S-Clarke

lol.

Not sure, I must have missed the 3000000 camera pans to him in the director box.

In this crazy market, you could realistically get £15m for him. They paid £16m for Maupay so they have history of spending on non-scoring strikers. He's not going anywhere anyway.

Claire Balding signs a 5 year deal at Newcastle.

It's taken some time, but the work that has been done on the Academy over the last couple of years is starting to bear fruit. We pretty much hit the floor for a year, but a bit of investment in some new talent and some breakthrough stars of our own and it all looks great again. I'd be pretty confident to say that there are maybe 1 or 2 future first team starting 11 players in this group. Shows what a bit of time and patience buys you, as this team has been developed over a couple of years - not overnight.

I think Sulemana is our 'striker'. That will probably be the height of our business, maybe a last ditch attempt for the Leece CM but not much else.

It's a bit of a token gesture really, as it's inevitable he'll go in the next few months. Just buys them a bit more time. Good to see all the same. It's frustrating for clubs of our level though as good teams will always get picked apart, I'd argue we had more time with our group a few years ago, but football has changed so much that clubs like ourselves and Brighton are lucky to get a season out of a good player/team now. My advise to Brighton is to enjoy where they are now, it won't last.

Isn't that incredibly similar to what we did with VVD back in 2017? Probably identical, in fact. He went in the next window anyway, which is what will happen with Caicedo.

I don't think you can really throw a comparison together like that when we're looking at totally different samples, less than half the amount of games Ralph had. I think people are going to exhaust themselves with this 'Jones' out stuff after every game, yeah he seems a bit of a nutter and he's on a collision course with some of his comments...but he's not going anywhere tomorrow, next week, next month - so there's no real point shouting and screaming after every match. Any chance this thread can have the OUT dropped off it it? Just seems small fry.

With the greatest of respect, wtf is he on about now?

That's the one thing which has stuck out during all his games with us, lazy as all shit. Doesn't track, doesn't press. Wrong sort of player for a team who want to press on the front foot and win possession. He's a luxury player who hangs on the edge of a game hoping to get a touch to pull something out of the bag. In hindsight a really weird signing as he doesn't fit the mould of what we've been trying to do.

I'm dying to see a decent team, but no matter who we play (L2/L1/Champ/PL) we just look shit, against anyone. A rabble of nonsense. Edozie a bright spark, Mara way too isolated and not involved enough - when he does get involved you can see he has something about him, but it's few and far between. Lavia tired massively as the game went on, kept him on too long IMO. Having Ely as a partner is like playing on your own for 90 mins. Good 90 for ABK, looked rusty though. Perraud the obvious bright spark. Orsic still well off the pace. Onto the really bad, AMN - what the fuck is he? He's certainly not a footballer, I just don't know what you can do with him. It's like when you're a manager at work and you have a shit employee, but you can't sack them so you keep having to move them around to try and find a role. I'd try the tea lady next, he shouldn't be anywhere near a football pitch. Lyanco rash and clumsy, created chaos in the last 10 mins with some really shitty bits of non-composed play. Putting Diallo on lost any element of control we may have had, and we struggled to hold on at that stage. These games are never easy, but we tried so hard to make it as hard as it could be through awful play.

That's why I find it difficult to see a way out, I'm not looking at it in the short term and seeing us being a couple of points from 14th or whatever - it's what we'd have to do over a prolonged period of time to get the points we need, as it will ultimately be mid 30's at the very least no matter how far away we are from 14th now. Like you said, that means European qualification level form from now to May. And ourselves, similar to Everton really, aren't going to do that. Hey, if we're proven wrong it means we've had one of the most epic 2nd halves of the season ever, but there are almost zero signs that this will happen.

