HanoiVillan

One of my favourite moments of the season, this. Shows how people who know the game don't get swept away in reactive stuff like scorelines, and focus on fundamentals. Worth remembering, and trying to 'be more like Alex'.

I think there's absolutely no chance of us choosing to 'prioritise Bournemouth'. Unai was busy boasting - as he should! - about his record of winning European trophies in the programme for the first leg. He's not going to throw a chance to add to his record when we're winning after the first leg of a quarter final.

They haven't broken those rules. There's no doubt they're PSR compliant. The question is about the veracity of their historical accounts.

They have away from home, but they did win their last two home games.

No, that does not seem to be why it was cancelled.

The likes of Kepa and Lukaku probably have book values that are prohibitively high and prevent them from turning a big profit on them. I've been quietly enjoying Broja's failure at Fulham, seems clear they'll struggle to get much north of £20m for him, when they were busy demanding £50m in January. They'll get decent money for Maatsen and Hall but there's a danger they have to sell players they'd ideally be starting, ie Gallagher, Colwill and if any bidders can be found, James.

This seems . . . extremely short-sighted? They had four games to get into the playoffs, it hardly makes sense to take this 'principled stance' in April. In October, sure.

Makes me laugh how many posters on here treat him as a deal like Nedeljkovic, when he's clearly a deal like Azaz.

They're experts in finding ways to shoot themselves in the feet, something will go hilariously wrong next season as well I'm sure.

Big advantage for Leicester is they still have three home games remaining. Win those and they'll be champions IMO.

These companies provide index funds, and as a result own large proportions of essentially every listed company in America. They have essentially no active involvement in the running of those companies.

You know, you don't need to post in such an aggro fashion, and also if you're going to rant at me you could at least have the decency to address me directly.

It doesn't, but the reality is they will be well aware they need to win out the rest of the season to hold off City and Liverpool. They're going to be close to full strength tomorrow, even if they make some minor change like Kiwior for Zinchenko or Trossard for Martinelli.

They still only need to finish above Huddersfield and Sheff Weds, with the former and Rotherham to play. 21st is still within reach, and will be even if they lose. That said, it's good that they have both Huddersfield and Rotherham away, will be a big challenge to win them both.

Gonna be a weird atmosphere at the SOTV Derby today, they've actually both got to get a result. They might even forget who their real enemies are!

Oh, go on then, twist my arm.

Our ground is bigger than Stamford Bridge. Stadium capacity is not the only or even main constraint on competitiveness.

Got to say it, you sound a touch rattled . . . . . . mate.

Yeah, 5 or 6 points behind Spurs is how I see it as well.

'The horse doesn't know the odds'

I think it's fairly safe to say the players aren't going to be poring over a blog post before they take the field, yes.

Good post. I don't agree with all of it - in particular, whatever you can accuse someone of making a £2-3bn stadium investment of, it certainly isn't 'making a quick buck' - but the thing I have been thinking about and really agree with you on is the way this has been sold, and the nature of the claims made for how the stadium will be monetised. You lay out correctly why they're unlikely to be able to host more than the (very) odd NFL game even in a best-case scenario, but I keep seeing Wagner talk about 'Euros' and 'World Cups' as well. This is crazy: The World Cup has hosts already awarded out to 2036, England are not one of them. Since European nations are the main hosts in 2032, Europe presumably wouldn't be hosting again until 2048 at the earliest, and no guarantee England will be hosting. The Euros are coming to England in 2028, but host stadia have been assigned and this won't be completed in time anyway. Since the British Isles will have been the hosts in '28, it's likely the Euros wouldn't be coming back for ~30 years again. Of course there are the women's tournaments as well, but even there England have hosted the Euros recently, and the most recent World Cup was in Europe, so there's no short-term prospect of it and they're obviously less lucrative in any case. The stuff around housing and office space seems more plausible, but is even more challenging. Commercial real estate is a tough business, and companies go bust all the time. You're at the mercy of the health of the wider economy and changing social trends like remote working or hotdesking or whatever. It could work well but it's a hard industry and it's a completely different set of competencies than running a football club so it's more management, complication etc. It's normal for people to put a little 'masala' on a big announcement to make it newsworthy, make a bit of a splash etc, but there's also the danger that they're quite deluded about what they're going to be able to achieve with this project.

Is this the most one-sided MOTM poll ever? Anyway, rightly so, as he was brilliant tonight. Nothing much new to say that hasn't already been said, but we have to get better from aerial set pieces and crosses into the box.

It may be that we end up needing to sell 2 or 3 players instead of 0 or 1. That would be sad, but life will go on. We'll still put 11 players out, managed by one of the best managers in the league. If it's to be the end for some of them, then let's go out on a high winning a trophy. What will be will be.

The evidence of the thread seems to suggest to me that people are more annoyed about Liverpool losing to Atalanta than they are happy about us beating Lille. I know there's a selection effect because it's the Champions League qualification thread. But in practice it seems a lot of people (and I get this, it was my first reaction too) are drawn to the negative, not the positive.