Luke SkyWalker-Peters

I like the look of Fernandes. A complete CM. Good with the ball, athletic, can dribble past players and has some bite to him. I think he is an upgrade to both Smallbone and Aribo. If Alcaraz goes, then I could see the club signing O'Riley too. We are a bit short at CM at the moment with Charles looking like he is going out on loan, considering we usually play 3 in midfield. I suspect we will get a striker once Mara is gone and a goalkeeper on loan just before the window closes, from a team hoping to sell their extra GK.

I thought he did very well in his Premier League debut today. He's always been a big, strong lad for an attacking player and thought he looked physically up to it. Won a few fouls and kept the ball well, but a shame he didn't have a go at one of his driving runs. He's been showing Premier League potential since he was 15, so its good for him and the academy to have nurtured the talent so well. After the window closes, a long-term deal for him must be a priority.

Considering we are going to have two more starters for next week's game (Lesley and Archer) I thought that was a pretty good performance. Many recently promoted teams still get dominated even if the opposition have had a red. We look like we belong at this level. McCarthy THB, Bednarek, Stephens Sugawara, Downes, Lesley, KWP Armstrong, Archer, BBD 343. I think that could do a job next week. Obviously a GK on loan goes straight in the XI.

This is what I don't get. How did he down tools? He dislocated his shoulder, badly, didn't have surgery so that he could return faster. Consequently, he kept getting recurring shoulder injuries that season and last season with PSV until he got the surgery he needed. If anything, he did the opposite of "downed tools" and put his career at serious risk by not getting the surgery immediately and continuing to play? This whole narrative about him in our relegation season is so baffling and contrary to what actually happened that honestly reeks of racist undertones. No-one was claiming Livramento "downed tools" when he was also fighting through numerous injuries. I've addressed this supposed attitude problem earlier. I would hope Martin, a revered man-manager, and our supposedly strong dressing room could handle one player that needs a bit of guidance. Not every player is going to be a JWP pro off the bat, and there is a level of quality that means the headache is worth it - we can't be turning our noses up at Premier League level players so easily. If we had lots of bad personalities, I'd think fair enough, but Martin has done a complete British and Irish overhaul of the squad with players who's personalities he likes. No I don't think anyone would have paid £26m for him now, because he just spent the season coming back from surgery. That's why I would have kept him and played him because he is levels above Stephens. If he was toxic then we could have told him that he can get a move in January and I'm sure he would have put in performances on the pitch.

He got a serious shoulder injury, decided not to have surgery so that he could return to the team faster, and then people here started saying he couldn't be bothered when we were getting relegated. The hate for him is weird. Obviously he didn't want to play for us last season in the Championship. He was in the Germany team and he was trying to make the squad for the Euros in Germany at the end of the season. He was at the playoff final supporting us. It looked like he was expecting to come back with us win or lose having spent almost the whole season at PSV injured and obviously out the Germany squad. Then pre-season starts and Martin doesn't give him a chance. Then Blackmore says he's a bad personality. It's just weird. Perhaps he isn't the best personality, but one of Martin's strengths is supposedly his man-management. Can't the dressing room handle one bad egg and try to set him on the right path? I feel like it has been handled poorly. He should have been starting ahead of Stephens IMO. We have also done a bad job of selling players at the right time in recent years.

£12.8m is so cheap for ABK. He's the same age as THB and has been proven at a higher level than him, both in the Premier League and for Germany. Like Alcaraz, we got great offers for him last summer. I know he has had injury issues, but Hoffenheim must be happy he is through them. This is a bit of a disaster IMO. We should have kept him and started him this season. When fit he is probably our best CB with THB. Not sure what has happened where he is deemed too toxic for the squad as Ralph seemingly liked him, and he wasn't against getting players out the team if they became toxic (Obafemi, Bednarek to Villa etc). Hopefully we have some great clauses in there to get extra money on incentives or a future sale, because he should have been going for around what we bought THB for even with his shoulder issue. We've sold him at half price, which we aren't in a position to do. Could fund O'Reilly though, so not all doom and gloom.