I can't help but lose faith if the club see Adams as a number 9, to anyone with an ounce of footballing knowledge you can see that he's the supplementary forward in a pair (the 2nd player being the clinical, number 9 type). Adams will do all your ugly stuff, run the channels, hold off players, make space etc, but ultimately he has never really been what I'd class as a goal scorer and the club shouldn't see him as one. As I keep saying, we're hanging a decent player out to dry by trying to force him to be someone he's not. Armstrong is cut from exactly the same cloth - which is why we now play him from wide left in a 3. Adams could arguably do a job in those sorts of roles as well. The links to wingers concern me as whilst they are needed, it's both we need - but if there was a choice, number 9 would win. - so based on our only link being a wide man, it concerns me as we are still seemingly looking at Adams as being our 9, he's not. We had our most success with two proper number 9's - Broja and Ings, with Adams supporting them. That's what got us goals. Adams up top on his own never has and never will equal goals, I just wish they'd stop trying to convince us (and probably themselves) that he's a number 9. He's a modern day Brett Ormerod I'd say. All teams need an Adams sort of player, but they need to be paired with clinical players otherwise their work goes unnoticed and they're the ones getting the headlines for missing chances.

We own him, so ultimately we have all the power to decide where he stays. There would likely be financial consequences for us, i.e. we'd have to pay Burnley back any loan fee they gave us, but other than that it's entirely our call. We have probably decided it's best to let him continue his development there, so we either have an accomplished Championship player next year or we are able to get a decent fee for him (2nd most likely I'd have thought).

Yeah, this is Brighton hitting the same glass ceiling we did. There's no real way beyond that for clubs like us, the good players we have will always do the above if we try to stand firm. They're enjoying their moment as we enjoyed our moment, but this is why being competitive in the top half in this league for more than a fleeting period for clubs without major, major backing is pretty much impossible.

Just realised I posted that in the wrong thread, meant to post that in the fantasy thread. Doh.

One to certainly watch though, be interesting to see where he is in 18 months.

Dion Drena Beljo

JWP will be the first out of the door, I'd actually guarentee you that the club are banking on the fee they get for him to cover any shortfall from relegation. The club will ensure we get a good fee for him, there is absolutley no situation he stays if we go down, not a hope in hell.

Bit like the summer one really, started promising, nothing in the middle, and an incredibly infuriating end to it which undoes any of the good work at the start. (Still some days to go through!)

To be fair he did win the previous EFL Championship Manager of the year.

It's not all about who spends the most, but it certainly does have a say in the probability of success - but you can do two extremes really. You can try and do it on the cheap with lots of kids, potentially get lucky but most likely drop like a stone. Massively risky approach. You can go and spend millions and millions on a new team of 'superstars' and equally flop, as they don't become a team (Fulham a few years ago spring to mind). There needs to be a balance, as a club you need the flexibility to be able to attract those young players but mix it up with some proven experience (that costs) as well.

This is a good post, during the Gao years it was obvious this league was too expensive for us. I had hope (and still do, somewhat) that SR have a bit more clout behind them, as they certainly have spent some money, but the markets we're shopping in (10-15m players) is not the market for PL clubs if we're honest, we seem fixated on getting players for that price and making them better so we can sell for a profit, which sadly doesn't really suggest we are as flush with cash as you'd hope. The approach we take makes sense, but......not the all encompassing way we’ve approached it, we need to be able to mix it up. So, for example, we can still get the Lavia's, Tinos in our 10-15m bracket...but we need to have the clout to go and buy proven in the £30m+ bracket, as otherwise you cannot build a strong enough team for the ‘now’. Having a mega billionaire throwing money around would be exciting, no one can deny that, but I personally get much more satisfaction from 'sustainably' building a team - but you still need some decent $$$ to even do that at this level. It feels like we are heading to our level of a middling Championship club to me, we've acted like it for years and constantly speak about how we are lucky to be here, so maybe they're being straight - we have no right to be in this league with the lack of clout we have. Truth be told I don't know why we're like that given we've been taking in PL TV Money for 11 years and have a 32k stadium, but that's the way it is.

''Where were you when you were shit''