hypochondriac

That may well be the case. Just frustrating that the main advantage we had over our slow start last year was that we had a more settled squad and a better chance to settle in with a winning mentality. That's not really going to be the case if we lose a load of players at the last minute and replace them all with players who haven't been here over preseason. I know it can't be helped but as you say it's frustrating.

Yes I get that. My point is that if we have rather limited funds and if we deemed it likely that we would be selling some big names like THB we'd have been better strengthening a real area of weakness such as cb rather than spending what appears to be a large chunk of our budget having two top players in that one position. If we have less monetary resources than we thought then I'd have thought we'd prioritise other areas of the pitch. With an inform Azaz Dobbin becomes a nice option to have rather than something more vital.

I think if you ignore the pr stuff from the club, players would obviously be very pissed off with the situation and maybe there was more private unrest or requests to leave than we know about. Publically it's been all united and going for automatics but if what Pilchards says is correct and they all want out then I don't see how it can be as united as is claimed.

Was always likely to be the case. The club have played the pr game well though. Getting Larin and Peretz signed early and then the interview with Solak and not selling players till near the end of the window has raised hopes of fans that we were going all out for promotion. Maybe that will still be the case but I don't like the noises.

Agreed. I find the signing of Dobbin for the amount we paid odd if it means we are substantially weaker at cb.

Good opportunity to put things right next Saturday as we lost to stoke at home last year.

Not entirely his fault but a pretty crap start for this lad it has to be said. Obviously only two games so far and plenty of time to come good but at present nowhere near Azaz and hasn't done much in terms of being an attacking threat either.

Agreed. Had we played to our ability then we would have won. No evidence they were a superior team to us. That first half was unacceptable.

Looks like Dragan will be keeping his promise. At this rate I'll be up off my seat because I'll have left to go to the pub instead.

Well that's ruined my Sunday. I'm off to do something else.

Watford aren't even a good team. We haven't got going at all.

Christ that was shite.

Ffs. Should be some retrospective action taken for terrible dirty challenges that injure players.

Edit wrong thread!

Great lineup. Dobbin starts as suspected. Great to see Matsuki on the wing and not the middle and to see Bragg starting.

He's charged with not acting on good faith. Some element of the mitigation would be that he hasn't directly pressured anyone to spy and it looks like he was a level removed from the actual logistics of this whole thing I.e. He wasn't the mastermind.

Probably not but I don't know his family situation. You could have said the same about Bowen for instance.

This may all be irrelevant as he may wish to go regardless but I'd at least be making the offer of him being on pitch captain, making him our highest paid player and then making it clear that he can leave with our blessing next year if we fail to win promotion.

Gameday! Comfortable win today please and then we can all concentrate on that rather than anything else.

If you're the person who directly pressured and bullied salt (and they had things like text messages to prove that) you're obviously going to be treated differently than if you weren't aware that something like that was going on even if you'd authorised the spying in the first place.

It does if the narrative at certain points was about bullying and how he was pressuring people to spy for him against his will. If instead he asked someone from the club to go and get the info via spying and then others in the club took it and ran with it that's something rather different and I suspect would be viewed less harshly.

Do you have evidence for this? That's quite a big revelation if true that I wasn't aware of if 100% of our parachute payments are going on servicing covid loans.

It is but it would certainly be viewed as deceptive if we did sell all four at this stage given the impression it leaves.

Instinctively I don't believe this. If it were true and I were West ham I'd be bidding 25 million immediately and absolutely pissing the league. I don't think we'd sell him that low.

It's a pointless thing to post. Very obviously we will have to wait until the end of the window to see what signings we make. If we do sell the remaining three big players at this point though (not saying we will) then we will still be significantly disadvantaged by the fact that we will have to bed in a load of new players when having a fast start is more imperative than ever.