Chez

Perhaps one of the 17 teams that does rate him may need a keeper this summer when they didn't last?

no he wasn't.

I think the consensus on here is, keep Ramsdale if possible, if not, get someone else in. However, we cant sign anyone until Ramsdale goes...and when he does, we will still be faced with that problem of having two extremely well paid keepers on the books that we can't shift. Can the club afford to pay a similarly large wage to a third keeper whilst in the championship...and can they attract a keeper in the championship that is going to be good enough to play at the higher level on promotion? The championship is littered with really average (to worse) keepers. If you are half decent, you are one of the three keepers each PL club has rather than in this godforsaken league.

Thanks. Interesting reading those posts. He's basically not done much for various reasons, but a £30m price tag is standard for a technically-good-enough-for-the-PL young midfielder. It's amazing that is the going rate these days...and no doubt we will be turning away offers below that for Fernandes.

Lot of talk about Jacob Ramsey to Forest or Everton, with £30m being mentioned. His destination and price, should Villa allow him to depart may directly impact any potential Fernandes move.

1. Do you even need a club captain? We pay the manager to organise and motivate the players. If you didn't have one, would the world come to an end? 2. We have been developing and playing youngsters from our youth system for decades. Young players know they can get games if they are decent. 3/4. Double. 5. Delaying giving him a new contract doesn't mean he would automatically depart. And it wouldn't go until next summer anyway. He certainly would look elsewhere for a contract offering long term security, but if we had waited until say January, Still could then see how important he is or isn't to our promotion hopes. I am sure if we offered him a deal in January, he'd of gone for that. 6. Fair point. But are his credentials all that great? Not a single PL club has tried to sign him whilst he was here. Bournemouth had him for a year on loan and passed on buying him. Experience and know how counts, but I'd chose more quality over more experience every time. 7. He had a year left on his contract. We would not be binning him. We would just not be extending his contract...yet. It's done now. I'm happy to get behind him, because he wants to be here and he is a Saint, but if things don't go well this season for him then I don't see why we can't have a good old moan at the management about giving him two more years.

Not the only thing. "...being transformed into a box-to-box midfielder under Still." It's almost like his season at Sheffield Wednesday never happened.

I'm not getting my hopes up too high. I know Sheff Wed fans thought he was good, but whenever I watched him for them, I still saw a guy that was constantly the wrong side of the ball and didn't dictate the game as the best CMs do. We need to ensure his role suits him and he has the right players alongside him.

Forest were seemingly interested long before Spurs bid for Gibbs-White, so not sure the move is reliant on that happening, but I agree, they will want to spend £25m plus add ons an we will want £40m plus add ons.

Yeah, lots of calls to ask if they can get him for £10m which obviously leads to nothing. Villa are going to be the team to look at. If Martinez goes to United, they will need a big personality to fill his shoes and Ramsdale fits the bill IMO.

Aribo played best for us as one of three central midfielders in the championship. He didn't do nearly enough in an attacking midfield role, all be it he didn't get too many opportunities in the championship.

Sounds out of their budget to me. He has ability, not too dissimilar to Edozie, but Palace are pretty astute and will know if they have a player that can make in the PL. It feels like they don't see that. That's a massive red flag for me. A loan would be fine fine, but I don't think we should be buying him for £10m.

I always thought Aribo would look for a move once his contract was up, rather than this summer. Free transfers are more attractive to suitors and ensure the wage remains high this season and then in future seasons.

Could it have been Gassama, choosing Rangers over us? Do they compete with us on wages?

it certainly needs trimming, but if enough depart, like all the main three or four we really rate and a few others like BBD, Taylor and Armstrong, then we can add to it. This attacking midfielder that could be signed with or without sales seems to be elusive too.

I was thinking more end of transfer window, as obviously a lot is done in the last week. I suspect it is very busy behind the scenes, but we just won't be accepting low bids again, so things will never move fast.

Absolutely. However, I thought Bednarek move would have been done considering he was reported to have a relegation release clause of just £6m. I thought also that Forest or whoever would be bidding for Fernandes by now. Maybe they already have and we said we want a lot more. I thought Ramsdale would have got a move by now also. All out of our hands, I realise that.

The bigger the gap between PL and Championship, the harder it is to get players to drop down. I guess larger PL squads put paid to that many years ago. Same for everyone I guess. Hence all we can do is take punts on 22 year olds with potential. I know there are many weeks to go, but I was hoping there might be a little more turnover of players and we could reshape the squad a bit more, especially adding some attacking talent and dribblers like Chakvetadze at Watford. Edozie may have to be that man. Hmm.

I see my suggestion of Andrija Maksimovic has joined RB Leipzig. I knew he was good, but we have no chance of competing with that kind of club, especially in the championship. Sainz obviously got a move to Porto, and Bindon joined Sheff United on loan. Pretty sure we wont be signing any of the others, so I'll need to come up with a new list.

There was some hopeful posts on his thread early on that we might get Evan Ferguson on loan, but Brighton and Roma are in talks. Getting decent players that can't get a game in the PL to drop down to the championship is almost impossible. Far more attractive options abroad.

as per the 96/97 shirt, fucking dreadful. Blue and yellow...and black. What a terrible colour combination.

The fact Sheff United lost faith in him during the final stretch of the season is a slight concern for me.

He was with us in the championship. I thought we bought him in January but it was a loan. I dint really have a point to my post, other than to see if we bought players in the championship promotion season and then immediately offloaded in the summer prior to the PL season. We didn't, although clearly the manager did recognise that three of the signings we not up to it, so didn't get a chance to play. We clearly couldn't offload them, and if we do the same - buy championship players this summer, we will be stuck with them for three years.

I thought I'd look back to 2011/12 - our first season back in the championship - to see if we signed players to take us up and then were happy to part ways once we did. In the summer we signed Fox, Cork and de Ridder, then Tadanari Lee and Sharp followed. A year later (having got promoted), we didn't release any of them. Whether that was because we wanted them in the squad, no one wanted them or they didn't want to go, I don't know. But only Cork and Fox started a PL game that season, so three of the five signings were deemed not up to it right from the off.

These are two different classifications of players, aren't they? In Solomon, you are talking about a player that Leeds loaned from Spurs and would perhaps be interested in signing at the right price, not a player Leeds are offloading because they don't see them as being good enough for the PL. I don't want Leeds cast offs. They are not fringe PL players, they are championship at best players. Brooks was a finge PL player (maybe better than that) as apposed to a player a newly promoted side immediately discarded.