egg

So we played well, Sterling wound them up, there may have made some monkey chants from a section of the crowd, and the knee booing is again deemed racist. Got it. The highlights are now on ITV game so I'll check it out. Cheers 👍

Tiny

I didn't see the game and popped on this thread. Completely dominated by the racist / not racist bollox we've had time and time again. If sections of the crowd are making monkey chants, sections of the crowd are racist - it's pretty fucking obvious. I've no idea how we played though, sadly.

Shame to see that you've reverted to troll mode. But yep, expecting an established international player to join and sit on the bench, is unrealistic. He'd have wanted assurances that he'd play and I don't think he'd have got in ahead of Romeu.

Innings

Yep, everyone says "get him in" but they forget he's got to want to come here. He's an established international and I can't imagine that he'd want to come and sit on our bench getting the odd cup game here and there.

I suspect he's on massive wages. Good player though.

In truth we don't know what we've received or spent. It may be that the wage savings gave us wriggle room. Personally, I think we needed a DM and not getting one has left is short.

That £10m will likely have gone on loyalty fees on outgoing players, signing on fees and agents fees. And before any smart arses pipe up that other clubs have those fees blah blah, we ain't other clubs, and didn't have another £10m lying around to pay those fees. In truth it's a break even ish window.

Bless.

Indeed. I was surprised to see Danny Drinkwater end up at Reading. Unless he's gone right downhill, I'd have thought he'd have given us a bit of no how and leadership.

Good. We're skint and needed to refresh our squad, shift players off the wage bill, and not spend money that we don't have. We've done well. PS. That graphic is bollox. The net spend wasn't - £25m.

Very good point. They were our proper itk's, although Appy seems to know some stuff too.

Expecting us to sign an upgrade on Stephens, as well as a Vestergaard replacement, is as unrealistic as expecting us or sign another keeper. We have Stephens, Bednarek and Salisu under contract. We've signed 1 to replace 1 in the squad. As lovely as it'd be to replace all our average players with better, it's unrealistic. You know that.

Hopefully so. We need more bodies, and quality, in CM. Instinct is that we'll do something.

Same here. I guess the issue is getting a starter on our budget is difficult, and getting someone half decent willing to be 4th pick equally so.

So a Bednarek or Stephens replacement. Completely unrealistic. As the club have said, Salisu replaces Vestergaard in the team, and Lyanco has replaced Salisu in the squad.

Dunno what happened with that lad, but he was brilliant once. A proper Premier league player. Massive fall from grace.

So you expected Vestergaard replacement to replace him and Stephens? One man to replace two doesn't work.

Yep, seems odd to delay it. It went through my mind that they may want to tie it up with another announcement but its hard to see what.

That was a monumental fuck up. Some heads should roll for that.

I think there's a few issues. We don't know what the initial fees received were (ie without add ons) and can't be sure on outlay. If your figures are right though and we've paid say 10% out from the sales as loyalty bonuses, paid from the fees, that drops receipts to about £45m. If we've paid 10% from the receipts on top of incoming fees on signing on fees, that increases them to about £32m. That leaves £13m...if we pay say £3m in agents fees from that, we've still got you're £10m left over...maybe something will happen. EDIT Just see your post about Armstrong...there's the money gone.

He'll have to want to sign it, unless we have an option. If he wants regular football, he'll need to move on. I think there's a really good player in there, but I just can't see it happening for him here. He needs a good season at a decent championship club to kick start his career.

Shambles

Gotta disagree with you. Our goalkeepers are our biggest weak like by a distance. The decision to give McCarthy a new contract was mind boggling.