite after 2-3 generations of the treaty once the living memories of the troubles had largely died out.

I think this one is quite likely given the changing demographics and the mechanics of the GFA the UK government can’t deny a referendum like it can with Scotland. Wales I think is very unlikely to become independent in any of our lifetimes, there’s never any appetite for it in polls. Scotland I think is definitely possibility but I’m not as convinced. A United Ireland by 2050 if not much earlier is definitely a very likely possibility I reckon though.

Eh. Thats thankfully illegal for obvious reasons. You can’t tell someone to come to training or play and then not pay them neither can you offer them contracts like that without things like paid holiday days in between.

Yeah the season before last he had the best goals to minute ratio in the PL. To say his decline happened 3-4 years ago is bananas. Definitely since the start of last season he seemed to drop off a cliff that summer though.

Knockaert did feel like the kind of player we hadn’t seen for a while when we signed him and he was a very good player as us but he doesn’t belong on the same rating as the likes of Huth, Drinkwater, Ulloa, Ndidi, Maddison, Ricardo, Tiekemans, Simpson, Nugent and Okazaki. James Justin or Fofana shouldn’t be 9s either though and both feel more out of place than Knockaert. Justin especially feels way out of place amongst the 9s. The most bizarre and out of place one is definitely Beckford getting a 6. He was a an absolute big money marquee flop and a complete panic buy and along with Matt Mills who rightfully scored a 2, the epitome of the early overspending under KP that Pearson had to reign in. Beckford should’ve been getting a 2 or a 3 if you wanted to be really generous because of that single performance vs Forest.

I think it probably is a generational shift. It definitely feels like games vs Coventry feel like noticeably bigger games than games vs Derby these days. There was a time in the early 90s where Derby games had a lot of needle to them but I haven’t really felt that for 15-20 years now and you have to be in your 40s now to have real memory of those days really. We had that period in the 00s where it felt like we beat them 4-0 twice a season and it felt like a bit of a procession and lost its edge. Feel like many younger fans don’t really see Derby as much of a rival these days nor get up for those games. While Cov in the early 90s probably would’ve been seen as the 4th or 5th rival behind Villa and Wolves even whereas nowadays it definitely feels like a much bigger game with more riding on it. Not sure Coventry feels quite as big as Forest yet overall, but it wouldn’t surprise me if in 10 years or so the Cov games felt the biggest. Feels like many younger fans see it as a bigger game than Forest and you can definitely feel the bigger bite to Cov games these days than it used to be. Coventry definitely seems to overtaken Derby as the 2nd biggest rival in general at least

It says “low -7C” then gives an average temperature for each hour. I don’t see what the issue is? The temperature won’t stay -5C for the whole hour. It will vary during the hour based on cloud cover, different front etc. -5C is just the average for that hour, not its lowest or highest point. But “low” showing -7C means the lowest predicted temperature not the average.

i think it’s probably the opposite. Walsh was great for longevity and commitment but his peak was not as high as many others on that list if we’re honest. Outside of the 96/97 season most of his best performances were in the 2nd tier. The likes of Morgan, Huth, Elliott, Soyuncu, Fofana and Evans’ best seasons were better than Walsh’s best seasons, but there’s a lot more to take into account with Walsh in terms of longevity and iconic goals etc. So it depends what you’re taking into account

Personally think Soyuncu’s one great season was better than Maguire, Fofana or Taggart’s one good season tbf (in the top flight, Taggart had a good season in the Championship too).

For me The 2 most iconic kits from the king power era have got to be the white kit with blue pinstripes that Albrighton scored our first CL goal in and the FA Cup winning Northampton maroon Tirlemans got the FA Cup winning goal in. They are the ones they need to re release if anything.

You are delusional tbf. Of course the playoff semi final win was bigger. Some of our fans coming across as a bit bitter and desperate tbh.

I think that while a fair point and likely true of some of the richer leave voters and business owners. I don’t think it’s anything the average voter cared/knew anything about. I’ve only become more convinced in the years since that a frightening number of voters didn’t even know what the EU or freedom of movement for people goods and services was or did. Even Boris Johnson supposedly didn’t understand what the customs union was.

