Sampson

What are you talking about? We are not getting 102pts this season. That side will finish the season with more points.

Agree but that’s the best case scenario. Think unless we’re willing/able to heavily invest then I think there’s a high chance we’ll just come straight back down like Burnley SheffUtd and Luton anyway and the promotion will be kind of pointless. Definitely take the FA Cup win either way.

Moore played even either Wasilewski or De Laet were out mostly as Wasyl would shift to right back. It doesn’t matter so much anyway because it would definitely be Wasyl who be the choice from the 2 in the combined xi

Wasilewski was first choice alongside Morgan from memory but Moore played when Wasilewski was injured. I'd have Wasilewski in for sure, he was also one of our best players the following season during the great escape season whereas Faes nor Vestegaard have never looked much good in the PL

Think of you did a combined XI it would be 9 players from 13/14 and 2 from 23/24. Ricardo for De Laet then one of Winks, KDH or Ndidi in for James (though Drinkwater would still be the first choice cm). The rest would be the 13/14 side.

You forgot Benkovic. £12m and didn’t make a single first team league appearance. Personally think Adrien Silva is comfortably the worst though. £22mil and didn’t have a single good performance in his time here. Edit - Wouldn’t put Praet in the top 5 personally, he wasn’t worth what we paid for him but he’s had quite a few good performances which is more than you can say for many others in the +10mil range. Silva, Benkovic, Ward, Soumare, Musa, Ghezzal and Souttar (though he still has time to turn it round) were all worse in terms of cost to what they gave us.

Don’t think he did press particularly well today though. Other than one occasion where he came back just before he was substituted, he largely just occupied space today, his pressing, movement or general presence wasn’t particularly threatening and their defence had zero problems containing him or marching his runs. The looping cross thing is true, but I think that’s just how the game is developing. defenders have now grown up with tiki taka and have been developed from a young age now to be good enough to pack in tight and defend against short passing style and quick one twos and instead and force it into pretty ineffective U-shaped passes outside the box to the point where crossing is the only option. There’s a reason that Guardiola and Klopp are favouring the big number 9 who is strong in the air again now and abandoning the false 9s or goal poachers.

But all we did today was pass the ball round 100 times with QPR not even needing to close us down and then we’d get bored of that after a couple of minutes and try a weak loopy cross into the box which QPR dealt with easily. It’s not about if you think it’s an outdated style or not, that’s the style we adapted today and at least with Albrighton on and some height up from we’d have a chance of those crosses being useful.

His constant diving today drove me up the wall. Must’ve killed 4 or 5 promising positions for us today by pretending to be fouled and falling over. Was so frustrating and embarrassing.

Winks never gets noted for his off days tbh because people have convinced themselves he’s supremely consistent when he has plenty of off days like today like everyone else does . He has very little when it comes to actually unlocking a defence.

Mavididi is just a horrendous diver. Must’ve dived 5 times today in promising areas. It’s so frustrating

Agree he wasn’t our worst player but you’re over defending him to make a point and exaggerating and swearing a bit to get the likes I think. Think he had a very mediocre and ineffective and inefficient game despite being in good form recently Agree he had zero service and there were much worse players there but he was far from our best player; neither did he cover every blade of grass. Apart from 1 moment just before he went off he largely just stayed in the middle and didn’t really try to get involved. Vardy already been way more proactive about getting into play since he came on

Thank **** Vardy is back in for Daka

Agree completely and said it many times on here that Population Ageing is the 2nd most important issue of our time and will continue to be the 2nd most important and impactful issue over the next 50 years only behind climate change. And so much conservative policy is secretly about trying to increase birth rates or trying to deflect away the issues of population ageing onto immigration or young people not working hard enough, because they can’t go after the pensions system as it’s their main voter base. Yet it seems to get virtually no coverage despite the fact many of the economic issues, problems with the nhs, the need for high levels of immigration and generational divides in our modern time all are direct results of population ageing and the fact the proportion of older people who take up the vast majority of state support is getting greater and greater compared to those of tax paying age.

Yep. Agree totally with both of you. She was a British citizen and born and raised in the UK. It’s washing our hands of a problem of our own culture’s creation. Saying she should be allowed back in the country isn’t saying she shouldn’t be punished. But stripping someone of their citizenship is banishment and strikes me as incredibly archaic and just strikes me as typical British exceptionalism. Let’s just say, I imagine the Venn diagram of crossover of people claiming it’s right she should be stripped of citizenship and those who would be livid if it was the other way round as you said is of high crossover. Also, it’s not just under British law we shouldn’t render someone stateless - it’s under international law and part of the Geneva convention.

Just saw this photo on facebook. Understatement of the century.

Vardy definitely was. Despite his first miss, he completely changed the game for the better when he came on and our attack looked so much more threatening with him breaking the lines and his movement looked so much sharper compared to Daka. Despite only playing about 25 minutes he was our best player by a mile.

Alvrighton and Drinkwater were both decent too and scored a couple each I think but understandably had to play second fiddle to Mahrez

I agree, I wasn't a massive fan of his last season and was a bit sceptical going into this season, but I'll be voting him POTY this season. He's won us more matches than any other player. Yet despite him getting all the numbers, he's almost become massively underrated by our fanbase this season, as they want to praise more consistent but less match-winning players like Winks or Vestergaard more (nothing wrong with praising those but there's a point where it swings too far the other way in terms of favouring consistency over match-winning moments).

If there’s little room for sentiment what’s the point of watching football? We’re pissing the league, no problem with Vardy starting against the crap teams at the bottom purely for sentimental reasons.

Think he’s injured

I’d be extremely surprised if that stat is genuinely true. We’re only 31 games into the season. He’s not going to have had the most passes in Championship history with 15 games to spare

Yes exactly and we’re on the same page here. I’ve already spent plenty of time on here baffled at how many people seemed to have had Maddison out as public enemy no.1 at the end of last season because of the missed penalty and the fluffed back pass in the run in when he and Barnes were just about out only 2 players who looked remotely like Premier League quality players last season. That was more my point - that the context of mistakes clearly matters but that context itself is mostly just luck when you get down to it.

I think he’s kind of right on this occasion though. Maddison gets slaughtered on here by many because he made a couple of mistakes in key games in the run in last season despite the fact he was clearly our best player over the season as a whole. The context is key but the context is also for the most part just the luck of where your mistakes do or don’t occur. On the opposite end of the spectrum you also have players like Leo Ulloa and Steve Claridge who are cult heroes because of 2 or 3 goals they scored in more important contexts. Im not saying it’s not natural or wrong but a lot of it just down luck of when these things occurred really. It is kind of lucky for Winks he made that mistake when it meant nothing in a standard league match when we’re already well clear and not on the last day as the mistake that cost us automatic promotion

Dunno about fixed but they have a budget of prize money they can give out so no doubt they make questions more/less difficult depending on how much prize money they have left to give out that series.