S-Clarke

A really good FA Cup day today, lots of good games and some cracking results. Kidderminster beating Reading was a massive upset, I hope they get a big tie in the next round.

Can't disagree, I think we ran the poor kid into the ground to be honest.

Fairly sure it counts. A booking wouldn't have gone towards a yellow accumulation, but the fact he got a red will mean the suspension will go over to all comps.

He's a bit of a terrier type, but there's no real quality in there is there. Some of his attempts to provide attacking width were beyond embarrassing. That is crucial in our set up, you need to be able to provide a threat. He looks hopeless in that part of the game. Defensively a little dodgy as well, but as I said he's a bit of a terrier and isn't afraid to get into oppo faces.

You can't make it up can you. Strengthen at full back, get great cover at RB. Then when you need the depth, 4 of your full backs are out. What are the chances. No Tino, KWP suspended, Valery suspended, Small COVID. So, through an amazing turn of bad luck we are going to have to shoe-horn a position in a very, very important game. Not great at all.

Hard to read a great deal into the game, at about 20 mins it was a doddle. It was going to be an utter stroll. Then Valery does what Valery does, and why he'll never be a decent player. Lost count of the amount of times I've seen him done in the same way and the same position, the guy doesn't learn. It was a weird game from that point on. We lost our midfield as JWP had to slip into RB, and we also lost our balance as we had no real right wing back presence so we lost our ability to switch it. It became a very niggly game where Swansea had a lot of the ball but to be fair they didn't really do a great deal with it, it was fairly comfortable for us in the main. Arguably, even with 10 min, we should have gone 2, 3-0 up with the chances we had (Notably Stephens). The main take away from that game is the character, one negative put against this team for so many years, but we showed it today. We didn't play well, it was very disjointed, we had so many bad things go our way (red card, equaliser, going behind) but we still fought to win it. Got to credit us for that, and credit to Long who came on and arguably changed the game. That's the impact you need for your subs when you're down to 10 men, he stretched the game.

Hard game to judge him on really, he wasn't through the middle and we were 10 men. But he really hasn't impressed me in the slightest over the last 6 months, looks like a complete lower league player out of his depth. No refinement in his game what so ever.

Stephens was one of the 'never announced' extensions, I think - along with McCarthy - he is contracted until 2024. No idea why the club haven't announced it, not a scooby.

I think the main crux is that only Newcastle have the ability, to in effect, build an entirely new team. They could then face us with 4 or 5 star players who would immediately lift them above our available quality. That seems slightly unfair given the team we would have faced had the fixture gone ahead at the time it was supposed to. That's the fear I think most have. An extremely winnable game a week or so ago, could turn into an impossible task in a few weeks due to their investment.

Exactly that, and it will be so refreshing to be able to operate with flexibility - that's all I ever wanted. I didn't want Countinho, Bale or £30m cb's etc. I was simply fed up with having to wait until we pocketed the change from Matt Targets deal before we could go and do x and y etc. I guess it depends what you consider to be a shoestring budget, but I can see us operating in the 10-15m bracket without having to sell first - that is a refreshing change and will allow us to grow rather than stand still.

I don't know where you've got that from? What comments were made? It's clear that we're not going to make big money signings. If anything he fits the setup more than anyone else would, I don't see anything has changed.

Signings like that in the winter window never make sense, lots of expense for what is probably going to be 6 months. I doubt Villa will be able to sign him perm. I also don't understand the priority - they've already got Emil Buendua who they spent £40m on in the summer, very similar player who operates in the same space. They've also got Leon Bailey to provide the winger type width. Really odd move for Villa, not sure they needed him. I don't think he's going to make much difference.

Coutinho has had a tough time at Barca, he hasn't had a single good game there. Barca has been a bit bat shit crazy though, similar could be said of Dembele who was a phenomenal player at Dortmund. The main question marks over Coutinho is that he also went on loan to Bayern and failed equally as badly there. I see this deal similar to that of James Rodriguez and Gareth Bale, lots of fan fare but neither did anything of note.

