Chez

why not? The club earns a fortune being in this league. Spend that fortune, but no more. if you get relegated you then aren't faced with a negative bank balance. Simple really.

are you saying that Steve Grant is the dark force?

Financial fair play hasn't kicked in yet has it. Besides I doubt we get close to Man City in terms of owners cash injections. Why go offshore and not to a UK bank? Everton only turned to these guys because they were maxed out at their UK bank. Could loan be to pay for stadium expansion? Straw clutching skate style. I know Cortese will say **** all, but I'd really like an explanation. I didn't expect my 40% ST price increase to be supported with an offshore loan to pay for the new signings.

what the **** are we doing? We almost died as a club five minutes ago by gambling on promotion and yet we seem to be doing the exact same thing here, albeit with a huge set of parachute payments to help. But are they going to cover Ramirez's wages for the next four years if he turns out to be a failure and we can't offload if we need to? All I've heard for three years is we are run `properly' and `as a business'. Yet the only evidence of these claims in my eyes is charging fans to park and to buy tickets, doubling ticket prices and spending vast sums of money, very well I might add, on players and wages to help us get promoted. It has certainly worked to date, but I genuinely thought once we had made it to the Prem we'd cut our cloth accordingly, what with the huge income available to us and the so called non debt ideals many kept telling me on here. Is it a case of needing that cash up front to help us compete? I recall Blackpool struggling to pay promotion bonus until Prem TV money started kicking in. Is it a cash flow thing? If so why haven't the owners provided a short term loan? This is what confuses me most. I don't understand why the owners cleared the debt one minute and then we turn to the BVI and mortgage future earnings for money the next. I for one am very concerned, as I have been a few times over the last three years about our huge wages and growing debt. The owners certainly put my fears to bed when they turned it into equity, but here we are again, but this time going to who knows who cap in hand. Maybe at the next `fans dinner' someone will stop the ass kissing and get the answers.

surprised JWP has not been selected ahead of Lansbury, who couldn't make any impact at Arsenal, after a bright start at Norwich couldn't get in their side, failed to get in the West Ham side last season and has struggled to get in the Forest side since his move.

er, I don't recall there being a single person unhappy at us signing the League 1 PFA team of the year right back. You certainly went against the tide with your support there. rolling eyes

Interesting to read your opinion rather than posts dissecting others. I have to say I agree with the home formation and certainly away from home I think we need a return to having a left and right midfielder who are willing to work up and down the pitch and not be wingers. Away from home this would be as pat of a 5, we're not good enough individually or collectively to go 4-4-2, but I wouldn't go for three central midfielders covering across the park as you suggested. IMO the left and right sides would have to be left and right sided players not Cork and Davis as you suggested. The issue is who we play in those wide roles. Chaplow was effective down the left last season and could so a similar job down the right. He was excellent out there against Palace I recall on return from injury. Lallana perhaps could do the left side job, but I've never thought he was up to much defensively and the third goal at Everton typifies where he is let down by a lack of pace, poor starting position and a tendency to focus on attack rather than defence. He tries, but he's not the right person to do an rigid up and down job. He'd have to reign back on his attacking tendencies and we'd be wasting his talent. What choice is there? Our injury problems in the centre mean JWP and Davis are our only options right now. That leaves one slot for Lallana or Ramirez.

I like Cork, but isn't this just a case of a player getting better every game he's not playing and we aren't winning? He couldn't get in the side towards the end of last season and didn't provide a great deal of protection for the back four in games like Leeds away for example. Obviously its better to have the option, but I don;t see his return to fitness as being the catalyst to a change in our fortune.

having almost literally stolen £1.25m from them for McGoaldraught (subsequently put to great use) I think it is us that still owes them. Many thanks curb crawler.

I am told that Lee Camp's agent has probably placed the story to help with Lee's contract negotiations with Forest. Expect to see "Camp snubs Saints interest to sign new contract at Forest" very shortly.

Camp has been fantastic for Forest for a few years now, but perhaps not at his best last season. I'm not his biggest fan, too short IMO, although yes there are the odd few small keepers to show the folly of that statement. Forest have load of money now, so not sure why they would want to sell unless they intend to upgrade, which begs the question why are we going for him.

I wonder if BC will continue to only offer one month contracts. Saves paying players for that long summer period for starters. It's not as though the players actually have a better offer elsewhere. If they did they'd be there.

double relegation and bottom of League 1? How much further do they have to drop before they have paid a price?

I thought Stuart Robinson was offering the Skate Trust a £3m loan? He seems to have become a "property developer partner" and now will be acquiring the ground or is it just security for that loan? Very good of him to offer a 0% interest rate, I assume because he is a supporter, but is that rate dependent on it being paid off within 12 months (didn't spot that in the original PST budget) or is it open ended?

they didn't lie and offered consistency. That's a step forward.

we're not currently bottom 3...you might be right...not sure we would have to have been bad. Even the supposed weaker sides are decent. Fulham for example have some real quality in their side.

I theirs. I backed big Sam, even if I don't like him. Thought he did a good job there to get them up (that's what was required and that's what he achieved under tremendous pressure) even if the style of football, if what we saw at SMS was anything to go by, was ****ing terrible and everything Sam claims he doesn't serve up. I also rate Poyet.

blast. Now I'm going to have to question the David Nugent, I mean Jay Rodriguez signing. Adkins will figure it out. Love his attack away from home and win four games concept.

a bit defeatest isn't it? I seem to recall promoted sides like Burnley and even the skates beating very good manu sides early season. I certainly didn't expect us to win all or any of these games, but I certainly hoped we might. All games are winnable. Swansea beat Man City last season and they only lost 5 league games all season.

Isn't our formation problem similar to that when we had the two dutch fellas in charge. Lots of bodies in the middle to dominate possession, but fullbacks left woefully exposed to a 2 on 1 allowing pinpoint crosses to come in that are almost impossible to defend against? I have to say I loved seeing us dominate possession (when the Dutch were in charge) but 4-4-2 made us much tougher to beat, if reducing our ability to control games. The solution therefore is to ensure that the left and right midfield are just that, midfielders, not wingers or free roaming ball players, they are midfielders that get up and down. Whether we support those with 2 or 3 in the middle and whether one of those is a luxury player is a different matter. Protect the fullbacks seems to the order of the day. Well that's one theory...

you may have posted it elsewhere, but please tell me what formation did you have in mind and using what players?

If I was looking for a player more pace than Lallana, Puncheon would be down there with Fox and Butterfield on my list.

Dayton, Drayton, very little difference.

not looking very hard then as every man and his dog seems to be crying like a girl about us not signing 23 new players in the window. Signing two whole strikers when we already had a bloody good one is now seen as a crime. How dare we sign the best we could get across the side before we had bought two in every defensive position first. How dare we. 2 GK 1 CB 1 RB 1 CM 1 AM 2 CF and a partridge in a pear tree.

Lallana tries very hard, no doubt about it, but he lacks pace and is not the best defensive player positionally or decision wise and that's putting it mildly. He simply got done, as he did a fair few times last season I might point out. Playing slightly further forward is not going to help matters either. too ask to charge forward AND be expected to track runners to your own byline too.