I'm really rooting for him. He was bossing the Championship with Sunderland before his injury. 10G and 3A in 13 games - so a goal contribution per game. He certainly looks capable of the Premier League if we can get him back fit.... Obviously "if" is doing a lot of work there. I don't like how our fanbase has seemingly written him off. He has had one really bad injury that has derailed his career, but didn't have too many before that. Terrible work by our medical, sport science and strength & conditioning teams to have done such a shit job of getting him back from his original injury. They did the same with Livramento. Both got really nasty hamstring injuries when trying to get match fitness back. The club needs to be careful with him. His body composition will be imbalanced and vulnerable to re-injury having been out so long. On face value a loan until January in a lower league would be good, but we need to be in control of his minutes. I think a lot of time building up fitness in the U21s carefully would be best. Not just 1 game then throw him back into the 1st team squad like last time. He needs to be playing 90 minutes for a number of U21 games before he can get onto the pitch in the Premier League IMO. And even then I'd be starting with 5 minute cameos in the PL for quite some time. I really hope he recovers. It must be awful to be injured so long and watching your career slip away. Also, I want him to come good as a £4.5m starting striker in FPL would be incredible for my team.

They had to spend over £40m to bring back two of the players from the playoff final 11, so its not saying as little as you'd like.

I think Charles had a decent season last year, but Martin managed him poorly. Smallbone was clearly far worse than Charles at DM, but Martin would repeatedly put Smallbone there when Downes was out and it would hurt us. With Smallbone starting at DM our record was 1W, 2D and 4L over 7 games in the league. With Charles at DM our record was 3W, 1D, 2L (games where he played >45mins). Martin hooked Charles twice at halftime in the league vs Bristol and Stoke. The Bristol game was where, in my opinion, his misevaluation of both Charles and Smallbone's abilities was most evident: We had a midfield 3 of Charles, Smallbone and Rothwell. We go into the half at 0-0. Martin decides that this is all Charles' fault and hooks him at halftime. Smallbone goes to DM, Stu comes on at CM... we then concede 3 goals in the next 45 minutes ending our unbeaten run. Martin doesn't seem to like Charles because he isn't the passer or metronome that Downes and Smallbone can be, but I think he played well last year when given opportunities. I don't think playing Smallbone at DM was the right call, when Charles consistently performed better in that role. I don't think hooking him at halftime helped his confidence either when both times seemed to have no positive effect on the team. I like Skipp, but in reality he is a very similar player to Charles, just a few years older and a bit ahead of schedule in that regard. They really have the same strengths and weaknesses, so I see no benefit in bringing Skipp in. Charles has had a year in the system and could develop into a better player than Skipp. I think going to Celtic would probably be better for Charles's career, but not for us.

Every year people moan about the last midweek lineup 😂 This is very much the B team of players that are available. The 1st XI will do 90 mins on Saturday giving them a good week of recovery and preparation before NEW. These lads might get an extra behind closed-doors friendly squeezed in around this time next week. A really good test for these guys. They haven't played with each other much at all. Obviously Lazio will also likely be putting out a weakened side, but nevertheless a difficult test for a team that lacks any chemistry. Excited to see BBD.

Because he has been out for so long with significant injuries they have to be incredibly careful with him otherwise other injuries will occur (as it sounds like happened recently). He will not be on the same schedule as a fit player in the middle of the season that has picked up a "little something". Ross has barely played in two years. Personally my issue with our medical team in recent years is that they seem to rush players back too quickly from significant injuries, and then they inevitably get another injury from their body trying to compensate for this imbalance in their strength/flexibility. Ross had an injured ankle, but had a severe hamstring injury when trying to come back to full fitness. Tino had a knee injury, then a hamstring injury when trying to come back to full fitness. Larios has had so many setbacks and complications that I've frankly lost track.

I didn't say fitness was an issue, I said that they were exhausted during the week (and likely before the game) by their strength and conditioning department to a) build very high levels of fitness fast and b) make the match very hard work to replicate the exhaustion felt late in a Premier League match. They won't be doing massive weights and cardio sessions just before Premier League matches, so it really is no comparison. Perhaps the team just have massively regressed since Montpellier, but to my eyes, when players that have only played 30 minutes look shattered, its because they are in the middle of an extremely intense fitness schedule.

