Chez

but John (I bet more like £17k a week), Saga, Rasiak (Ibet closer to 17k a week) and Dyer have only left the wage bill temporarilty. We paid them ALL summer and we will pay them all next summer as well - not to mention the fact John, Saga and Dyer are short term loans not the full season.

the thing is though Arizona, the likes of Rasiak, Saga, Skacel etc are going to be on 15-20k a week - thats why the wage bill is £12m. The young replacements are going to be on about £1-2k a week. That is a massive difference. We will never agree on Saga. IMO he is just another Dobie that got lucky when on loan then failed to rediscover that scoring touch when we signed him. Without the goals he offered nothing. I disagree fully that he worked harder than anyone else. John did less running but BWP mtached it and at pace.

seemed a strange decision to me to. He's a muchbetter player than Smith and bearing in mind he is still a youngster people need to cut him some slack in terms of his performances on the pitch. Perhaps Jan felt he was not trying hard enough in training or was a bad example to his other youngsters... I have to say in Robertson we have someone that tries hard but I don't see huge amounts of quality there yet.

Cork is the only one worth signing. Pearce has done OK but I'd hope there was better out there. If Smith signs then I will demand my money money back.

boy was he bad when he first came into the side but that was in the Premiership. I saw his first start at St Andrews and he was the worst player I have ever seen. He made Wotton look classy. He's not looked back since he was pushed up front rather than playing in midfield where his horrific first touch made him look like a donkey. Only the SMS diots failed to see immediately that he offered a real threat up front despite not taking as many chances as people wanted early doors. Makes me laugh thinking about all the mongs who said he was average and not worth the £6.5m we sold him for (or was it £4.8m???).

if keeping us out of administration is going forward then so far yes, although closing down the Itchen corner and signing Wotton certainly did not help IMO.

As I understood it he trippled his wages when he went to Fulham. That doesn't sound like the type of wage we can afford now does it? As for Lallana going to Spurs. What a load of rubbish. Arry got burned on the last multi million pound tranfer from the CCC and I doubt he will rush to do that again.

Dobie, I mean Sags's season in a nutshell: cack, dropped, injured, not given a chance, cack, dropped. I have no idea why we signed the other two either. We shoul not have been signing anyone, we should have been cutting back, hard, except in defence where we were short.

16k crowds and still having Skacel, Thomas, Davis and John earning 3 or 4 times what we can afford to pay. BTW you still have to pay players during the summer months so we need to build a nest egg to pay for Saga, John and Rasiak.

We haev to make a profit to pay any of the overdraft off. The 16k crowds have put paid to that. Skacel, Thomas, John and Davis wages are monsterous compared to the income. Lose those four and Rasiak and Saga (we paid them all summer and we will pay them all next summer) and we might start to make a few bob which will help reduce the overdraft.

I disagree with that. Under Lowe I think the shortfall in income as a result of relegation was covered by player sales and lower expenditure. The financial problems have arisen since with the £7m splurge failing to get us promoted and then some absolutely horrific decision making in the summer before last. Why Stern John and Saga were bought I will never know. We had Rasiak on huge wages already and there was no way we could afford those three when the parachute payment was to be removed. Add to that every man and his dog knew that ST sales would be down. Absolute ****ing madness to increase the wage bill. Crazy. That board want shooting. The horrific financial problems we have now and the effects this brings is purely down to those decisions.

you don't pay a loss off. You pay back any loans you have taken to fund that spending. ie we haev built up a sizeable overdraft with the bank and now we have to start reduing that. The problem is we aer not making any profits each week to reduce the overdraft. With crowds so low we are probably make a loss every week so the overdaft will just grow. The bank will set deadlines for reductions say £5m to £4m by the end of January and £4m to £3m by the end of the summer. What we will have to do it come up with that money somehow (anyhow) or they could get heavy.

when was the last time Harry spent £5m on an unproved nipper? Can't see that myself.

The figures are for last years accounts. Nothing done since Lowe returend has any effect on this set of accounts. The £5M loss comes through an increase in wages from last summer (low earners like Jones, Bale, Pele, Baird leave and replaced by high earners such as John, Thomas, R Wright etc.), the loss of the parachute payment and 3000 less on the gate every week (and the knock on effect that has in terms of matchday expenditure). Not rocket science really. When the parachite payment was stopped we should not have signed John and Saga when we had enough strikers. And we should have been able to find defenders that cost us a lot less then the £1.2m we paid for Thomas.

