leicesterseddon

Re: leaving it late to sack Ruud because of accounting considerations Is that even a factor in League One? From what I’ve read, we are moving from a system that caps overall losses to one that links player wages directly to revenue What I’m not sure about is whether they need to delay a sacking again so as not to breach this year (under Championship rules)…

IMO some of our older fans believe the generation below them have been spoiled by success, and regard relegation as just another turning of the wheel Which of course totally overlooks the fact that anything other than finishing top next season will be an all-time historic low, and the speed of our decline… Fortunately there are also plenty of older fans who are capable of comprehending that what the club is facing now is probably not just a repeat of previous dips, but potentially something much more serious

We’d definitely need to have a fire sale of anyone on decent wages. Do any of the current squad have relegation clauses? As others have pointed out, reduced player wages alone probably wouldn’t cut it and we’d need to fire other club staff too. Probably need to look at reducing costs at the training ground (e.g. maintaining fewer pitches) and I imagine maybe selling Belvoir Drive. To be honest though nearly all of this will have to happen anyway, even if we stay in the Championship.

Was dealt a bad hand, and played it badly

Our underlying level of performance is not 3rd in the table. We will start to drop eventually unless we can create more chances. Dropping Soumare/Skipp is a good start but the problem really is that we have nothing up front. Has been obvious all summer but the club only acted on the final day of the window, and then only to bring in a loanee who has since failed to start a game. Personally I’m still seeing us as upper midtable at the moment, unless I see something to justify thinking otherwise. And that’s before the inevitable 6-7 point deduction

Do we know that? As far as I can tell, Cifuentes has never said what the target is this season, and our board don’t do interviews…

Despite a reasonable set of early results, I've been pretty horrified by the standard of football we've been churning out. The fact he hasn't yet rumbled players like Skipp and Soumare is pretty worrying, whilst benching Ricardo is just plain odd. Our first five games under Maresca in 23/24 also weren't great, to be fair, but I'd argue we had shown (a bit) more promise than this.

Awful again, as we have been all season (including our “great” performance at home against Brum mustering two shots on target) Initial sympathy for Cifuentes rapidly running out if he continues with Skipp, Soumare, Vestergaard, Ayew, and Hamza over Ricardo

So many red flags with this team selection from Cifuentes

Pretty hard to “build” a team these days given manager churn and the fact anyone decent will eventually be sold/leave. Given PSR, the only route for clubs like us is to gradually increase revenue from matchday/commercial so we can sustain a higher wage bill Rather than what we did, which is massively increase wages over a short period off the back of overperformance and player sales, which was never going to last, then crash when we inevitably regressed to the mean

I will feel better once we’ve mustered more than a couple of shots on target against a team that wasn’t in League One last year or likely to be next year. The team is just desperately crying out for a decent striker and someone in midfield who can actually pass it forwards more than a few times a game.

Stolarz Ricardo Okoli Vestergaard (God I hate saying that) Thomas Fatawu Winks Alves Monga Ayew Daka Will never happen though

Went today. Believe me we were absolutely rank, against a side that was playing in League One last year. Few conclusions: 1. Okoli was rubbish 2. He may not be popular, but Winks is a much better player than the dire Skipp/Soumaré 3. Good to see the academy lads playing, but it’s not fair on them or us to expect them to suddenly constitute the spine of the team 4. We are still an accident waiting to happen playing out from the back. Although it’s the new orthodoxy and the data boyz love it so can’t see it changing 5. My God do we need a proper striker

One of the big lessons from the Rodgers relegation season is not to stuff the first team with players out of contract at the end of the year, with no realistic prospect of staying…

We need to sign a proper striker or we have absolutely no chance of promotion. We cannot try and get by with Ayew and Daka in a 46 game season. As others have said, if you take out the wingers we are a pretty poor side.