Dan

I'll get pelters for this but Sean Dyche. Burnley are on the wane now and I don't put that on him - I think they're about to crash and burn personally. I think he'd come, whilst Potter wouldn't. I'm not even saying this for "he'll keep you up every season" because that's way less than you should be aiming for and that 'ambition' is what would eventually relegate a club, but he's managed that at a club with a consistently weaker squad and a substantially poorer budget. Can totally understand turning the nose up at him but I think his ceiling is a bit higher than simply survival. It's intrigue as much as anything, I'd be very interested to see him at a bigger club. In another way the more I think about it I think you're just fucked and you're going to repetitively do this until Moshiri goes. You've tried all types of managers, all types of players, spent a lot in order to do so, but worst of all in my opinion you brought in the football 'brain', didn't utilise it what so ever, let a manager who blatantly had no long term future there get rid of him and then sacked that manager a month later anyway. What hope has literally any manager got in that situation? Even more so given you've spent a lot of the money now and you're having to go for the cheaper players anyway. Dyche, Potter, Martinez, Allardyce, it's irrelevant until the clown at the top learns from his errors and there are no signs of it. You need to get him out first and foremost because I fear this kind of season will become your norm otherwise.

They bought another left back anyway, I doubt it's for profit. Dodger's had a drink again by the looks of it. Reckon he's a couple of prods away from another meltdown if anyone else fancies it.

You're such a hard problem to fix. I just think you need a manager who is capable of getting the club to pull in the same kind of direction again. I think a humble kind of appointment like a Ferguson or a Rooney would do it to some degree. There was definitely a little bit of a buzz about you when Ferguson was there before. Benitez was a totally stupid appointment. You can't even say there's anything close to the organisation you would hope for under him. It's just a mess. It was always going to get like this though I feel. Saw your run of form earlier. Find it peculiar how many of your points have come against the bigger sides - but the record against 'the rest' is absolutely criminal. It's why I'm annoyed we got Tuesday called off, even with a couple of youth players in the side I'd have fancied us.

I did think he was pally with White. Does explain it to some degree.

Moshiri gets nowhere near the shit he should. Has he got mates in the media or something? I don't see how he's any better than GSB.

It's like the entire squad is made of glass.

I don't like the idea of throwing a 17 year old into this but Nelson is meant to be decent and I guess sometimes you do have to go for the deep end. It's shambolic stuff. We're gonna end up with a back three of Castagne, Vestergaard and Bertrand aren't we. Some kind of incarnation of that and it's going to be every bit as ghastly as feared. This season's just a damp squib. Go for the conference league and FA Cup. We're doing nothing in the league.

I don't know how many times these things that get called conspiracy theories have to come true before people stop with that ridiculous phrase. If you still trust this government, the agenda driven scientists or the media at this point you'll trust literally anything.

It's pretty obvious to me at this point that any doubling down on restrictions and whatnot is just to distract us from the reality - that grossly overreacting has caused years of damage. It was a mistake that you can understand how it happened, but I think there's far more politics at play than people want to admit now. Our government have shown everyone what they really think of the rules and what fear they really hold - and it's absolutely one, they just know that if they told us all to be free they would be essentially admitting their error and would have to be accountable for a lot of the damage caused. Find it disgusting that they do it though even if I can see why it's happening. The national psyche has never been lower and it will take years to properly recover from. I feel for you lot with Drakeford. He's revolting.

TAD is correct - it's been a constant thing throughout the entire last two years in that they deliberately temper every bit of good news with something shit. I thought the announcement of likely vaccine passports on 'freedom day' was utterly disgraceful. I think some are pushing for restrictions because they know that omicron is going to essentially give us herd immunity, meaning the gravy train comes to a halt and meaning there's going to be some serious accountability.

Tielemans and Justin were before him even if the deals themselves happened happened with him here. It's not as simple as to blame him for every bad deal and credit others for every good one but I have spotted a pattern in our recruitment in the last two years and I've not really liked it - and recruitment is something I think any club should be absolutely thorough with, especially somebody like us who are frequently trying to compete with sides who can outbid us, I just don't think we can afford to get nearly any wrong. I'm led to believe Castagne was a Rodgers/Congerton pick which I think has been a decent one. Fofana I believe was as well so that's a big tick. I just don't think he was a good move at all from us bringing him in. Thought it from day one, based on previous warnings but seen very little to change my mind. This is a good move and I'm quite confident of that. We really need to get this next year right.

Big news for us - Lee Congerton is going to Atalanta. Common consensus, and something I strongly agree is that this is fantastic news. There's no smoke without fire. He's been involved at numerous clubs that have recruited awfully and I think ours has gone backwards in the time he's been here as well. Ahead of what's going to be quite a key period of recruitment for us in the next year or so this is a real stroke of luck. I'm baffled at what Atalanta, a club who recruit well themselves, have seen to do this, but happy days.

