Dan

I'm not one who eliminates the possibility of terrorism that easily but I think in this case it's pretty obvious it's a gas explosion. That's just totally pointless speculation from him. Did you see the house in Birstall that exploded a few months ago? That was mental. One person I work with lives in Birstall and slept through it, someone lives 5 miles away and it woke them up Weird stuff.

They're pulling bodies out apparently. It sounds nasty. Does make you question how well some of these buildings are maintained. I don't live in the city, I live in a village about 6 miles outside of it, but I drive past this area pretty frequently.

In all honesty I don't know any more than anyone else as I've just gotten all my info from Twitter. Had no idea it's practically flattened a shop though. That's worrying.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/bayer-leverkusen-leon-bailey-england-12042341 We may have had a huge stroke of luck here. Leon Bailey of Bayer Leverkusen is apparently eligible to play for England (as well as Jamaica, Belgium and Malta, strangely) and would consider it. That's a game changer for us. He's quality and that for me is our weakest position. Exactly what we need.

Chester apparently need £50,000 to be saved, yet are due £55,000 from us in June through an installment on defender Sam Hughes that we signed off them in the summer. While I hope we just let them have the money, I do worry that it's not actually helping solve the problem, and more just patching over it before it comes back again in future. Clubs who end up in these scenarios have something fundamentally wrong with them and giving them the money doesn't fix that. It's akin to giving someone homeless some money to spend and they go and buy alcohol. But as stated, I hope we bring forward the payment and let them have it. We probably pay Kelechi Iheanacho that money in about 4 days and we're due to pay it to them anyway. Would be a shame for them if they did end up resorting to selling their sell-on clause to us as I think that's the single best way a smaller club can make money nowadays. Their fans really rate him as well and he's having a good year in our youth team.

I'm really unsure what to do this year. I've got two weekends away booked and that's it. Both big family ones, one in some place in Staffordshire and one in Butlins which we've done for about the last 20 years in-keeping with the Leicester tradition there. But as regards to going abroad there's absolutely nothing and it's purely because I've got a block of time up in Leeds, right during the World Cup which has pissed me right off. I'll miss a lot of the games and I can't go away as planned. Quelle surprise, most of my mates are going at that kind of time, a lot of them not together either, so I'm a bit stuck on my own this time around. I'm actually half tempted to do something a bit different on my own, nothing too expensive because I'm trying to save a bit of money this year, but something slightly out of the ordinary of Spain. Maybe Portugal.

They're too similar to play together.

Portugal's a no-brainer actually. Perfect.

Think I'm finally going to be an Ultimate Team wanker. Going to build a bit of a different type of squad though as I can't be arsed having the same as everyone else. Maybe something like Mexican or Uruguayan.

Expect him and Choudhury to feature at Fleetwood. Barnes seems to be getting rave reviews at every level he plays at so maybe all he needs is that chance that I expect Puel to give him. I look to the likes of Dele Alli and Marcus Rashford, players who by all accounts got a chance they weren't really expecting to and haven't ever looked back since. Not saying he's as good as them but you'll never know if you don't try. I've wanted us for years to have a manager who's a bit more ballsy with playing youngsters and Puel may be that man. There was one of the people there who left, it may have been Liebherr, and I've seen plenty say it's gone downhill since then. I used to see Southampton and Swansea as the model clubs. Now I think both, Swansea in-particular are a bit of a nonentity. Southampton aren't just not replacing their star players but they're hardly bringing any through anymore either.

I was going to have some on us -2 when Spurs went down to 9 men, at 2-1, with 15 minutes left. So of course it ends 6-1. They're absolutely flying though. I think it's a big problem at Leicester to be honest the lack of youngsters we've produced of any real quality over the years, I don't know if this group are really that good (Sam Hughes and George Thomas seem to be getting a lot of praise) but we do at least now have a manager who is happy to give youngsters those chances and that's something we've needed. No manager's done it here for as long as I can remember. Also found the above Twitter thread very interesting. It's mainly about Southampton but it reflects well on Puel - and pretty terribly on Southampton (and Les Reed, who I actually did think highly of).

I'm still sat on here at silly o clock at times.

Bet he orders a Korma

Drinkwater should've been on the plane to France last tournament. Absolutely ludicrous that he wasn't after he'd had such a decent season - yet bottlejob Hodgson went with a completely unfit and out of form WIlshere / Henderson instead, while eventually resorting to playing Rooney in midfield. Never seen such blatant big club bias in my life, which ironically might actually get him in this time. I do hope he does well. Pissed off that he left (although not as much as Kante) and even more pissed off that we completely screwed up getting Silva in on time but he was a fantastic signing for us really. Signed for under a million, gave us five and a half years, heavily involved in two league winning sides and eventually sold for £35mil. Fantastic move.

