S-Clarke

I think a lot of the pessimism here is our lack of faith in recruitment. It may be that £15m is a good deal, but the faith people have in the clubs ability to replace that player like it's a doddle worries me. We could quite easily lose Che for £15m, pat ourselves on the back, and end up in a deadline day loop like last year where we fail to get any of our targets. I personally think we're hitting the point where first team sales need to stop, as we simply won't have time to adequately replace. If we had faith in our setup to find the 'next' Adams or a better Adams I doubt there'd be as much pessimism, but we're heading into a bit of an unknown with no midfield and no proven strikers which is quite a horrific place to be in 3 weeks into the season.

Fair if you're a PNE or a Bristol City for example, but as others have said we have just made over £100m in player sales. If he walks for free next summer he walks for free, that's just a risk we can now afford to take given the money we've brought in.

I guess it's a no brainer if we look at it in a pure financial sense, but if I'm honest with you....I'm a football fan, I want to watch football and see the best players. I'm bored with the back slapping around how much money we make, look at us etc. Who cares! I just want a team I can support, and players on the pitch is more fun for me than knowing the club has money in the bank. It's really not for us to worry about tbh. I just want the club to build us a team we can all connect to, like the Lambo years. We were a different breed back then, I'm sure Lallana, Morgan and co had offers to leave - but we didn't negotiate with any club and the rest was history. Sometimes you just need to shut the door and focus on football, not the money. (it's not like we're skint)

This was always the mega gamble/risk of trying to play hardball and keeping players until this late, in my opinion there comes a line where it's too late to sell and I think we're just about to hit that line - as like you say, clubs will see us as being flush with cash and they'll stick extra $$$ on the end of everything. Saints being Saints will never overspend, always doing it on our terms etc etc etc, which will mean we'll end up with diddly squat.

That's my view on it. I can totally understand Tino, JWP, Lavia moving on - they're going to clubs who will be in Europe and compete well in the PL, so it's a good opportunity for them. To move to Everton for someone like Che, who is so confidence driven, is totally the wrong call for him. He's spent many years with us circling the drain and losing games of football, he should listen to Martin who said that actually a year in the Championship can be more fun/more rewarding than losing every week in the league above. If he does well he can either negotiate a better contract with us, or have the pick of better clubs in the PL. Jumping to Everton now, which is toxic to say the least, is a very daft move. PL or not, he'll be losing every week and probably end up being berated by the fans for not scoring - doesn't sound like much fun.

Being in the PL makes no difference for Scotland call ups, Lyndon Dykes being an example. From a football point of view he'd be better off staying here, but Southampton have once again seen the $$$ so we'll be opening the door for him.

I doubt it would take much convincing to sit him down and say you'd be better off here than Everton, but at the end of the day this is being driven by finance - the risk of not getting any money, weighed up to 'breaking even'. One day, maybe one day, we'll make a decision for footballing reasons and not pure financial as it's all rather pointless otherwise. If we lose money, we lose money. We've got a £140 war chest in place to suck that loss up on a couple of players.

So I was right yesterday, your posts are fully agenda driven.

He reminds me so much of Danny Fox, and at this level that's not a bad thing. We got something like 14 or so assists from Fox in our promotion season, Manning strikes me as someone who can do similar. I think we'll clearly need to replace should we get to the top level, but we're not there yet and for this level I think he's fine.

You're having an absolute nightmare here to be honest.

I think there comes a point where we shut the door though, if we lose Adams for free then so be it - we've got £140m in the coffers, and promotion would earn us a lot more than £15m for Che Adams. I honestly think we should now say no to Tella, Adams etc - get them to focus, heads down (which they've done to be fair, been very professional). We still need additions which will happen, and I think we'll see the likes of Aribo, Lyanco and co go to reduce the squad size - but I think now is the time we stop selling the first 11 players.

He's a perfect player to bring off the bench, looks a very talented guy. Quick feet, good pace, full of tricks - seems to already have more of an end product than Edozie.

