Rino8

Fully understand your thinking but you have to look at ourselves (Leeds) and Sheffield who had much better first seasons than you and fell off a cliff second time round. Players mentalities change, opponents approaches change and suddenly you're struggling for points anywhere. Toney has struggled for large parts of the season and Eriksen taped over some fairly big cracks in the back half of the season. I think you'll just about be alright due to Fulham/Bournemouth/Everton/Forest being worse than you, but it won't be as plain sailing as last year. I'd be really concerned about Damsgard too. The lad has arthritis at twenty two.

Wouldn't have an issue with selling if I were Leicester. Its proven time and time again that better players can be found for a third the price if you're willing to take a risk. I do wonder if their model has hit its ceiling though. They sell Maddison for way over what he's worth, cool. But then a replacement costs you, 30, 40? And then there is no guarantee on an improvement there, or even a side step. Really the only way they can bridge that gap now is with some absolute blinders in the market or destroy their model and spend big.

Had to Google that had no idea. You're probably not wrong though we're massive. Bet he doesn't even know who Doug Ellis is

Don't envy playing promoted teams first game. Win, nobody cares you should have beat them. Lose and you're ****, getting relegated with less than Derby.

On the face of it yeah. But if I was a won everything seen everything infinite money footballer I'd be spending the last few years of my career looking at clubs like a travel brochure. You can't do much better than Como

The worst part of it all. We can complain about gaps between the top teams all we like but aside from Italy I can't think of a genuinely competitive league. The drop off in the likes of Spain and Germany is absolutely enormous

Does its throwback to the 1940's make it retro?

Alberto Gilardino wasn't a good striker. OK poacher, useless at everything else. Not even close to Immobile who is also not very good.

Peace Cup Champions, we'll never sing that

Not at all. It's why it's so funny to see. Rivalry created entirely in the depths of Football Twitter. I Both sides play victims, sit here saying the other sets of fans are obsessed while also relentlessly bringing the same things up.

I love all this tbf. Shit for Archie if its a bad injury, I'm all for decking each other in a friendly so long as ankles aren't being snapped. That every game we play gets needlessly spicy makes things better - it makes when we play again in the league more interesting than when we play Forest, Wolves etc. Had a good laugh reading through the match thread and how properly angry some of you get. We only get this sort of organic hate from a handful of clubs.

Who? Never heard of him

Worse than all this, I'm confident 2 years from now you'll hear about us taking them to court because they haven't paid for anything more than his flight to Barcelona.

I was jealous/suprised/impressed you pulled it off as a signing last year, and even more suprised he was as poor as he has been. Used to watch him at Leverkusen with Diaby. He was a bit hit and miss in his last couple seasons but still good.

I hate everything that Barcelona have become. They'll still start the season fine, with all their new signings with no repercussions for the club. Roll out Mes Que En Club bollocks and tell the world we should all be lucky to watch Barcelona exist

Absolutely true. It almost ruined Bamford's time with us and its partly why it took us so long to get out of both divisions. It's not as bad as in the prem because losing one game feels less all consuming. Similar to yourselves its because half the people in attendance remember us being much better. When Watford fans watch them be shit its different.

Never got the Ziyech hype. I wasn't especially convinced of his Robben impression when he was playing second fiddle to Dusan Tadic

Yeah you're right, but comparing the players you signed in the past to this isn't the same. Aaronson was laying off the opener against Bayern Munich in the CL in February. I don't so much think the experience is what's valuable but these are players that have competed well at that level already so there's at least a foundation there to believe the step up won't overwhelm them.

Very different player profiles mind. These are internationals with Europa/Champions League experience. It's obviously a gamble but it's not the same thing. I think we can come out of this an overall stronger team. Phillips was hugely important to us but not because he was the best DM in world football, it was because we had nobody who could do anything like his job and under Bielsa it was the most important role in the team, when he was out we were crap. At this point we're probably better selling so we can improve. Obviously I'd have rather he stayed but what can you do

Gelhardt has looked great when given a chance in fairness, he's a bit on the short side but he's stocky and aggressive. Got a bit of Rooney/Tevez about him but it would be a huge gamble to let him play second choice to a pretty injury prone Bamford. We've been linked to Kalinuendo from Lens/PSG but I admittedly know **** all about him Noah Lang too but he comes with a bit of an ego and attitude that I don't think would fit into our team at all

If by some miracle we keep our current players we've done great business so far. Replaced the comedy defending of Ayling, got a proper CM to help out Phillips and a genuinely coveted by the world young AM. If we lose them its very different. Not sure replacing Raphinha would be the problem as we've so many other areas that are problems the money would be decent and I think switching Harrison to the right wouldn't be the worst idea anyway. Be curious how replacing CM goes as top ones are obviously very hard to come by

I hope this isn't a piss take. If it is I'd always suggest Phil Brown. If it isn't I'd love to see Dyche give England a go. Not sure we've any better names floating about, Burnley were capable of fast paced albeit rigid football sometimes. At least we'd have a plan

We'll lose Raph regardless of this seasons performances I think. Miles too good for a team that isn't in the champions league nevermind fighting relegation. Think Phillips stays and extends but realistically we need four first team replacements and then another 2 or 3 back ups. Possible if we get the big money for Raphinha but then you're needing all signings to be a success and start well, near impossible. Our best hope is probably sitting around 11th next season

Never in doubt lads.

Bit reactionary but I get it too. We knew our problems going into this season and pretty much ignored them, soon as we lost Phillips and Bamford we fell apart. It also feels like they had plans to get Marsch in regardless and while we've had some half decent results with him our performances have been largely shite. Sacking Bielsa is a hard one, half the team looked exhausted after 3 years and the amount of soft tissue injuries we've had is staggering. I fully believe Cooper and Phillips' injuries were brought on by Bielsa and his insistence on outrunning the world, and he routinely overlooked young players for the likes of Tyler Roberts who might be the worst player in the league. Think our fanbase would have taken a relegation with Marcelo over sacking him mid season, not sure where I sit.