The performances over a longer period do concern me I can't lie. Last night was a disaster in isolation but it's not the first time it's happened. 3rd game in 6 that we've shipped 4+ in the league. It's sort of inevitable when you lose defenders at the rate we seem to but we've clearly not found the answer to it either. I think some of those who've been here a while need to look at themselves. Soyuncu I'm running out of patience with. Maddison hasn't had a good game in 6 months. Perez is totally out of his depth and shouldn't play against anybody above the Championship in a cup game this season. I want to think it's just a dip but performance wise we seem to have picked up where we left off last season. We did win the FA Cup which to me made all of these things irrelevant at the time but you don't live in the past. We need to sharpen our act. Slightly concerned for Saturday - what I'm noticing under Rodgers is that we do have particular sides we struggle to perform against. West Ham have become the obvious one but we were shocking against an abysmal Norwich in 2019/20 in both games. I would not be surprised if they took something.

Even more fun if you introduce a rule that one person letting it down owes everyone a drink.

I mean I'd assume they scored if they won Leipzig the pricks did me for £400 last week. Even bigger farce given Mainz apparently had 11 out. I do a group bet with 4 mates (now 3) every week and we've still never won one. Started last season. Somebody backing Luton today just sums up the standard on offer.

If someone had posted that photo and claimed to be from the future I'd have said I'm amazed at how much photoshop has developed. Crazy really.

Just trying to wonder what the contingency plan is in this instance. I think you've got to write him off until February at the absolute earliest and even that's probably optimistic - could easily be the whole season. It would be a blow anyway, but we've still not seen Evans once this preseason. I don't know where he is, what's happened to him, or why he's out. It's not like you can even say it's linked to the Euros either. As it stands Saturday we're going to probably end up with Amartey and Soyuncu at centre half and to say that fills me with confidence would be a big lie. It's either going to be that, Ndidi / Soyuncu with probably Soumare in midfield (possibly my preferred option but unsure if it would leave us a bit weak in defensive midfield), or even a back three (sighs) of Amartey, Soyuncu and Bertrand. It's imperative we get a centre half in now. I think that was rising as a priority position before tonight given Evans absence but we might even need two now. I wonder if it'll force us into selling Maddison you know, essentially selling him to fund two, maybe even three signings. I got the impression we'd spent most of our budget to get Daka & Soumare in and this will force our hand somewhat. Could be talking rubbish but our bargaining position in this one went down a bit as a result of tonight as we need the money a bit more. All speculation but we've got to make a move now. I thought this before even this injury but I have a feeling we'll sign Gary Cahill. He seems probably the nearest thing to Evans we could bring in. Would say the chances of Kabak coming in grew tonight too, that may have been a contingency.

I am just so fucked off. Even now. Been sick to death of having to clump together a team on what feels like their last legs for so much of last season. Felt like one after another we'd just lose players, forcing others to play too much to the point they'd end up pulling up too. We'd never needed a pre-season as much as this one. A real sense of recharging, getting virtually everyone back and looking fresh - Ricardo and Barnes, two post injury players, both looked back to their best for large parts tonight. We'd been excellent. We were taking them to pieces. Were well on course to stick 5 or more past them given the way the game was going. Then bang. One of the top 3 crucial players breaks his leg in a friendly. An enormous blow to our season. Fucking furious. We're never ever going to have a fit squad again.

So annoying though. Everything about the night had gone as well as you could've hoped up until that. Was fantastic being back there again, best atmosphere I've been to for a friendly, actually felt like a league game for large parts. We played some great stuff at times. Just sickening to lose one of the key men yet again. Three seasons in a row FFS.

It's the fact Fofana 'hurt' (definitely didn't) him about 5 minutes before. It's just too big a coincidence.

I agree somewhat but there was definitely malice. Like I say, I don't think the intention was for him to break Fofana's leg at all, I don't think it was quite that sinister, but there was definitely a bit of revenge in it. It's far too coincidental to not have.

For what it's worth - he definitely went in a bit hard deliberately, in retaliation to this: I don't think he intended that outcome but there was definitely some malice in it.

I am just absolutely fucking sick tonight. Think I'm more gutted than any loss last season for example. The third absolutely crucial player gone to a horror injury in under 18 months. It's horrendous luck. We'd been excellent tonight before that. You could tell it totally knocked everything out of us. Could tell very early on it was a bad one. Was really good to be back but feels like we've lost a meaningful game 6-0. Gutted for him and a massive loss for us.

That is true, but I'm not saying we made an error - I think we all knew we'd eventually be back. I just think it was sods law with the timing. We'd committed to starting the training ground pre-covid. I don't know how long the ground itself will take. Will feel quite surreal thinking about it. I'm so used to our place.