Championship 🏆 2025/26

[StonyFox]

6 minutes ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

The squad is a right mess

 

Looking at this we'll be hamstrung by contracts until 2026 when we can get rid of a lot of wage expenditure. I can't see Faes and Ndidi staying until 2027, and hermansen will go to Chelsea, so we should tie down stolarczyk now. So 18 months of pain until we can start a bit of a rebuild. 

 

Vestergaard to 2027 still makes my blood boil!

[john ridley]

3 minutes ago, cropstonfox said:

Nobody in the Premier league will want them.

Your right ,all these so called top players arnt going anywhere till their  contracts run out ,can't give em away.

[ClaphamFox]

3 minutes ago, StonyFox said:

Looking at this we'll be hamstrung by contracts until 2026 when we can get rid of a lot of wage expenditure. I can't see Faes and Ndidi staying until 2027, and hermansen will go to Chelsea, so we should tie down stolarczyk now. So 18 months of pain until we can start a bit of a rebuild. 

 

Vestergaard to 2027 still makes my blood boil!

I would rather see Faes walk on a free and take the PSR hit than suffer another season of him strolling nonchalantly around before getting caught horribly out of position then waving his arms about in an attempt to imply it's somebody else's fault...

[Trav Le Bleu]

16 hours ago, Zear0 said:

Who's starting the L1 26/27 thread?

The Wilderness Years 2026-2075

[Viva]

5 minutes ago, CosbehFox said:

You've left out a fair bit of detail there. You are correct on Daka & Soumare - but you don't mention Bertrand, Vestergaard or the obscene contracts. 

 

Who do you have as responsible for the relegation then? 

 

The club has no strategy. You can't change from a manager who's built a squad with his style of football in mind and then appoint Cooper who is such a different style of football. That's madness. That's the choice of Top & Rudkin. 

Vestergaard was a panic buy after the Fofana injury. Bertrand was signed on a free, but yes a shocking salary. Lookman was a good loan signing that summer. 

 

Primarily I would have Rodgers and the players down to us getting relegated. Obviously he should have been sacked earlier, which was on Top and the board, but we all know how much that was going to cost when finances were tight. 

 

Yes, Rudkin and Top got it wrong bringing in Cooper, after getting the decision spot on in appointing Enzo. 

[Noahfence]

28 minutes ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

The squad is a right mess

 

Giving a 31 year old defender (who was rubbish the last time he was in the Prem) a new 3 year deal which he’ll almost definitely be on at least 80k a week is absolute self sabotage. What was the need?! 

[ClaphamFox]

13 minutes ago, Noahfence said:

Giving a 31 year old defender (who was rubbish the last time he was in the Prem) a new 3 year deal which he’ll almost definitely be on at least 80k a week is absolute self sabotage. What was the need?! 

Enzo wanted him and insisted we tie him down. Then Enzo walked out. Then Steve Cooper came in and we shifted our transfer strategy to give him the players he wanted, even though they were completely different from the kind of player we would have targeted had Enzo stayed. These Cooper purchases have largely turned out to be a complete waste of money. Then we sacked Steve Cooper and replaced him with RvN, who is more of an Enzo-type manager. And because we'd allowed Cooper to spend a lot of money on players who haven't improved the first eleven, we weren't able to give RvN any money to spend at all. 

Edited 4 February by ClaphamFox

[LCFCJohn]

48 minutes ago, Viva said:

What started a lot of the decline, was buying exactly the type of players that people would have wanted, but that just didn’t work. 
After the FA Cup we got in Daka and Soumare early in the summer. You only have to look back at the reaction to signing those on here, to see that they were met with great excitement.  On paper, young, exciting players to help us continue our challenge for European places. There’s no guarantee that those promising players will work either though because as we know they have been terrible. It only takes a couple of bad windows for a club like ours, or someone like Brighton to start to struggle. 

So yes, we made mistakes and got relegated. Can’t pin all that on Top and Rudkin though. The squad was more than good enough to not get relegated. 
 

Strategies then have to change and we did what was needed to get promoted. It was always going to be tough this season, with relegation a strong possibility. 

Perhaps the obscene wages? They were both young players who had succeeded in Europe. There would have been plenty of takers for them (such as Sevilla for Soumare last season).

 

The reason people are annoyed is that we cannot shift these players when they don’t work and make our money on the transfer fee back or at least profit in PSR terms based on their book value left. And that is the wages being handed out.

[Buzzell]

49 minutes ago, ClaphamFox said:

Enzo wanted him and insisted we tie him down. Then Enzo walked out. Then Steve Cooper came in and we shifted our transfer strategy to give him the players he wanted, even though they were completely different from the kind of player we would have targeted had Enzo stayed. These Cooper purchases have largely turned out to be a complete waste of money. Then we sacked Steve Cooper and replaced him with RvN, who is more of an Enzo-type manager. And because we'd allowed Cooper to spend a lot of money on players who haven't improved the first eleven, we weren't able to give RvN any money to spend at all. 

