Chez

a quick Google has the NHS website telling me that a "nasty torn calf muscle could take up to three months to heal". That might require surgery, three weeks in a fixed cast and three weeks in a stretchy cast followed by light pysical activity. Your guess is as good as mine why, 5 months later, there is still no sign of him.

Nonsense. We sold £160m of talent and spent just £20m because we had financial pressure to do so. Burnley sold £100m of players last summer and spent about £45m. Are you suggesting that £55m difference is just sitting in their bank account?

Does Burnley, Sheffield and Luton's situation have any bearing on our own? It's very difficult to compare clubs' finances, as each will have spent differently in terms of transfers, be carrying different amounts of debt, have different wage bills going up and then coming back down, different acceptable losses and actual opportunities to make sales.

Yep, wIth Taylor offering cover, and no one going out the door, I just don't understand why we needed Wood. I guess Martin knew he was going to play five at the back, and he will have wanted lots of cover.

He's got some good physical attributes, but he looked really poor last year at a lower level, making all kinds of basic errors. It therefore looked like we had missed a bullet when not signing him the summer before. Obviously, Martin had seen those attributes close up and I can see why he/we took a punt on him, but from the little I have seen of him since he came here, those issues - poor decision-making and pass selection for example - still need resolving.

I don’t have an issue with players being criticised on here. I was pointing out what a non-entity Smallbone was when he played for us in the PL last time. I also pointed out what a pussy he was in the tackle last season. But this season I’ve been surprised at the vitriol on here since he returned from injury. He came on against United, made one poor pass and then took pretty much all the blame for the defeat. Since then he has become the whipping boy, despite hardly figuring. If he starts and plays badly, fine, criticise away, but when I see him being singled out despite only having come on for five minutes at the end of a game, it annoys me a bit.

Still surprised Wood was picked ahead of him.

Try anything except a change of formation?

It could be argued that Les hasn’t been picked to start in every game because some performances haven’t exactly been great. He’s up and down.

Some very good points. He also is faced by the issue of having a large number of players fully invested in RMs possession at all costs game. Even though that wasn’t working in the PL, it’s not easy for players to just give that up having had success last season.

I remember watching him in his first few games and saying he simply wasn’t good enough. Too slow of body and mind. He was always desperately throwing himself to the ground, which sounds good but a good defender is on his feet matching his opponent. At that point he was a £5m punt on a young back up and it didn’t matter too much, but when he’s your so called first choice cb you have a big problem. He’s too weak to match big powerful strikers, too slow to match quick ones. He makes too many errors. He’s not up to Premier league standard.

everything about the game of football annoys me right now.

At one point deep in the second half, Aribo moved back to left centre half, manning went to left wing back and Wellington went into the middle but actually just joined Manning. Les had gone off. Smallbone replaced him and was on quite an advanced position. The central midfield area was pretty much vacant. Juric needs to explain, because I am struggling to understand what the hell we were doing.

Stick this `5 at the back' shit in the fucking bin.

What choice do the defenders have? There aren't any central midfielders to pass to.

Aribo now playing on the left side, with Wellington and Manning right next to him. Its fucking mental. You have to have central midfielders. Managers that stick to formations no matter what are infuriating.

I think we are playing one in midfield at the moment.

Interesting that Juric said he was a "little" dissapointed with our transfer window business. He expanded: "There are some positions where we are missing players and that could be an issue in the future. But I understand the situation and it is difficult when you are bottom of the table to convince players. The club tried to bring me what I want - but we didn't succeed." I wonder who we tried to get? When he mentions the future I am not sure he means later this season or next.

Is Archer not a centre forward then?

It would be pretty to harsh to sell a guy that has scored 20+ goals in a promotion season, but I suppose we could it. It's such an unsual situation. Has there been any other strikers that have scored in the champ, got a move to the prem, failed at that level, gone down with that side, again scored loads in the championship fo them, but failed again when back in the prem and gone down with the same side? Someone at WBA or Burnley maybe?

Yeah that's what the Daily Mail suggested. But we'll see. If Besiktas is the suitor, as rumoured, then expect a very low bid and maybe even an expectation that we give him a big leaving bonus to make up for any shortfall in wages. Juric seems to like him, so not sure he will be pushing him out the door. There was talk that his wage was really high and it wasn't cut on relegation - not sure if either are true - but if the rumoured £70k a week is accurate, then Besiktas aren't matching that. Aribo isn't going to leave in the summer to earn less money. He may as well sit tight and leave the year after.

If we go down, does Goetze become the top of the SR chain? Is the standard in the Turkish top flight better than the Championship?

I'd be surprised if we signed another CB in the summer. Assuming ABK departs, we still have THB, Edwards, Woods, Stephens, Bednarek and Sanda. Taylor and Bree can both play there too. Quite a few will need to go out before we bring more in. Could happen I suppose. If it does, one option might be to loan Tyler Bindon from Forest. They just signed him from Reading and have left him there until the end of the season. I'd assume they will loan him to a championship club next season. Reading fans rave about him. Maybe in Edwards we already have that young football league talent though.

Absolutely this. Next season the manager will plenty of choice. We have CBs coming out of our ears: Stephens, Bednarek, THB, Wood, Edwards, ABK, Sanda, Taylor, Bree...Aribo!

Championship Cardiff got pretty close in in 2008. We wont mention the victors. Some pretty poor PL teams have made the final since then...Watford, Hull City, Wigan and the Skates (both of whome were relegated that same season). We are shite, but it's football, so you can dream. What's the worst that can happen? Don't answer that.