The Kraken

Why not? Even is he doesn't leave Brizzle it could happen.

With AOC the club have known he was going since Xmas. Christ, even I knew it was a fact he was going to Arsenal back in March (although the usual suspects shouted me and others down about it at the time....). So they've had 6 months to prepare for exactly what they need to replace him and strengthen the squad. Good work all round and well done NC and NA. Now get on with it and get the other two on the bus, pronto!

Good news. I wasn't too surprised about this one though. I could be mistaken, but i believe that Morgan is now considered a home grown player with us, as he's spent 3 years here before his 21st (he turned 21 last November but I'm sure that season counts). As a consquence we would have been entitled to a development fee for him if he had left when his contract expired., so it's in his interests to presumably get himself on better wages for at least a season then see what happens. I'm sure MLG will be along soon to correct me on that, but that's the way I read it.

Sorry, couldn't resist it. Agree about the CB, Seaborne just isn't there for me. Martin is ok as cover but againts top strikers will get found out at times. And it seems as if old age has caught up with big Radhi. If someone like Gorkss and (as is still being rumoured) Maynard were to arrive, well that would be as close to a brilliant summer transfer window as you'd realistically hope for.

Probably would have been more accurate listening to what Exeter fans were saying about him

Very much agree. NA has already said that other deals were in place before Chamberlain going, so hopefully there is still room for a CB and CF. Mills was looking like going to Preston at one point wasn't he? I'm sure his days here are numbered.

Agree with you, not sure I'd have prioritised LB over the other two poisitions. But then NA did comment that there were deals still in place, so maybe the first of two or three. Fourth Official on twitter is still saying Maynard is on his way, I just would really like to see a Jaidi-type replacement to play alongside Fonte. i think Dickson's days are numbered; couldn't displace Harding last term, hasn't looked all that sharp this season. Now third in line, and with Ben Reeves also coming through.

Can't see Dickson getting much of a go this year, he failed to displace Harding last year. Not sure that I'd have prioritised a new left back, but I'm sure NA knows what's doing....

Nah, has to be incoming, they'd never talk up a departure like that.

Hasn't he been banging on about this for a while now?! The bloody tease.

FloridaMarlin, can't fault the effort!! I'm not sure if I agree with you though. You seem to be suggesting that the motive of the clubs is to restrict access to only club websites that can give out score information etc. Which is a similar motive to what SFC tried to do with the photo thing. I really don't think that's the issue here. i think the clubs are all saying that any website will still be free to post the information they currently provide, with no form of censorship or otherwise. It's just that a hefty charge will now be incurred. Your concerns are all perfectly valid, I just don't see that they're entirely relevant in this particular situation.

I was going to debate the matter, then you come out with the unnecessary Lowe comment, which is neither true nor realistic. You put your dummy back in and we'll choose to ignore each other. You offer nothing but ignorance and childish idiocy.

Unfortunately there are a minority of people like that on here; I'll thank you for not insulting my intelligence or willingness for rational debate by ranking me alongside them. Its a cheap and ignorant shot.

There is that argument. All publicity is good publicity, and all that. I think this is more an exercise in control. In itself, the fixture list publication fee that I mentioned is utterly ridiculous. That you can't publish a list of teams next to a list of other teams without having to pay a huge amount of money is just a laughable idea. Yet there it is, in law. This is just the very next step along those lines, making all websites etc have to pay for publishing live scores or any information from the grounds. If it passes you can expect massive crackdowns on individuals and websites reporting from matches. Not a good thing. As for your second paragraph, all I'll say is that it smacks of censorship, and is the potential start of an erosion of free press. At least with this current situation, there are no potential censorship issues, it's just making various news outlets pay up for the privilege of distributing their own content.

F*ck off telling me who to support you clown! You're so clueless, do you really have to resort to making things up?! As I've said, please feel free to identify where I continually slag him off. Unlike you seem to be, I am capable of being very grateful and complimentary about the many things Mr Cortese has done for our club. He has made some mistakes, but they are far outweighed IMO by the good things he has and continues to do. You are clearly an idiot if you can't or won't do something similar, or indeed recognise it in others. Go and support someone else. Are you 10 years old?