I never found him particularly attacking. Like I say, not even close to the creativity of Mahrez for me. The majority of his creativity would come from a longer ball through to Vardy for him to run onto rather than anything too intricate, which Mahrez is capable of.

I've not watched all of Chelsea's games when he's played but I've caught glimpses - and my immediate thought when looking out for Drinkwater was how much more he looks to attack for you than us. When he was here I thought he was a solid all-round player, technically pretty good, a strong passer both short and long range and a good engine, but he didn't really score enough goals and he was nowhere near as creative as Mahrez, for example. His goalscoring record for us in the Premier League is actually pretty shocking - 3 goals in 87 games which incredibly is less than Wes Morgan (5 in 114) and Robert Huth (6 in 82), although not Danny Simpson bad (0 in 91), a very low total really for a midfielder, especially when you factor in how Kante only got the one, Okazaki and Albrighton didn't score many either, shows how reliant we were on Vardy & Mahrez for goals. I don't think it ever helped him however playing the formation we played - him and Kante (and later King, Ndidi & Amartey) were playing as a 2 and as a result had less license to attack whereas at Chelsea he's covered by two other midfielders. I do wonder if we still had him whether he'd be used in more of an attacking role seeing as we look to finally be adapting to another way of playing under Puel (who like Shakespeare hasn't had his replacement available). I'm quite surprised he's holding a place down to be honest, I thought he tailed off big time towards the end for us and while I was livid at how we handled deadline day, we got a decent fee considering everything. I expected him to be behind Kante, Bakayoko and Fabregas but seemingly Bakayoko hasn't performed. His form tailing off so badly during last season will forever remain a mystery to me. While most of them dipped from the year before, he didn't for ages and then around this time of year he seemed to go well off the boil. He went from the best player in a bad side to the weak link of quite a good one. He's a strange player.

Concerning is very generous. I'd say disgraceful. What an absolutely terrible message to send out going into a World Cup - acceptance of failing in one of the easiest groups we could've asked for. You can't use the World Cup to practice for the future as they aren't frequent enough, this is the real thing - if we seriously can't come above fucking Tunisia and Panama then how on earth can you argue that we're moving in any kind of right direction? We've got a better squad than we had two years ago. We've actually got a lot of players playing well on the continent which is the first time in years you can say that's the case. I actually don't get what goes through these peoples heads at times. What an absolutely ridiculous thing to come out with. Covering our arses incase we don't better Tunisia absolutely unbelievable. He's got to go.

How the fucking hell was that 450/1? I'd have had that nearer 80/1.

Correct. My stance is quite simple that I'm not sorting her out again, and I'll only do it occasionally for others too. One of my mates used to take the piss but he's got his act together somewhat now.

I don't know how people can go through their life like that to be honest. He's literally living off your money. I'm quite cynical about situations where people are supposedly skint because I know somewhere along the line there's been a mistake made to get to that point. Like this girl here - she can't get through this month if she don't have £30 off me? Load of utter bollocks. I'd be insane to lend it back to her when she's proven in the last seven months that she can't be trusted to pay it back. Now I'm quite tight myself this month, but that's my own fault for relying on withdrawing money from William Hill and for paying for darts tickets at short notice. I should be fine within a week, but the last thing I need is to lend someone back the £30 they've owed me for ages that they've inadvertently paid me back. If you're being really picky, you could accuse me of being quite sneaky by having her season ticket after the Everton game - in fairness, the one who used it lives miles away so it made sense for me to take it, but I'm sure at the time we both said I've got the power here to get that £30 off her. Sure enough, there it is. She's probably bargained for having that £30 but she shouldn't be when she's owing me money. I can't stand owing people money and I have no idea how anyone goes through life doing it regularly.

I have done a very similar post to this in the past @Any O'Brien. Basically I agree. I am involved. I'm person A. Person B isn't getting their money. I need it myself this month and most importantly, it is, you know, my fucking money.

Person A bought tickets for West Brom away in April of this year. Person B hadn't paid back and kept putting it off. Person B didn't go to the last home game against Everton. Person A has their season ticket as they gave a lift home to the person who did use it. Person B then sells their season ticket for Man City at home this weekend for the exact same amount that the West Brom ticket went for to a randomer online. Said randomer turns up at Person A's house to get the ticket and pay the money. Person B asks Person A for the £30, and for them to pay it back to Person A at the end of the month as they're very hard up. But Person A has also had a tight month money wise and could do with it themselves. Who is in the wrong? I'm 99% sure I know the answer here, I just want some neutral opinions. It doesn't necessarily involve me.

He's clearly got some quality about him. Still unsure he fits us though.