I'm pretty sure I watched an interview with Martin where he suggested the players were going to be fatigued for these two games. That made sense to me as it was otherwise weird to drop the level of competition from Ligue 1 sides down to League One and Championship, when building up for the season. But, clearly tonight they were looking fatigued. I'm assuming the scheduled late kick-off was to give them time to do a serious fitness session at Staplewood before the game. I didn't realise teams did this until I saw the England Rugby team talking about it in the build-up to the World Cup. They were absolutely awful in their pre-World Cup friendlies - including losing to Fiji for their first time ever - but they had been doing enormous fitness sessions throughout the whole process, then come the World Cup they were one of the fittest teams, played really well coming 3rd. Anyway, one would hope that Saints would perform better despite being massively fatigued, but I suspect that there isn't really much to read into these two games and that more of a sense might be found from the games next week. Who knows, we don't know their training schedule, but to me, they looked exhausted pretty much throughout the game. There were mental mistakes and huge amounts of space for Oxford to exploit throughout, which tends to only happen to exhausted teams at the end of games (or to a Hassenhuttl team after minute 60 lol). Or perhaps we have regressed to a league two level in a week. Who knows.

He got 6 goals and 3 assists for us in the league last season after getting 0G and 0A the season before. How have you not seen an improvement? Edozie is developing well. He is only 21. Tella was 23 when he moved to Burnley and scored his first ever goal in the league. You need to adjust your expectations. No-one is saying that Edozie is the next Saka, but considering he is only 21 and that he only cost £5m, he is both developing well and performing at expectations for his cost.

What about Harrison Miles? Very concerning if the club can't hold onto Miles or Gomes-Rodriguez.

These are just the estimated wages by capology based on last years financials while we were in the Prem. This is without applying the 40% wage reduction clause that all our contracts reportedly had. They will correct them when the financial report comes out. It is also assuming that loan players are having their complete salary paid for - which is not true. Essentially, this is an estimate of what our wage bill would have been had we lost all the players we did this summer (transfer and loan) but remained in the Premier League. Leicester reportedly didn't have many reduction clauses as they had been playing in Europe, so their figures could be close, but likely still high. Leeds had massive clauses (reportedly up to 60% for some). That was why they lost so many players to loans this summer, because players would only accept the relegation wage reduction clause if they could get a loan clause inserted upon relegation as well. I'm fairly sure that the positions on the table will be accurate, but the difference in wages between us and the other recently relegated teams (like Norwich) won't be as vast as it is projected to be here.

This is a very quick over-reaction. In short, we have an excellent squad for this level that is good enough to win the title, but it will take time for them to gel after the massive overhaul. My biggest concern would be with Martin, rather than the squad. In terms of outgoings, we got excellent fees for our players and weren't forced into discounts like Leicester had for Maddison and Barnes, or horrendous clauses that Leeds had that have essentially lost them almost all the players they bought while in the Premier League for about £20m total. The money we received for players was probably the same as had we stayed in the league. This will be beneficial if we don't manage to make promotion this year. In terms of incomings, Charles aside - who I think has been very good, they were all players who have proven that they can play at this level or higher in the correct circumstances. Downes had an excellent game against QPR, so it would be ridiculous to completely right him off after his game against Sunderland. Others have had less time in the building. Manning is certainly suffering from the chaotic nature of defending in this system, but he has looked defensively suspect. He is the only one I'm concerned about, but I'm confident in Bree, Holgate and even Larios playing well in the Championship at LB/RB if Manning needs to be benched. We have assembled an excellent squad for this level. That isn't particularly a surprise when we have such an enormous budget compared to non-parachute payment teams. Football tends to be predictable in every league - the teams with the most money win. Personally, I believe that it is us and Leicester with the two best squads. In my view, Martin has been given everything he needs. For this level, he can field a great starting XI and has incredible depth. If he can't get the job done, then that's on him. It won't be easy as other teams aren't having to go through the massive squad overhaul and drastic system changes that the three relegated clubs are. I will stick to my preseason assessment that all three of Leeds, Leicester and Southampton will start hitting form mid-October.

He had a poor preseason but has been OK in the actual games before today. Honestly felt the defence had let him down and he had conceded some excellent finishes. It was obvious that RM was going to like him as he is very good at doing the things a keeper can to stop shots in the first place (good with the ball, off his line and collecting crosses) and his shot stopping had been OK before today. However, very poor so far today. Looks extremely lacking in confidence, especially in that parry on the freekick. He looks like he did at his worst last season again. Seems to be a young player that needs confidence, but he doesn't have any. I assume RM will believe the solution is to stick with him and build his confidence.

