S-Clarke

Not really, but I'm sure that's what we'll be fed in the next 24 hrs.

Absolutley, the standard rumours we'll see over the next 24 hrs are not worth getting het up with. But....the quotes from the Athletic are worth following, they are fed by club sources so that's why people pay more attention to those. The fact that they even feel the need to put that quote out there is quite scary imo.

They spent £15m on a 20 year old CM from Argentina and £8m on an attacking midfielder from Croatia, that's £20m there which could have been put elsewhere. And I still believe that any credible scout can find a better striker than Che Adams on that budget.

But it's still the fact that it's so much easier to do this to a lower league club, even more so a non-league club. All they had to do was put a few bits of loose change in and they'd be better than anyone else, so automatically they'll start winning games and it's fun and the feelgood factor spreads because they win games. They win lots of games because they have spent money, that's the single factor in all of this. If they were bottom half of non-league and losing lots of games, I can guarantee you that their fans wouldn't be giving a hoot about Netflix documentaries and 'fan engagement', in fact they'd probably be calling it out. It's a lot harder doing that in the PL or higher as you need oil money.

That snippet from the Athletic will give me nightmares, it's club nonsense. I have no doubt that they're trying, but we knew we needed a striker on the First of July 2022. We're now into the last 48hrs (less) of the 2nd transfer window to fix it and we still haven't fixed it. I refuse to believe that any credible scouts cannot find a better centre forward than Che Adams and Sekou Mara within our budget. A kid, and someone who isn't a centre forward. They can dress it up as being sensible and not spending for the sake of it, but it's as far away from being sensible as you can get - it would be the 2nd negligent transfer window in a row had and heads should roll if it's like this on Wednesday. We'd need to cost cut in the Championship anyway, so what better way to start than to remove all these seemingly inept analysts we have failing to find a striker on all of the screens they gorp over all day.

The return of Lavia has allowed for the change of shape, which has enabled us to push JWP further forward. I think we all had the same view after the Chelsea home game, he is critical to our season and his spell out coincided with our midfield being the most weak and disjointed it's ever been, but now it has some structure again because of this prodigious 18 year old kid.

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