Yes. £600,000.

no I am not talking about stopping to catch them offside I'm talking about a situation in the second half where Readign took a throw in towards the edge of our 18 yard box and after a couple of passes they played a one two and Skacel just stopped and gave up. It wasn't as though he thought someone else was tracking the guy he just stood still and acted like it wasn't his responsibility. I know I get on Skacel's back a bit, but I also credit the lad when credits due. Here he just could not be arsed and tried to make it look like it was BWP's fault. It matters not, but I know what I saw and this sort of thing just adds to my dislike of him. Add to that him constantly mooning at the linesman for supposed fouls that were never there (that's my job), the usual falling over at the mearest hint of a push when required and the feigning of injury to try and slow things down. I don't like any of those things even though they all help the side.

meh, this is no time to worry about future let downs. Just bask in the glory of a wonderful victory. We are playing well and I see no reason why that won't continue.

I'd like to see Mills get more games unless this fella is the nuts.

Just got back after a road trip to Yorkshire via Reading. If I was to give scores after the first half it would be 10 out of 10 for each and every player. Simply outstanding display from back to front. Davies didn't have a save to make, the back four won everything and passed extremely well. The midfield ran the show, showed great composure and creativity and up front we created chances a plenty. We ran them ragged and it could easily have been 2 or 3. The diving header chance that was saved would have been one of the greatest team goals I have ever seen, pass and move, skill on the ball, drawing the opposition in, a marvelous cross from Skacel and a great header. Tremendous. Dare I say it TOTAL Football. Thank god for the second goal though, because in the end we went to pieces in the second half. There was a ten minute spell when we were all over the place, hoofing it anywhere and under real pressure. Skacel feigned an injury to put a hault to the landslide and it needed a midfield leaderf to sort things out but no one stepped up. An offside saved us from an equaliser and nails were bitten towards the end. Fair play to the lads for holding out though and what a great win. Well deserved as we looked like the CCC promotion challengers not Reading and many of their fans said the same thing on the walk back to the car. Second half scores (first half are all tens) Davis 7 - great timewasting. Not many saves to make. Good claims. James 3 - hoofed it anywhere and it was his fault for the goal. Perry 10 - brilliant. Best display I have seen from a CB in years. Cork 10 brilliant. Reading hoofed it down the channels all day long and he was there every time. Skacel 7 Decent display but he gave up on one occasion which dumbfounded me. Schneiderlin 7 - he can tackle. More please. Surman 7 chased hard but ball bypassed midfield too much for him to control the game as he did in first half. Lallana 8 needed more ball but when he got it boy did he use it well. What a player this boy is. McGoldrick 6 went missing the longer the game went on. Robertson - 7 chased until he could run no more. BWP 7 great goal but did give it away a little too cheap now and then. Pattersen 9 kept the ball and tackled hard. Excellent cameo. I have been buzzing after the great display against Wolves and now I am off the scale. Luv it.

actually the goal was once again down to James following the wide man far too deep them making a wreckless tackle (which he was yellow carded for) that he didn't win putting him out of position and stretching us massively which we never recovered from. James had a ery poor second half IMO. As for Skacel, I know I canlt stand him but was it only me that saw him give up in the second half allowing their wide man to run into the box totally untracked? Other than that he had a decent game. Perry and Cork were the key to our success though not Skacel.

likewise, SMS has been quiet and even some of the awau games have been a bit tepid. With 3000 plus it should be noisy.

I'm certainly more forgiving of academy players, and rightly so. Players like MLT, BT and now Surman all took time to find their feet. I don't ever blame players for taking big wages. I blamed scouts and managers for signing **** players. There is not a Burnley fan in the country that didn't think we had massively overpaid. GB and scouts must take the blame. I hope you are right about the number of partners effecting Thomas' game, boy do we need to improve at the back, but he must shoulder some of the blame for our defensie frailties last season. As soon as we signeed Davis (decent CB IMO) we looked much much better showing how poor Thomas was.

who is going to buy them when they can loan them and then not have to waste money on summer holiday money?

It is hard to put to one side the inflated transfer fee, not to mention the huge wages a million pound tranfer always brings. But even if I could I would still have my doubts about him. So many goals last season were as a result of mistakes by Thomas. The more I saw of him the worse he got. At Sheffield United he looked qualithym one stuf fin the air, kept BT relatively quiet and by the end strutted around like he owned Yorshire never mind Brammal Lane. But that quickly dissapeared and after a few months he looked out of his depth making errors right left and centre. He did well at right back and I'd have no problem him playing there.

our desire to get Thomas back in the side shows how far we have fallen. For me he is a very very average centre back, not that quick, not that great in the, a poor decision maker and not that great positionally. All in all a very poor signing for £1.2m but I'd still play him ahead of Lancashire as he at least offers some physical strength.