And to think there’s still people out there that think Cooper was the right man for the job 

[Viva]

39 minutes ago, LCFCJohn said:

Perhaps the obscene wages? They were both young players who had succeeded in Europe. There would have been plenty of takers for them (such as Sevilla for Soumare last season).

 

The reason people are annoyed is that we cannot shift these players when they don’t work and make our money on the transfer fee back or at least profit in PSR terms based on their book value left. And that is the wages being handed out.

Yes, the wages have been a massive issue. When you are paying Vardy and Schmeichel £140k a week though, an agent for a new £20m plus signing isn't going to accept £30k a week for their client. Being a top five club for two years, does lead to increased wages. 

 

The alternative is to keep selling your best players like Vardy and Schmeichel, rather than paying top wages. I'm glad we didn't go down that route though, as we might not have had some of later successes we had, like the FA Cup. Also Vardy wouldn't have been the GOAT.

 

 

[Foxin_Mad]

4 hours ago, Fox92 said:

People said this when we got relegated two seasons ago.

 

You do realise how weak the bottom of the Championship is?

 

Teams have gone down in worse states than us and been "fine". You only have to look at the mess Sheffield United are yet they're going to be promoted again.

Those clubs had changes, we will start the season with the same clueless inept jokers in position, doing the same things, blaming others. 

[LCFCJohn]

20 minutes ago, Viva said:

Yes, the wages have been a massive issue. When you are paying Vardy and Schmeichel £140k a week though, an agent for a new £20m plus signing isn't going to accept £30k a week for their client. Being a top five club for two years, does lead to increased wages. 

 

The alternative is to keep selling your best players like Vardy and Schmeichel, rather than paying top wages. I'm glad we didn't go down that route though, as we might not have had some of later successes we had, like the FA Cup. Also Vardy wouldn't have been the GOAT.

 

 

It is obviously a difficult one and other teams will have the same struggles.

 

However, we were an attractive proposition and I’d like to think we could have taken a tougher stance. Maybe rather than comparing them with our long servers who’d earned their increases, we should have been looking at would they receive what we were offering elsewhere. That was obviously not the case as we would putting them on massively high starting wages. As a new signing into the club, there is a balance to be had and they should understand they have to earn the increases as there is no guarantee they are a success as with Daka and Soumare. If they weren’t accepting what they should have been worth, we should have been stronger and moved to other targets. 
 

You cannot deny it has hamstrung us. Obviously high wages through contract extensions has been a huge issue also.

Edited 4 February by LCFCJohn

[spacemunky]

18 hours ago, Zear0 said:

Who's starting the L1 26/27 thread?

See you guys there!

[gurru991]

Nothing will change at the club until we have a proper DOF who knows how to run a football club 

[K789]

Well at least leeds aren't goimg to be in division 

[lcfc sheff]

On 04/02/2025 at 13:36, Les-TA-Jon said:

The squad is a right mess

 

Honestly there is only 5 players I’d keep from that list, rest are disposable. Pray we get enough interest 

[ceebeefox]

On 04/02/2025 at 12:50, john ridley said:

Your right ,all these so called top players arnt going anywhere till their  contracts run out ,can't give em away.

Yes agreed, but also the reason we bounce back up again.

[phoneticerror]

On 04/02/2025 at 12:47, StonyFox said:

Looking at this we'll be hamstrung by contracts until 2026 when we can get rid of a lot of wage expenditure. I can't see Faes and Ndidi staying until 2027, and hermansen will go to Chelsea, so we should tie down stolarczyk now. So 18 months of pain until we can start a bit of a rebuild. 

 

Vestergaard to 2027 still makes my blood boil!

How on earth do you look at that table and not get angered by Skipp until 2029!?

[RonnieTodger]

The decision to recall and sell Cannon just seems all the more crazy. He’s no world beater but we’re hideously short of options.

 

Believe Ipswich and Southampton will be better equipped.

[Foxin_Mad]

There's no way in earth we finish top next year. I suspect we will probably end this season in the position we deserve, bottom

 

[john ridley]

On 04/02/2025 at 12:45, cropstonfox said:

Nobody in the Premier league will want them.

Your right ,all these so called top players arnt going anywhere till their  contracts run out ,can't give em away.

[Chrysalis]

On 04/02/2025 at 14:10, Buzzell said:

And to think there’s still people out there that think Cooper was the right man for the job 

Better than thinking if we still had Enzo we would be comfortably outside the bottom three.

[Pliskin]

Problem is, we will have to sell any saleable asset, and then we will be left with shit. 

[john ridley]

Saw Cov v Leeds last night .Leeds were everything  we're  not ,organised,fit  and quick as fvck in the press ,never gave Cov a minute. Think they'll  find it tough in the Premier but just shows in knowing  what your doing and the players buying into it and pulling together. 

[StonyFox]

2 hours ago, phoneticerror said:

How on earth do you look at that table and not get angered by Skipp until 2029!?

Yes we over paid, but even by 2029 he'll still be younger (29) than Ayew, decordova-ried, coady, vestergaard and ward are now. He'll suit us fine in the championship, which is where we'll be for most of the seasons from now until 2029.