S-Clarke

And this is exactly why we wait. He's now out for another prolonged period, without doubt. If I was the club I wouldn't ever contemplate offering him a new deal, I'd let him walk on a free and spend free wages on a striker we can actually rely on. (although the chances of SR scouting an adequate player are slim you'd have to say)

To a degree, yes, but also squad wise we are severely lacking in certain areas. Up front specifically, our blind spot in that area will allow many clubs at this level to overtake us. Derby have a better centre forward than us, so do Wrexham and Birmingham. We will draw lots of games because we cannot put them to bed, we are inadequate in such a key area. I'm not calling for us to sign Moore or Morris as the fix all by the way, but why are we not picking up Stansfield when Birmingham did, and why did we get the American striker we did over the one Derby got? They're operating in different leagues ability wise. The club seemingly put all their eggs into the Ross Stewart basket, and took a gamble on an unproven young player, and that is once again a decision that kills us stone dead. We are now in a position where we tread water until January, keep somewhat in touch to 6th, sign a striker for the 2nd half of the season and we may sneak it. But the fact we're wishing the January window to come already, after we spent £40m at this level, is mismanagement of the highest.

We look like exactly where we are in the league, a mid-table also-ran Championship club. We have settled into our true level under Sports Republic. This is now where we stay.

But he's still contracted to us, Newcastle are just paying a % of his contract with us. He's not getting paid any more.

He genuinely said, in real life, that this isn't a tactical or coaching problem, it's mentality. This bloke is surely not for real, he must be a real life meme or something.

If we did that after 2 goals then we're even more daft than I thought we were. He needs at least half a season, 6 months+ of consistent football and output before we should even consider a new deal. I think it's great for him personally that he's got back to back games with so many mins under his belt, and some output, but it needs to be shown over a prolonged period before anyone gets too excited.

The league is very open this year, there will be no Leicester/Leeds style runaways from what I can tell so far. Every team has been competitive this year from top to bottom, a really competitive league. Even Wednesday, for all their turmoil, aren't even bottom.

I reckon we signed his doppelganger.

Yeah he's the real deal, good technique, good pace/movement with the ball. Good spot Spors.

It might be a controversial view, but I never feel as if we have midfield control when Charles plays. Charles is a bit ''all action'' and doesn't 'sit' as such, he drives all over the place. I really liked Downes and Jander together at Anfield, we had control in the middle then.

I thought we probably shaded parts of it, but neither side had real control. It was a typical game against two sides really struggling to find their way. We just needed to get out of there with 3 points, no matter how we played.

Wood and THB make sense, although Ronnie Edwards could feel hard done by as he was also very good tonight. Quarshie is your typical rash/raw/young CB. Thankfully we have a decent cohort of CB's so we're not forced to play him every week.

A horrible game to watch, but that 'win' (to break this horrendous spell) wasn't ever going to be pretty. We needed a backs to the walls win like that, although it wasn't as 'hanging on' as it could have been. Sheffield United were seriously disjointed after their subs. A win like that was needed to break some players in, bring the mood back up and get us moving again. Tonight was about getting it done, and getting the fuck out of there. I'm happy for Ross, it feels like he's finally arrived after 2 years. He's our only viable number 9 and he's taken his chance today, that's for sure - I just hope his problems are in the past. Derby will be interesting, I'd expect us to take the game to them a bit now we've got that win.

That's probably a case of after the horse has bolted tbh.

Yeah can you imagine - team finishing third, 95 points. Loses in the playoff final to a team who scraped 8th on the final day to finish on say 60-65 points That gap is crazy, and it would show in the PL as it would further erode competitiveness between the promoted sides and the rest of the PL if that started to happen.

Don't try to fix what isn't broken is my view. The playoffs still create a competitive league, and even in the final weeks you have teams often down to 10 or 11th in the Champ who still have a sniff. It's not like the 'top 6' in these leagues works as a closed shop. The league table so far this season demonstrates that. I don't see any genuine benefit of complicating it and adding additional places for playoffs.

I keep seeing posts like this, but it's probably because he was never going to stay in the Championship due to his wages. We always needed to get rid of him. Let's not re-write history and pretend Onuachu was the second coming of Pelle though, he was absolutely horrific.

You'd probably be surprised, we'd actually lose a lot on free's. Smallbone, Stewart, McCarthy, Fraser all OOC and Jelert and Long leaving from their loans. We'd have Charles, Armstrong and Manning with just 1 year left and we'd probably have to sell at that point (Charles would certainly have takers). Thankfully, the good news, Stephens and Bazunu would be down to 1 year left on their deals - so that's a positive at least. (we're probably going to offer Bazunu an 8 year contract though, I can see it in my nightmares) But I could see us losing Charles, Downes, THB, Robinson, Edwards etc for fees - but they wouldn't be huge. So factor in those possible sales, with the guys on frees as well....we're basically in a rebuilding situation once again, but with less money.

Christ, I'd forgotten that 3-0 game. That left permanent scars. fricking David Healy.

They have shown they can make good picks, but they're few and far between. It does seem strange how the same scouting network can spot someone like Fernandes and bring him in, but in the same breath approve and sign Brereton-Diaz. Something just doesn't add up, it's like we've got two scouting networks working independently. I get clubs make bad signings, but the drop off from our few good signings to our bad ones is huge - it's not even that they're not 'as good', they're fricking trash.

Not sure learning the ropes is totally fair, more a case of learning the squad and players he has and how he gets the best out of them here. I know people rewind to pre-season saying that's when a manager does this, which is fair in most cases...but we had such a churn post pre-season, so since around Mid-Aug we've kind of had to reset again and he's got another load of new players to adapt. The point I usually start seriously questioning managers is when they start seeing a different game to me, that's when they're waffling and flapping around with their answers (so brave, so proud, front footedness, I've ignored my principles etc etc - all that shit). But Still is still seeing the same game as me and he's calling out what we're seeing, not trying to cover it up or smarm his way out or have on-camera mental breakdowns like previous managers did. I notice people are saying it's a negative that he's so moody and not very positive, but if you step back he's actually mirroring exactly what we're feeling like to. He's as frustrated as the rest of us because he knows what's needed.

I think it was 20 actually, it was abandoned around 70-71mins. The cut off for a 'replay of the remaining' is around 75 mins - I reckon they'll both be forced to replay the 90, but it'll happen next year because they'll spend the next few months arguing. It's basically the equivalent of quitting Football Manager when you don't like a game, and reloading the save previous.

Sadly, what doesn't help him is that his make up is a little moody/lazy, which is part of him I think and how he comes across on the pitch. When those sorts aren't delivering (which he isn't) he looks 10x as worse. My problem with this signing isn't taking punts like this per-say, it's that we keep taking punts on these sorts to be our main men down the spine of the team - and we don't learn. ABK, Bazunu, Mara, Edozie, Larios, even Charles when he came to us first. It's nuts when you don't have the genuine depth in quality in the spine as it is, because it means those young 'lads' have no scope to grow - they literally have to go from day 1, some swim (Tino/Lavia) and some completely sink, which we've seen far more of. For a club which prides it's self on developing, we're doing a fricking shit job of it as we keep throwing these young players out to dry without anything around them. We added 'proven' players at full back, wide areas, 10's etc - but the constant ignorance of the spine is what does it for me, if that isn't right then everything else is pointless.

The problem we have is highlighted in that post - we have poor keepers, full stop. Not one we can fully trust, and choices are made on selections at what they're less bad at. It's a very unhealthy place to be as a club.

I was just being a tiny bit picky tbf, but yeah 99% of that on McCarthy for sure.