Please feel free to identify my negativity towards all those factors. I suggest you grow up a little if you're incapable of entering into a debate without throwing your toys out of the pram and polarising everyone into a pro-Cortese or anti-Cortese camp, which is a ridiculous notion in itself.

The "free content" motive, yes. That's where the motive is similar I agree. The methods though are vastly different. The clubs are not looking to restrict incoming photographers such that only medium that is allowed out is one that is effectively controlled by the club. That's what Mr Cortese was trying to do, no other photographers were to be allowed in oher than ones employed by the club. The current situation seems to be almost an extension of the rule whereby you have to pay to be able to reproduce the fixture lists etc. There's no restriction on who can access the ground and publish the information, the clubs just seem to want to extract a fair charge for it.

You are aware that, while there are some similarities with the motives, there are massive differences between what Cortese was trying to achieve and what the clubs are trying to achieve this time round? Right?

Oh dear. You really don't know too much, do you?

What a ridiculous statement. Wilde gambled all the family silver on getting back to the Premier League. That failed. We all know what a crippling, financial mess that left us in. Lowe then went on to make further mistakes with the appointment of the Dutch duo, but while his actual methods were flawed many could see that, given our state at the time, we didn't have too many other choices than to make huge financial cuts. As for your statement "at least he tried, and gave us hope", well I find that remarkable. Peter Ridsdale has tried at a couple of clubs; he's overspent and they've almost gone to the wall. Peter Storrie tried, and gave Pompey hope for a while. Does that make them good chairmen? No, it doesn't. Lowe did quite a few good things for this club He also made some very, very poor errors in judgement. But he always had a plan to keep the club on the financial straight and narrow. Wilde and his lot spent money they didn't have chasing a footballing dream, then woke up to a financial nightmare of their own creation.

Thurrocking good news.

John, its a detailed response, that's for sure! But I don't agree with you though that AOC's move is purely about money. It's a factor I'm sure, but I'm sure he's done it for footballing reasons primarily. I think it's primarily the way he's gone about engineering a move which has stuck in people's throats, rather than the actual move. First of all, you say that you've always seen out a job. You could argue that Chamberlain has done the same. He wanted to leave at Xmas, talked to the club about a move and was convinced to wait until the summer. So he's done that, he hasn't left us in the lurch, the club knew he wanted to leave, assumed he would, and had 6 months to plan for that eventuality. He's now moved to a club a league above us. We're 2 years into a 5 year plan to get to that league. So, judging by that plan, he could have just accelerated his progression to the top league by 3 years. Take Walcott as an example, there's plenty of parallels between the two. In Walcott's first full season with Arsenal he played in more than 30 games. If AOC gets that many appearances then he'll have learnt a massive amount from playing at Premier League and Champions League level. Not to mention the huge benefit he'll gain from working with Wenger and alongside the quality international players in Arsenal's squad. Also, look at Walcott. After signing for Arsenal, and without actually playing a game for their first team, he was called up for England and taken to a world cup. His exposure will be massively increased at a club like Arsenal and, whether you look at it rightly or wrongly, he's probably just accelerated his progression to the national team (Tom Cleverley is a point in case, not really noticed while out on loan but returns to Man U, plays 45 minutes in teh Communit Shield and gets called up for England). So there's a huge number of footballing reasons to take into account before you get to the obvious financial benefits he'll see from the move.

Darren Bent, Charlton to Spurs, £16.5M. Technically speaking though, Bent wasn't really a Championship player. Charlton had just been relegated from the Premier League and Bent went in the summer before the Championship kicked off. But then you could apply that logic to Chamberlain being a League 1 player and not Championship. So it's perhaps better described as a transfer from a Championship club. Semantics really.

Despite evidence to the contrary in the form of club accounts, I think some people still do, yes.