CloudFox

Okay now I'm starting to notice it too, and it's going to drive me nuts 😅. Reasonable line up considering lots of players on the bench were playing for their international teams. Fatawu was away too, but to be fair didn't get off Ghana's bench.

This transfer window has been a bit of an outlier for Turkish clubs. Suddenly they seem keen to splash the cash!

I'm so sorry, they used to be better than this. That sounds incredibly frustrating. And, well, stupid, quite frankly.

I've also just realised that we are performing almost spot on with our xG too. Interesting!

Another one to bookmark (presuming it gets updated as the season goes on): Championship Stats: 2023-24 Season https://theanalyst.com/eu/2023/08/championship-stats-2023-24-opta As of today... Shots from Open Play Joint 2nd in shots from Open Play: Team Sequence Styles As might be expected, our style is slower and more intricate than most, but faster/more direct than the likes of Preston (top of the league), QPR, Southampton (with whom we have drawn and will draw comparisons). Zones of Control Now this is interesting. We already know we dominate possession in our games. But in terms of territory? We dominate the pitch more than any other team. Curiously we seem to occupy the right side of the opposition penalty box with possession. However, of most interest to me is that the "Right Back" area which Ricardo obviously vacates to come inside is marked as contested. That makes a lot of sense, but is not dominated by the opposition. So perhaps it's not as weak a point as we expected, so far? Right, that's enough from me. I've not even done the Athletic article, so I'll leave to someone else now 😅😁.

Bloody hell Will! What a comparison! If he has kept that agility and skill to go with—what looks like—a heck of a lot of muscle for his age, he will smash some poor full backs to bits once he gets into his groove! I know we need to keep calm and not expect too much too soon, but I really really want this to be their season. Braybrooke could be very handy cover for Winks, while Alves should be a great option as a wide forward or high 8. Would love to know what Enzo thinks of them, as from the little bits we've seen of them at U23 and senior level so far, I feel like they're made for his style.

Really interesting article from Tanner in The Athletic today: Later on I'll try to pull some numbers out without completely pasting the whole article here 😅. Some really interesting numbers though, including this from Opta:

This is fantastic content from the club, hats off to them. Talking to (promising) youngsters about their injuries and recovery is such a great thing to champion. Hopefully it encourages and reassures other youngsters going through injury issues. Just encouraging them to talk about it on camera is a really positive approach.

Setting Ricardo as captain makes even more sense then 👏

Yeah Justin Peach is a decent pundit. Very balanced and tends to have fairly nuanced opinions. He's refused to jump onboard the Ipswich bandwagon, for instance. Funnily enough, no, it's Justin Peach (on the right) who is the Derby fan! It's definitely set up that way (clickbait). Ryan tends to play the "host" card and throw in controversial opinions for Justin to dig into or disagree with. Works fairly well, although it is a tad annoying. What I find interesting so far is that they talk about us having a strong enough squad to go up before the signings this window. Which I think all of us would disagree with. Yes there was quality (Pereira, for example), but nowhere near enough to be challenging if we hadn't added to the squad. With Maddison, Barnes and Tielamans (in theory, re: as a creative outlet) leaving, we had no creativity left in the squad at all. They highly rate KDH too, which confuses me a bit. He's a good player, with some flaws, but not Player of the Year candidate, as they've suggested in the past. I feel like they're going off his past time in the Championship, which is not the same context as within this season's league, or in terms of his value to Leicester.

Would be great for Scotland. I'm always bit on the fence about players switching their nationality for football despite not really having much of a link to them culturally...but hey, it would strengthen Scotland and give Harvey a chance to compete at the Euros. Go for it.

I'm so sad to hear this. He brought in what we desperately needed (and need) then. Disappointing that Enzo didn't try to change his mind—he seemed perfect as competition for Doyle too. Hopefully Bologna don't take up the buy option and VK can come back into a refreshed squad, free of that ridiculous behaviour.