James

Shame we missed out on Lankshear. Well taken goal last night, think we will regret not going for him to be honest.

Someone on the Not606 Forum saying that Spors told fans in the bar after the Forum last night that we are close to signing a striker, hopefully before Watford. Not Vipotnik.

How are you ascertaining that Azon had way more chances? My understanding is that Azon was largely a bench player for Ipswich but became increasingly important during the run in. Their fans also seemed to like a lot about him. Jebbison’s numbers concerned me as it seemed like he was a starter for PNE but only managed 6. Happy to be corrected though.

Concern for me is the lack of goals when the aim is autos. His record is pretty patchy. But, on the flip side, he’s only 22 and broke into first team football super early. Feels like he’s been around forever.

50/50 is generous. Larin is the only striker that’s been remotely competent. Before Downs we had BBD, Archer, Mara…

To be honest, if it’s to be Jebbison I think I’d rather we went for Azon from Como.

As good as he is on his day, wouldn’t have wanted to give Stewart a 3 year deal, he’s made of glass. He barely played for us, let’s be honest. Hope that Spors and co have something lined up, especially since Alfie House said that, after missing out on Lankshear, our primary target was to bring back Stewart. If we go for Jebbison I’ll be pretty disappointed.

Totally agree although, as an aside, it’s a bit disappointing that we are potentially starting a competitive fixture with BBD or Downs up front. I know that’s partly because Larin is late back from the WC but we always seem to find ourselves short handed up top starting the season.

Suspect that’s about right. Can see Bragg over Jander (injury), Matsuki over Fellows and BBD over Downs.

I’m fine with giving one of BBD, Downs or Archer the third striker role but it would be a bold call to elevate one of them to back up Larin. Ideally we need a 1a/1b with Larin and A.Nother. Then pick one of those three to stay. I’m not sure Archer is going to fit here given how we play and Downs has been Ali Dia levels of bad so far so it’s probably BBD.

Christ, that would be some signing for the Championship.

I know what you mean about Larin. When we were first linked it looked an incredibly average signing given his goal record previously. He’s been great and it was a no brainer to sign him but he was, at least as I interpreted it, always our “second striker”. The fact that we rotated so heavily at the end of the season given so many games hid it a bit but whenever we had to play our best team we usually started Stewart. If we’d have played the playoff final I am fairly sure Ross would have started. There is some risk that Larin’s form was a purple patch to get the move - we have seen that before with Saganowski for example - and he has looked a bit leggy at times. Elevating him to our first choice is a risk, especially if the second slot is being filled by someone with a patchy goal record. Would be a surprise as Stewart to Jebbison is a clear downgrade and Solak’s comments over the summer suggested we’d be going all out. Larin and Jebbison is much interior to Bowen and Castellanos or Jiminez and Armstrong for example.

True although I’ve always thought BBD would do better through the middle.

Jebbison looks OK in that YouTube clip shared earlier, good physical profile but a concern he only scored six times last year. If he’s who we go for then it’s massive pressure on Larin. Replacing Stewart with Jebbison is quite the downgrade, if that’s what we are doing then query if more cost efficient to just keep BBD - I’m relatively sure he’d get 6 goals and 2 assists over a season playing in our side….

Don’t disagree with any of that but you can infer from the reaction of the wider footballing community (outside of the talking heads and twitter wind ups) that this isn’t the kind of one off heinous crime that Boro and the EFL whipped it up to be. All of your points can be true at the same time as acknowledging that Middlesbrough were well prepared to take full advantage of the situation, given they likely knew it was about to happen, which is exactly what they did.

The point is that Middlesbrough saw an opportunity to use something which, in my opinion goes on throughout the league week in week out and is done by most other clubs, to their advantage if they couldn’t beat us on the pitch which is what they did to great effect. Doesn’t make it right that we did it and doesn’t make it any less stupid but if Boro were waiting ready to gather evidence then it does show they were ready to use it to their advantage and it wasn’t something they just happened to notice on the day. They were perfectly entitled to do what they did btw, any club would do the same.

What evidence is there that the “core” are suddenly going to leave? It’s been pretty clear Charles was one we would sell. Haven’t seen an uptick in rumours about anyone else unless I’ve missed stuff?

Exactly. Chelsea made illegal payments in connection with Eden Hazard’s transfer. Would he have signed for them absent those payments? Who knows but, if I’m remembering rightly, it’s fair to say that most of the wider football community was surprised Hazard had chosen to move to Chelsea at a time when most of the top clubs in Europe wanted to sign him. During the 7 years Chelsea had Hazard in their team they won 2 league titles, an FA Cup, a League Cup and 2 Europa Leagues. Would they have won those trophies without Hazard? Again, who knows but having one of the best players in world football clearly will have helped. That’s before you even get to the circa. £100m transfer profit they made selling him on to Real Madrid or the countless other players they signed using these illegal tactics. To categorise all this as purely a financial breach is kind of missing the point. The FA is wilfully missing the point to avoid having to sanction Chelsea to harshly but even a basic read of the facts tells you they gained a huge sporting advantage from these practices. As has been said vis a vis our conduct, if they didn’t think it’d bring them success on the pitch then why did they do it?

100%. Worth remembering that we are going to be competing for autos, starting on -4, with West Ham Who have Bowen up front and Wolves who have Jimenez. Larin is great but we need someone who will get us 20/25 to be able to compete.

Same. He’s top quality for the Championship and would have been a free. Not overly confident as SR have had a huge blind spot for strikers. Unless we are going after a proven striker in this league like Vipotnik then it’ll be a gamble. The Ipswich loanee sounded promising but if we are serious about promotion we need better. I worried the Stewart deal was off when Tonda started talking up the possibility of BBD staying.

Could be right if he’s been given a touchline ban but I suspect if he is banned it’ll be from all activities.

I think it’ll be at least 10 games - it’ll be a harsh sanction - but we’ve been hit hard as a result of this as we are an easy target. I can’t see us being let off lightly and there isn’t much of a precedent. The FA have already broken the closest precedent when they charged Tonda having let Bielsa off. I’m more intrigued to see what happens next, do we get a new manager or limp on with Lallana until the ban is served? I hope the former to be honest. It’s concerning that the Club seemingly haven't received an indication of what the sanction will be and even when it’ll be communicated so fully expecting us to be blindsided by this and have no plan. I think a 10 game ban would take us past the Pompey home game.

As an aside, relatively little was made of this during the World Cup: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c872pv2r5y4o

100%. Yet a surprising number of our fans believe we’ve got it coming and that the combined punishment will be well deserved. Absolutely absurd.

Could be reading too much into it but a photo of Solak, Spoors and Stephens could be implying that the Club still has leadership if we get bad news in the next few days re Eckert.