Patrick Roberts seems an incredibly underwhelming Tella replacement. Imperative we keep Sulemana as we should have enough quality out wide with him, Edozie and Fraser regardless. I'm sure he'd be fine, but its incredibly annoying that we could have got Piroe, who played there a lot for Swansea, if the Tella deal had got done quicker. A front 3 of (assuming Adams goes) Stewart, Piroe and Sulemana would have been fantastic. I know I'm in the minority, but I believe letting Mara go would be a mistake. I thought he looked good against QPR off the bench. His physicality, like Adams, is necessary in that role. I would have been comfortable with Stewart and Mara as our no.1 and no.2 assuming Adams goes. Fans forget that Mara was only 20 years old last season and it was a big step up from Ligue 1. I think he would be good in the Championship and should be a player we try and hold onto. He is built like a no.9 for this system and there aren't enough players like that around.

He said on his post-match podcast on the weekend that they both had interest over the summer, among others. I'm assuming it was teams hoping they'd get a bargain off us, but we haven't been doing that. He's probably just mentioning them because they are players we all expected to go and there is the possibility that one of them does get a late move, as the interest is there (and others who had interest, such as Stephens and Smallbone, have committed to the club).

This is just a delayed payment strategy. It makes no sense any other way. He extends his contract, we let him go on loan and then there is an obligation to buy at the end of the season. I'm sure Watford and their journalists are hoping its an option, but it won't be at that price. The only reason he is worth only £15m is because he only has 1 year left on his contract. Why would we give them the option to buy him at that reduced price if he extends, thereby having multiple years left on his contract and a higher value? If he's going, he isn't coming back.

Because that's how football clubs run their books. If you want a better answer as to why, I'm sure there will be an accountant here that can tell you. I assume that when you own an asset you can spread the cost over the length of the contract, but when you sell one it has to go down as immediate income that year. This is why Chelsea have spent £1bn in 3 transfer windows, sold around £275m worth of players but are fine under FFP (i.e won't make a £105m loss over any 3 year period). That £1bn is being spread over ridiculously long contracts whereas the sales are immediately available to offset that.

Yes, I missed out the step for those players. To be clear, I was just doing a rough estimation to show how easily we are in the profit. That would now have us at £50m on the books, and I was being pessimistic with my estimated numbers. One could very easily work out exactly where we are based on the old accounts, the known 40% drop in wages, the fees paid for players, the amortised costs and the losses experienced by other relegated teams that can all be calculated based on information here and here. But I can't be bothered to be that precise. Just wanted to disprove the narrative that we can't buy anyone because we don't have money. We aren't buying anyone because we are choosing not to where possible.

Lots of rumblings about the money that should be spent or whether it can be spent. On whether it should be, I wrote another post detailing why I personally believe this is a conscious strategy to save money now to spend more when promoted. I believe I first got the impression of this by a comment made by Blackmore, so I assume he has had conversations on the topic with those inside Staplewood. Link here. In short, they aren't wasting transfer money on Champioship players and instead are saving in for when we are promoted. As for whether it can be, this is a great website for football finances as it goes through all the accounts. It sounds obvious but we have loads of money available. Yes we have been relegated, but with the parachute payments that comes to about -£50m in TV revenue lost from the previous year. Some sponsorships will drop slightly, but the TV revenue will be the main drop of income plus perhaps an extra -£10m if being extremely pessimistic. On the books, we will be very profitable this year. Even though we spent £130m last season that cost is amortised over the duration of the contracts for the players we bought. So that would have only been an extra (approximately) £30m paid per year over 4 years had we kept all those players (I'm just averaging out at 4 year contracts here for simplicity). But the players we sold will go down as immediate income. We have brought in £150m from player sales this summer. Factoring in that our players have taken a 40% wage reduction due to relegation clauses (as confirmed by Semmens years ago and journalists this summer) and have lost most of our highest earners. From our approximately £60m wage bill last season we will be saving approximately £24m. In terms of total personnel cost savings (including bonuses etc I expect and perhaps other staff) most relegated clubs save far more than that (Norwich saved approx £50m). Under Gao we were almost breaking even (approx -£10m per year). Being very pessimistic, we shall say we have lost £60m in income from relegation and we are paying an extra £30m for the players we bought last summer (I'm not even going to minus the ones we already sold). That puts us at -£90m. We have saved a minimum of £24m on personnel (honestly could be double) and made £150m in sales. Using our previous seasons as a reference then : -10-60-30+24+150.... which would make us at minimum £74m in profit for this season. In real cash terms it will be a different story, but there are plenty of ways of deferring payments (loans+obligations to buy). Just as our outgoings are paid in instalments over 1-3 years, so are our incomings. The club might be very honest about not having large amounts of cash available to sign many players (as my previous post said - I suspect they don't want to waste money on Championship players), but they absolutely could work around that if they wanted to as they will be very profitable by the year's end. For reference, when Fulham went down they made £12m in sales and just took the £60m loss on their accounts to go back up (having lost £100m the year before). Anyone saying we don't have the money to spend is lying. We may not have the cash this moment, but that can be worked around. We are in an extremely healthy position. Anyone saying we are at risk under FFP is lying. You can lose over £100m over a 3 year period while in the Premier League, we likely exceeded that last season but have more than made up for it this year. In previous Gao years we were at worst losing around £10m per year. Sport Republic invested into the club, they don't need or intend to take that money out. I suspect they will make a profit on the £130m they spent on players last year having made almost half of it back on just one player already. I'm fairly certain I read that they also paid off our loan debt just after acquiring the club.

