Football Season 2024/25

According to the gossip columns, and their “sources” ( :man_shrugging:), it’s all gloom and doom at Elland Road in the aftermath of remaining in The Championship, between sailing close to the wind as far as FFP regulations are concerned, and the return of most of the evacuees who had it away on their toes, taking advantage of the bonkers contracts handed out by Orta & Co.

Well, things are surely not all that bad, as, if the obvious impending departures of both Summerville and Gnonto are to be believed, then the money incoming will help considerably towards the immediate debts.

Wee Erchie is rumoured to be under threat of a severe battering off his great Uncle Eddie, should he even so much as breathe a word about maybe going to The Scousers, and if we can find a way of enticing both Ampadu and Rodon to stay, we’re pretty much sorted.

As for the returning turncoats, their “flee the nest” contracts remain valid and they can return on loan once more from whence they came, assuming they are still wanted.

I try to keep abreast of things in the non first team group, and there’s some very capable youngsters eagerly bursting for their chance to step things up, and Farke’s just the man to bring out the best in them.

So yes, I was disappointed on the day of the play off final, but on reflection, regroup and go again is the order of the day.

M.O.T.

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If we start the season with a genuine, fit No.9, genuine full backs and a creative mid we’ll be fine. I’ll not miss Gnonto, Summerville or Rutter (or Meslier if he’s marketable).

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Given Plymouth have appointed Rooney, I think they will do well to avoid relegation.

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Great start to the new era under new management, or so I thought.

New man barely has his feet under the table & reports say that Carrow Road witnessed by far the best performance in the past 12 months on Tuesday night.

Shattered to find it was comment on the ‘Take That’ concert there.

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Lots of relevant songs they might have played:

‘Relight my fire’, ‘Pray’, ‘Could it be magic’, ‘Patience’ :wink:

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‘Pray’ sounds appropriate to me…

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Finally confirmed, Johannes Hoff Thorup is our new Head Coach.
An interesting appointment and from what I’ve read a good one.
I hope we now have a young manager with a younger team keen to prove their worth.

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Depends on whether he’s allowed to assemble his own team I suspect. Rosenoir was with him at Derby and it showed. He’s available again now. I never saw any evidence Gary Speed was a decent manager but that was one heck of a team he assembled around him for Wales.

The BBC tell me that Kylian Mbappe has signed for Real Madrid. I know this because I have just read my favourite comment for a while, on their HYS:

“Damn! And I brought my Luton Town Mbappe shirt in the hope he was coming over.”

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Thanks Christopher, that made me laugh! I know that we have just brought Ross Barkley’s career back from the dead, could have done the same with Mbappe :joy:

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Rumours are that Birmingham and Burnley have held talks with Frank Lampard over their vacant managers post.
Why does his name always crop up when he’s never had any success as a manager?

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Strong evidence that Frank has never developed a plan B career wise and that neither club has learned basic lessons.

As a manager he has repeatedly shown that he refuses to learn the rookie lesson that you don’t criticise in public which means he’ll never get 100% player support if things are on a knife edge. He’s also shown that he’s no idea how to build a defence and all of his teams have the same fault lines. Bewilderingly he continues to surround himself with people who will never be top of their class at anything so if anyone is daft enough to appoint him the outcome is almost laughably predictable. A question of when rather than if.

I’ve zero sympathy for Birmingham. As fine an example as you could want with regard to American owners who continue to believe that they have a model which will work if they just persist. Presumably they have zero eyes on Chelsea.

I almost feel for Burnley. Almost. Few would have predicted they’d have lost Kompany as the 8th choice of Bayern. Pretty much everyone could have predicted that sacking off Dyche and replacing him with a name and a radically different style of football would inevitably produce the same outcome.

Has always seemed to me that Frank was trying to run before he could walk properly.

As I recall, his first managerial season with Derby went quite well. Chelsea obviously thought so. Hindsight suggests he would have done well to take a good look at himself & realise that he was not the finished article & another season or two at Derby would have done him no harm at at in preparation for a, possibly, long & successful managerial career to match his playing career.

Unusually for us, we dodged a bullet in not appointing him & were lucky enough to get Dean Smith instead…

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Instead we ended up with Deano!:smile:

I think Frank understood that staying at Derby would see him dragged into the financial mire which Rooney handled so well. He opted for similar at Chelsea but with a better class of player and so backed himself in terms of being able to maximise outcomes even with financial restrictions.

Unfortunately he then proceeded to demonstrate that actually he couldn’t get the best out of young players; couldn’t get the respect of old pros etc. and had amazingly little tactical nous. He’s one of those peo[le who thinks everything gets fixed if only people give him and the fans 100% and never quote realises that he’s the specific reason they’re not.

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That’ll mean a change of name then: Frank Lampard’s Birmingham City or Frank Lampard’s Burnley!

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According to our local paper our joint majority shareholder Attanasio is looking to take a 25% shareholding in Benfica.
Difficult to work out if this is good or bad news for Norwich City.
Certainly difficult to work out the current financial situation with football and what the future holds.

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Perhaps we’ll do better in the Portuguese league?

Hope he’s not talking water over the Norwich deal.

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Bated breath then. Fixtures out this morning.

Tough opening game for Pompey on the opening day. Away to Leeds. :fearful:

More positively, just seen that we’ve signed Josh Murphy from Oxford.