S-Clarke

Yeah, I'm not sure on the Stephens bashing today. He did nothing wrong, and was probably our more passable player with the ball. THB had an absolute disaster class, so his sub made total sense. I think most appreciate that he's not a superstar, but the piling in on him when he didn't evne do anything wrong is incredibly tiresome. There were many other players more benefiting to a rant. Not that anyone deserves really ranting about at this stage.

Credit where it's due, proved his worth as a shot stopper today. Kept the score down. Still not great playing out from the back though.

It had all the hallmarks of Wigan at home on our last promotion to this league. Big fan fare return, expectation against a lesser PL side, and it's a complete damp squib. I didn't think we played well at any point. We looked incredibly nervous in the first half, we tried to force things and kept giving the ball away - it was food and drink for Forest for 90% of that match. They fully deserved their win and there's not really much else to say. When you oly have 1 attempt on target, which is straight at the keeper, then there's a problem. Way too passive and reactive on and off the pitch. Best performers for us were Downes, KWP and credit to McCarthy too who kept the score down, which I didn't expect to be saying. It's quite a wakeup call in the sense that Forest are one of the weaker sides, yet the players they have in their attack (Hudson Odoi, Elanga, Gibbs White etc) are massive levels above anything we can put out. Ourselves, Leicester and Ipswich are going to find that. We lack a bit of magic in that final third, someone you can give the ball to and get fans off their seats. We don't have that player. We need a decent couple of additions in the final few days, as it's going to be quite a painful season trying to watch Armstrong threaten at this level on his own.

I would imagine the 'this season' finances in the Ramsdale deal are very similar to that of the Bijlow, main difference is the outlay would be on a loan rather than the permanent. Something the club will have to weigh up. If they can negotiate a reasonable obligation clause should we stay up, which factors in financially what we've covered this season, then it could make sense if we get him for say £20m next summer.

That's Brandon Charles, U18 midfield player.

This is DT though. He will have a moan up over pretty much anything, it's all in his mind most of the time.

Russell was pretty clear in his press conference, that with Lis out of the door, we now need to do something in GK and we will do. It may not be either of them, but thankfully it seems clear that we will actually sign a goalkeeper much to my relief. The dutch guy is the one though I think.

Yeah he probably is gutted, but as a club we've got to be ruthless and you have to be honest and say he has been a truly horrific signing that will likely never return to a high standard. I noticed that Russell said he'll be back on the training pitch this week, but unsurprisingly he hasn't been back on the training pitch. There's 'not rushing him back' and then there's ''covering up something more sinister'', and it looks like the latter.

There seems to be a belief that every club needs a 20 goal a season, proper central 9 to be safe. Totally not the case. You quite often only have a couple who get over 20 in a season. If we want a 20 goal striker, we need to pay £70m like Spurs did with Solanke. Sometimes clubs like ourselves can get lucky with an Ings, but ideally for our level we want to be sharing the goals around. I think 10-12 for each of those guys is massively optimistic and not needed if our target is to just survive, but if all 3 hit 10 goals then we're finishing top half without a problem.

Have I missed something? Everything I've seen points at the dutch chap, we tried for Ramsdale but Arsenal wanted too much. We've moved on surely, which is why the other move is now advancing - may well get done today.

We've had some pretty bad forwards, he's up there. The fact we've got £10m for him, and he's paid for a new GK, is absolutely bonkers and amazing business.

He is/was a very, very highly rated keeper. I knew he had some injury issues, but I didn't know they were as consistent as they have been. He's missed around 150 games in 4/5 years. Last season he missed 27 games. Season before 16, season before that 27 again - so yeah, undeniably he does seem incredibly injury prone (seems to be a recurring wrist injury)….but the chances of signing keepers of his level are quite rare for clubs like us, so hopefully he doesn't end up sharing the treatment room with Stewart and we can get a decent % of games from him. I imagine the fee will be quite small due to his injury history.

Not sure what's funnier with regards to that Krapyvstov link. 1) He's called Krapy 2) It's another kid who hasn't played football professionally. 3) Chelsea are linked and they already have 200000 keepers.

I don't understand how these top clubs can get the money they can for their deadwood. Before his injury and after his decent season with us (in the January when he was with us actually) there was talk of £30m bids. Now, 2/3 years on, on the back of a mega-injury and a pretty woeful spell at Fulham, he's still worth the same. Bonkers really. To me there's no value in that one, Fulham fans will vouch for that as they hated him last year. A loan with a £10-15m is probably fair, but £30m is just nonsense and is why football is broken.

An interesting interview with his Estoril manager, who will know him better than most. Solent Sport - Vasco Seabra: Saints and AFCB get transfer insight - BBC Sounds

Outside of Ramsdale, I'm not sure of any other PL keepers available for loan who'd be suitable or gettable for us. I predictably saw an article linking us to Ukraine's U19 goalkeeper, available on a free after being released by Dinipro-U19's. Hasn't ever played a pro game in his career. I imagine that one is a goer. Free - tick Young - tick Never played pro football - tick

More nonsense from the bat-shit crazy Chelsea.

It's that time of the transfer window where every single tweet, news article or rumour is taken as gospel, and we spend the next 24 hours (well, DT does) losing their minds for no real reason.

I think we'll struggle to shift ABK for any notable fee now. Hoffenheim were utter shithouses releasing the news about his heart. There's no way clubs will commit anywhere near what we want now We either take a nominal fee, or we loan him out for the rest of his contract and earn a loan fee every year. Will probably be the latter.

I find the whole Stewart thing a little perplexing really. We were told in December of 2023 that we can 'count him out' for the rest of the season, no need to put pressure on him. Then we start to hear that he may make it back for the playoffs, he does - around 20mins? That was on the pretence that it would allow him to go into pre-season with a bit of match conditioning behind him, and then attack pre-season to get up to speed. He missed the entirety of pre-season. Not just the games, but even normal training. He hasn't been seen. He may well be back on the training pitch next week, but I won't hold my breath that we'll see him kicking a ball for us to any sort of level. Honestly feels like the club are covering all tracks for some sort of insurance claim here, acting like they've done everything they can not to rush him back etc.

Sporting fans love this guy -

But if Baz hadn't got that injury, we wouldn't haven't been playing Newcastle away - probably Preston or Oxford. Swings and roundabouts really, but the reality is that not a single one of our 4 First Team GK's are good enough and won't ever be good enough for PL football, which is an absolute mess.

Just seen that Ivan Tony looks like he's off, not included in the Brentford team today due to 'transfer interest'. Brentford already replaced him with Thaigo, but he's injured for 7 months - could be a killer if he leaves.

I'd agree to a point that we're a bit bloated - Charles, Charly at a push, Sulemana, Onuachu, Mara, ABK are 6 players that are expendable in my eyes. Get rid of those and use that to reinforce the two areas we are lacking, after yesterday it looks even more obvious if it didn't already. We need a 'star' attacking player, all the teams in the league have someone. We also need a GK who has the ability to keep us in games when we're having tough moments. Get those two positions sorted and I think we're a mid-table side. Might be a bit premature, but had we had those two elements yesterday we'd have won that game 2 or 3.

He frustrates me to be honest. He's got the ability to beat a man, but his end product is so often lacking. We will need him to hit some numbers this year, it's his 2nd season of regular pro football so time is still on his side, but I'd have hoped by now we'd start seeing some end product from him - but he's still exactly the same as he was 2 years ago in my eyes. Jurys out, may never quite make the grade at the top level because of that.