goodymatt

Small sample size indeed, but both new signings look to be encouraging so far. Quarshie looks a starter already, which for £3m looks great value. Downs we need to see more of but a great finish today. imagine if Edwards and Quarshie end up being our starting partnership, only £6m combined!

Is this because Alfie 100% expects him to leave this summer? Alfie did make comments about David Brooks wanting to move up north to be near family, which nobody else reported. Struggling to see what else has been written about Ramsdale or his close friends.

Yes, that’s correct. I had to settle for the Kingsland near the away fans but would also have preferred a Northam ticket. Assume we can’t transfer seats once they open up the exchange?

You do you @gio1saints, think I’ll just stick to ‘Quarshie’ or ‘Joshua’. It is an encouraging interview, saying the right things and has the raw attributes we were missing. Will be interesting to see how many minutes he gets this season, we have A LOT of options at present.

I understand that we do have an option to extend his contract by another year. Not sure we should take up that option, unless we were to arrange a loan with wages covered and hope his stock rises to sell next summer. Having tried that with PSV and his stock actually drop, I’d just get what we can and move on.

Can’t agree with this, GK was by far our weakest position. For 2 seasons running we had statistically the worst starting goalkeeper. Signing Ramsdale for £18m wasn’t the mistake, not signing another 4 or 5 players of that proven PL quality was.

The only concern is playing to the strengths of these players to get such returns. They all need us to play quite differently I think. I don’t think we can play with 2 inside forwards and a CF for example, it lacks the creativity and we are seeing a real lack of connection across the front 3 or 4 in preseason so far. I appreciate Still is a flexible manager but we do need to have a default formation/style and I’m not sure I see one that plays to the strengths of all of these players. We might be better suited deciding who we are going to back and playing to their strengths, then looking to move on those that don’t fit, allowing us to bring in new players that do. It’s a real headache as we don’t want to be strengthening rivals or losing proven goalscoring but on the other hand we need to see a front line that can be effective together.

Ramsdale was £18m plus add ons, I assume no add ons were met given how the season went. Wages I think were £120k/week in the PL. You’d hope he’s currently on the 40% relegation wage reduction but some press reports have suggested we are willing to pay him £100k/week to keep him. Personally think this was a decent signing for a fair fee, it’s just a shame other than Matty Fernandes, that we didn’t sign any other new players up to the PL challenge. I think Bazunu cost us £12m for reference.

We’ve been comfortably second best. Not really had a phase of play where we have controlled the game. Not very encouraging.

Bazunu making some great saves, that’s 2 worldies and 1 solid save now.

Looks so much more accomplished, his loan has done him no harm at all.

Great save Bazunu tbf

Daily Echo reckon Edwards at RB, guess it’s just about fitness mins for him having just come back. Might suggest Stephens and Quarshie are currently front runners to start vs Wrexham?

Matsuki might end up on loan elsewhere. THB obviously not fit to travel but could leave. Dibling we also will struggle to keep. Flynn missing is the one that really stands out as a problem for us, I hope his injury isn’t a bad one! We need him fit and ready for the season in 19 days.

I think that’s the only clear message here. He must 100% be going, which isn’t a surprise with his release clause.

So no THB, Downes, Dibling or Matsuki - all of which had reported injuries.

11am flight this morning, I believe.

Looked like Ederson had been interested in a move to Saudi last couple of windows, now Turkey this window. Seems to be chasing one last pay day. For City he has 1 year left but €3m is crazy cheap for Ederson.

He really does have previous for this. How many times did we hear about random fans he bumped into walking around the area telling him that they fully supported his philosophy and understood what he was doing. I’m sure it’s a coincidence that it was SAF’s first visit to their training ground, rather than it being out of huge support for Russell Martin. Pretty cool for Russ though to have some conversations with a manager that achieved it all.

Decent signings, you can see the gap in ambition between them and Birmingham though. I don’t expect Wrexham to be challenging for playoffs.

Always beat us to players 😂, this one we can live with being a former skate.

I live up north so only manage a couple of home games a season. Usually do 8-10 aways a season on a membership. I’m fine with season ticket holders having preference, they attend more games total so that’s fair. What I did notice last season was some games that always went to membership the whole time I’ve been going, sold out to ST holders. So I missed out on Wolves and City away tickets but then managed to buy some from fans who bought to sell on… What wasn’t fair was the League cup final where I had 12 games total, 2 home and 10 away (including the away semi final - what a night!), but members with just any 3 home games got preference. In no world was that fair, I did get a ticket when they released an extra small allocation but I was really annoyed when I initially missed out. Not had that problem since, think the club realised it was stupid. Last time out in the championship as a member I did miss out on Birmingham and Leeds aways. I’m sure there will be some midlands/northern ones that don’t make it again, still worth having the membership though IMO.