Don't underestimate how good a win that was. Not many sides will come to Plymouth and win this season, it was a battle and it wasn't easy. First half was very tepid and slow I felt, second half the tempo rose from my sides - but I think it favoured us more as the game went on. Last 15 mins we pretty much penned them in, we went close a fair few times. Deserved win in my opinion. I really enjoyed Charles performance, I thought he anchored that midfield like a seasoned pro - that was his first ever league start in his career, so impressive and mature for his age. Adam Armstrong was our bright spark in attack, popping up in space and driving with the ball - he's not the best technically, but you cannot deny that he's put in a right old shift at the start of this season. CB's ball watching for the goal, Manning unlucky as he slipped, but he looks a bit limited to me. 7 points from 9 is more than I thought we'd get, two wins at two promoted sides as well - not to be sniffed at by any means. We're navigating these horribly choppy waters really well at the moment, big few weeks coming.

Yeah, this is exactly the moment to focus on Bazunu. You haven't got an agenda at all.

I know it's not, but they're going to employ a dud at some point. Guaranteed as much as night comes after day. If they're still flying high in 5 years then fair play, but my betting is they're not.

Glad to see Adams starting, at this level that attack should cause problems. Alcaraz went off with a knock in the open training day by the way, just to stop everyone panicking.

Drafted in to replace Adams at a guess?

I can almost guarantee you that fans of Brighton looked at us in 2015/2016 and were saying exactly the same ''They've got it so good, they are run so well'' - but one poor transfer window and a niave belief that you can keep selling because you're so good at replacing bit us, and from 2017 onwards we were pretty much circling the drain. They've lost their midfield this summer in McAlistair and Cacadeo - that is a huge hole, a 4-1 win over Luton Town doesn't show anyone that they've cracked the replacement of those guys.

I think it's inevitable that Brighton will be in the Championship again at some point in the next 10 years, ditto Brentford. They're basking in a good moment, but as others have said it's simply not sustainable. I'd be a bit nervous if I was Brighton, as Paul Barber is coming out and speaking in very similar ways to Les Reed. If they think they've cracked football they will be mistaken. The only way to crack football is to be owned by Saudi.

We're not going to be signing a CB until we lose at least 1 of ours though, that's the prob we have. We were probably counting on either ABK or Lyanco being gone by now, but they're still here. Obviously not complaining if ABK stays, but worst case is that we get a bid on the last day and all of our targets have been taken by other clubs by then.

Exactly, the same can be said of Wilcox as well - they seem to speak for us, they see what we see. That is refreshing. I don't think Ralph was ''too'' bad (it got worse towards the end), but Selles and Jones were utter nutjobs when it came to not seeing the actual game that was going in front of them. It feels like the two people heading up the football side are firstly aligned, but secondly see exactly what we all see. I hope my optimism of these guys is well placed come the end of the season, but something feels right to me.

It would be the window of the century if Liverpool miss out on Lavia and Cacedo, after they've already lost Henderson, Fabinho and Milner. And to put a cherry on top of it, lose their only world-class player to Saudi. Klopp won't hang around if that happens, could see him going mid-season (probably to Saudi as well going by the money they're pissing around)

Played this one perfectly, masterclass of how to negotiate an outgoing. Let's not spend the next year patting ourselves on the back for getting the fee we did though, we need to make sure this is used correctly and reinvested in the right areas over the next few years.

Not the most amazing forum, some of the questions were a bit pointless to say the least. But compared to last season's, it was night and day. If you remember - last seasons forum was very, very defensive (Toby Steele regarding the stewarding, Martin Semmens about anything). That forum was when I thought we had a few problems, it didn't feel right. With the new guys they are all aligned and they are all pushing for the same thing, the same philosophy. Something struck me from what Wilcox said...he'd been watching our matches since January, and his opinion were that our wins were out of luck - not style, not philosophy and he couldn't work out what we were ever trying to do. Music to my ears to have someone speak what we've all been seeing for what feels like a few years. This club was quite clearly caught between two philosophy's and confused it's self, having everyone aligned will enable us to zone in one a single philosophy and build and recruit correctly for that. It won't happen overnight, it will need patience before it's all roses, but I don't think it'll take long with someone like Wilcox in charge - he's a proper leader, you can tell. Absolutely the right person for this root and branch reset.

This is exactly it, I see people saying they'll enjoy this league more, winning games etc. But just to remind people of 2008/9 - an absolute cesspit of misery, watching us get dicked at Hull, Wednesday at home against Doncaster and Forest. I wouldn't call that fun.