Sorry to lump these all together. This will be long, but I'm just going to type out my thoughts on these points and not bother going through the effort of trimming it down: The club will have expected approximately half the transfers to not work, because that is the hit-rate for Premier League transfers (explained well by the ex-Liverpool Director of Research here). Regardless, I think in that portfolio of 13 players we bought last year that we will end up making a large profit. I think people forget just how cheap most of those signings were. The profit we have made from Lavia (after factoring in the sell-on clause) is approximately £34m. DCC and Orsic have already been unloaded for a loss of approximately £5m. With Sulemana, ABK and Alcaraz also getting interest for large profits and most others expected to be large contributors this season, I think those 13 (as a collective) will bring the club good money and service on the pitch. On the second part, there will not be that much losses this season. We will be looking very healthy for the financial year and FFP. Relegation (with the parachute payment) is essentially a £50m loss to TV revenue, plus a bit of sponsorship. We had the 40% wage reduction and have lost some high earners, so we have probably halved our £60m wage budget. Remember, we basically ran at breakeven under Gao, so we have plenty of room to make losses. Leicester have far higher costs than us and haven't needed to make the same amount of sales. Leeds have spent far more than us over the last three years and are accepting losing half of their squad for nothing. I don't believe we need to make back the money spent last summer, we have plenty of room to make losses (which is why they were happy to spend it). FFP has changed this. We were able to build a great squad in League One because we were paying huge wages to attract the players. The gap between the Premier League and Championship is exponentially larger now. We will want players that are at that level. They can gain cohesion in the first few months of the campaign (but generally speaking, good players don't need a huge amount of time). I'd rather not spend almost £20m on Coady and Winks, for example, when we can get similar players on loan. Kind of proving my point as they had a squad full of Championship players, invested massively and still almost went down. You want players of a higher quality if possible. I agree, I'd rather we kept our players. The more good Premier League quality players you keep, the better your chances of going straight back up. It seems that the club don't want to stand in the way of players getting good moves though. Out of the players I would have wanted to keep, only Salisu isn't going to a club playing in the Champions League or Europa League - but Monaco aren't exactly a small team. It's a risky strategy due to the finances. We have a young team, and a huge amount of cash in the bank. If necessary we could make up those finances and fund another push next year (when the Championship will be much easier to win). It is absolutely better to win now, and the team is clearly one that should compete to win the league, but we haven't put all our eggs in one basket. If Leicester don't go up this year, it could be a very long time until they do. I did not say that, I said for the next 3 years - that is including this season. The club clearly are fully committed to getting promoted now and certainly have far more players that they could sell (and have tried to hold onto others that have left). My point was that if we don't get promoted this year, in the strongest Championship there has possibly ever been, then we are in a very good position to go again next year (when it will be one of the weakest we have ever seen). Leeds, and Leicester especially, are not currently in a position to sustain multiple attempts if necessary. What I meant by Leicester being all-in is that they have gambled on this one year. They have enormous wages (no wage reduction) and costs from their facilities. If they don't go up this year, they could go into administration. They have also spent a lot of money on buying players that have proven not to be good enough for the Premier League (Winks, Coady). They are in serious trouble if they don't go up this year. Don't let Leicester's wins fool you, they have been incredibly lucky to win any of their games (should have been 4-0 down to Coventry by halftime). I'm not convinced they are going to walk the league.