Personally I always thought it was more the view that when many romanticise the commonwealth they think of it as being the rich English speaking (and let’s be honest here - white) countries i.e. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and maybe the rich parts of East Asia I.e. Singapore, Hong Kong than people coming from India, Pakistan, the Caribbean or Africa which is where the vast majority of the population of the commonwealth actually is. I remember an interview with Farage how he was romanticising how people from Australia, Canada and New Zealand saw Britain as “the motherland”. There was also the talk of CANZUK during the referendum and if you see most polls from all 4 countries, they’re overwhelmingly in favour of freedom of movement between the UK, Australia, Canada and NZ. When it comes to India or Jamaica for example, nowhere near the same. Similarly, Farage himself in the lead up to the referendum said he nor UKIP wanted a referendum until 2004 when many Eastern European countries joined. If the EU was just the rich countries of west and central Europe I.e. UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Benelux, the Nordics, Switzerland and Austria and the sunny holiday/retirement countries in the Mediterranean of Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Malta I don’t think leaving the eu would’ve even been on anyone’s radar. Let’s not forget those distasteful campaigns in the lead up to the referendum of how Turkey was supposedly on the brink of joining (despite the fact EU had categorically said they can’t join with Erdogon in charge) and 80million Turks were about to enter the UK to escape Erdogan or something. I remember seeing several billboards around Warwick and Leamington Spa at the time of the referendum whipping up fear about Turkey joining Ultimately, people will claim they don’t but if it’s immigrants from other rich countries like Canada or Denmark very few care, immigrants from India or Romania are always used to drive the fear campaigns a lot more.

Yep. Farage himself was championing it for a while. “The people of India and Australia have more in common to Brits that the people of Poland” (paraphrasing) and similar quotes were a common amongst leavers. “Commwealth not common market” was also a slogan of many Brexiteers for many years. Don’t understand any Brexiteer would be annoyed by the explosion of immigration from former UK colonies, it was a big part of the leave campaign’s goals.

Yeah just seen it on bbc. Really sad news. Wouldn’t call him a Leicester legend but it was a weird and crazy time while he was manager and while he did spend a lot on rubbish, he did sign Schmeichel, Nugent and to a lesser extent Konchesky who ended up being worth many times more to us than his total transfer outlay combined.

I usually agree with you on most matters leicsmac and used to agree with you here, but since the Brexit debate, sadly I don't necessarily agree anymore. It's been clear to me since the Brexit debate that many use "it's just my opinion" and "we should allow civil debate" as a defence mechanism to hold clearly non-scientific, bigoted and objectively wrong views on an array of different subjects and that they actually don't want to debate them and so latch onto "it's just my opinion" and like to talk about how we should be having a civil debate as a way to disarm their opponents and end any discussion, when they themselves don't want any part in any actual evidence based civil debate on the subject. Civil debate as a genuine option for the betterment of society was shown pretty starkly to be quackery for me when anyone who tried to make any economic argument for staying in the EU was met with "project fear" and "you don't believe in Britain" duing the lead up to the election and then were all told after the result when Leave won, largely due to 2 word sloganeering and lowest-common denominator appeals to patriotism that the reason Remain lost was because "you didn't actually debate anyone and don't respect the opposite side's opinion" or som false equivalence "there was lying going on on both sides" when the truth was the Remain side constantly tried to engage in genuine economic and evidence based debate but were shot down by meaningless sloganeering and appeals to patriotism and meaningless and vague ideas of self-governing that no one ever wanted to define. Then we had Trump, Covid and wars in Ukraine and Gaza and these weird culture war, anti-"wokeness" stuff and I feel like things since have shown even more that "civilized debate" doesn't work. What the alternatives are I don't know. But "it should be just people's opinions, sitting down and having a civilized debate" is pretty clearly just a defence mechanism for trying to disarm the enemy and ignore any actual debate so that the status quo stays in tact at this point.

Goals up on the FA Cup YouTube channel for those who missed them.

Very good today I thought. Even though he's nowhere near as consistent as he once was, he's still great to watch when he puts out a battling performance like that.

Albrighton been fantastic. Really rolled back the years today.

It’s not going to. Think you’re burying your head in the sand if you think we’re signing anyone this month

May be wrong but I’m sure I remember the club announcing on its website Andy King would get a testimonial after covid (as he left during the time fans weren’t allowed in stadiums) but it never happened. Schmeichel nor Morgan got one either

Feel like Albrighton leaving at the end of the season will understandably get a bit overshadowed by Vardy leaving too, Marc deserves a huge send off by the fans and club as well

Eh. They were poor performences but you can’t genuinely say he looked disinterested, if anything it felt like he was trying to do everything himself and wanted the ball too much, whereas some of our other players genuinely didn’t look arsed. Will never understand the hate Maddison gets for last season either. He was one of the very few who put in performances that were good enough to keep us up over the span of last season and how he became public enemy number one in some people’s eyes when he should’ve been the last player who deserved that tag. I mean look at someone like Johnny Evans, he was the actual club captain who seemed to be take most of the season to get over a minor injury but suddenly be fit enough to play for Northern Ireland in the middle of that injury and meant we had to keep starting Daniel Amartey who tried fine but simply wasn’t good enough. Now there was our supposed leader who’s heart clearly wasn’t it who deserved to take way way more flak than Maddison but bizarrely hasn’t. And genuinely can’t believe how much grown men get worked up and offended over an extremely inoffensive and mundane post on social media, but they’d probably give him the same level of hate if he posted something against the team or was silent and didn’t post at all and that post definitively has become an excuse for people’s hate of Maddison rather than a reason for it.