StrangelyBrown

Oh yes we have... We've tried to sign hidden gems from Man City and Chelsea's academy with mixed success, hidden gems from mediocre European teams with little success, half decent championship players for the premier league with next to no success, loans of formerly good premier league players... We've had a number of failed strategies and as a result there have been far far more misses than hits.

This. We need to sign some quality in some really key positions. Dragan promised some of them, but so far what have the team delivered??? A young CB who might be good and a young CF who might be good... So many years of trying to be cleverer than everyone else has resulted in a bloated mediocre team, we seriously need to stop speculating on footballs equivalent of penny shares hoping to accidentally invest in a unicorn.

3rd in a 2 horse race seems more realistic for Russ

I'm the scenario where Still sticks with the new keeper it renders the loan completely pointless - from my perspective we should either keep or sell. So either: - we stick with Baz and McCarthy and hope that miraculously they've improved - We get someone new and discard them in a year and have Ramsdale back - probably a waste of money - We get someone new and Ramsdale ends up not being number 1 and we end up selling him One way or another it just doesn't strike me as a good deal for us.

I can't help but think that it will make bringing a replacement in more difficult - I wonder what decent keeper is going to want to come here knowing that if all goes well in a seasons time they will lose their place to Ramsdale? Which to me suggests the club are thinking Baz and McCarthy are good enough for the championship.

Agreed. Same with WGS - we seemed to be fitter than every other team and punched way above our weight as a consequence

Which poses the question why on earth did they already extend jack Stephens' contract?

What about Will Smallbone? Will, yes you can jog about a bit doing not a lot? 😄

Hopefully if the club suspect players will be going they will be moving mountains to line up replacements rather than leaving it all to the last minute

I agree with most of this but I'm not sure he's got a good engine - he looks like he's blowing within a small number of minutes and can't keep up with the pace of the game. It's actually one of the things I've been most surprised with as an athlete with his build ought to be able to keep running and running.

It's exactly that reason why I'd like Stephens to move on - id love it if it forwards played against him

Please tell me what you see in him as a footballer - I genuinely couldn't find anything other than you waffling on about character and experience?

So purely based on character and being a good guy to have around? What utter nonsense

What is it that you think is great about Stephens? He ball watches, he's poor at heading the ball, not particularly great at distributing it, frequently loses concentration, loses his head and gets himself into trouble and is a consistent part of our failures... Even in the championship he was bang average.

100% this. Edozie might have "no end product", but he at least has something about him and the potential to improve. BBD doesnt seem to have anything about him - woeful touch, poor positioning, slow, poor shooting - his 2 good scoring seasons seem completley out of kilter with his footballing abilities.

Would be an awful signing unless it was to help train our physios.

There seemed to be plenty of games where Archer made really decent runs that no one in the team seemed able to spot. This seemed to happen early on in the game and then his head dropped and he stopped doing anything much and became a waste of a shirt. My view is we simply weren't set up to make the most of his talents. Whether that changes this season remains to be seen, but I hope he gets paired with a centre forward who can hold the ball up (either as part of a 2 or 3 up top). Then I think we'll find out if he's any good or not.

I can't work out if you are being sarcastic, contrary or if you genuinely think that?

I'm really worried about this - it can only be fixed with snake oil

We also had Tijuana Tim super soccerball fan

Seems like a strategy we've already tried and failed with - BBD, Armstrong, THB, Downes, Bree, Manning, Archer, Wood - all not good enough. If we sign players they'll be on 3 year contracts minimum so if they're not good enough we'll be stuck with them. Discarding immediately if we go up just isn't going to happen meaning we're left with a squad of deadwood which has been our problem for some time. Taking a punt on lesser known young players from a minor foreign league who might be able to make a step up is also flawed too - the only recent success that comes to mind is Fernandes. Im beginning to think that the only way to stay up is to do a Forest and break the FFP rules keep a lean squad in the championship and then recruit like mad in the Premier League and take a hit on a points deduction.

Paul Telfer - the most bang average footballer of all time

It's not a proper transfer thread in my book until someone asks if we've signed Rudi Skacel yet

Buy one get one free???

Perhaps Russ is more interesting than the absolute nothing that is going on with us at the moment?