Not from how he worded it, it was more in relation to additions to what we currently have numbers wise. Willy Cabellero could count as 1 though.

I'm pleased he's signed. I thought this was the year he'd 'explode' onto the scene, given his pre-season, but he's really struggled to get into the side for some reason. He does lack consistency and his final action is very hit and miss, but his pace and direct running give us more than any of our existing number 10's. Good to have players like him around the place.

I must admit, I've never heard Ralph as bullish as that either. He must know a hell of a lot more than any of us, so things are in the pipeline I guess. I don't think we'll move from our plan though, we buy players for the future who we can develop - Tino was a bit of a freak in terms of his readiness. I think it'll probably be the likes of Delap or Macatee who just add to our bench and grow into this side, which is quite exciting. It's either that or a 6 month loan for Coutinho at extreme expense which may not actually deliver anything.

Yep, potential benefit as well. It will help us to have European avenues to send players that is already in place, rather than having to scour the market for a club who may take player x.

I see where you are coming from, and there are many instances where players don't move around the groups and they get higher moves. So for example if our group takes over FC Gallen and they have a new Halland there, the likelihood is that he will go elsewhere if we don't catch him early enough (i.e before he's a full pro). The real benefit I can see from our point of view is having a consistent avenue to loan our players to. The clubs will ultimately have similar structures and similar ways of playing and recruiting, so there could be good avenues for our younger players to move clubs to gain experience whilst still retaining the same ethos as they would here. That's how I see us benefiting - not so much recruiting players in, but by providing feeder club options for our younger players.

I had a look up on the Lincoln forums to see what they feel, they're quite happy he's gone. They seem to be of the opinion that whilst he has all the attributes of pace/height/strength etc, he's not a very good footballer at all. They seem to think L1 was too high for him. Not great, and given that he's 23 now (I think) you can't even class him as a youngster anymore, so his chances of making it at this level are close to being done I think. He's not coming back here to play, he's probably going to go back out on loan to non league or L2 at the most.

It wasn't his money though, that's the thing. He was spending someone else's and when he went crawling to KL for some more money, she said no...and that's when it all started to unravel a bit. He was ambitious, was part of our progress up, but he was a total control freak and felt it was his fortune to spend. Staff at the club celebrated when he went, he created a horrific atmosphere behind the scenes.

This was on SSN earlier - Breaking news Willy Caballero is in talks with Southampton over extending his stay beyond January. The goalkeeper is set to stay at Southampton for the rest of the season after Ralph Hasenhuttl confirms plan to extend goalkeeper's one-month contract after impressive displays since joining the club.

Decent in the Champ, but absolutely hopeless at this level.

There's a lot of weird stuff out there, as Manji said there's a lot of political gamesmanship being played as well - he's seen as a bad guy as he's trying to uncover the political bollocks of the countries government, so there's a lot flying around in that context.

'This lot' - bit vague. They've only just setup Sports Republic, December 9th to be exact - so I'm not sure what debt they've got themselves into already? If you're referring to Dragan and his telecoms/media company then this takeover is not interlinked with that company in any way, Sports Republic was funded and setup independently of any of his previous ventures and is funded from his own capital.

Both really good listens, two very intelligent and bright human beings. They do things the right way. There is so much more to football than just the black and white outcomes you see. I was never convinced Puel's season was any good, 8th was a freak. In any other season we'd have finished bottom half, the downturn in where we were was too large to ignore, that's what I had problems with and what a lot of other fans had problems with, we'd gone backwards at an alarming rate. Ultimately Les and co saw that and they made the decision, but they got the calls wrong after that and tried to be clever. I'd argue that appointing Puel in the first place was the wrong call as well, there were a few years between 16-19 where they just made wrong decision after wrong decision in both managerial and player moves. These guys (Especially Rasmus) seem to have a really good understanding of football in this country and what is required. If he has the right level of financial backing behind him then I'm very optimistic about what these guys can build.