S-Clarke

The Chelsea 'zero strategy' bandwagon carries on. Someone has got to put a stop to them surely? Now going for Felix, who has already had a stint there which was a bit of a fail. They have no idea what they're doing, and you do have to feel somewhat for their fans as it's a hollow club. It's like a mega version of the WHU Transfer tombola.

I don't mind them pushing the app, but they should at least get it bug free first. It's a bit clunky.

Seriously, don't play the race card. Absolute nonsense and is usually piped out when there's no further substance to the actual point you're trying to make. The facts are that he came here with potential, looked to have the raw attributes in physique and power etc - but he was actually pretty rubbish and a big let down. Switches off too much when he's fit, but also isn't ever fit. Made of glass. Add to all of that, he is an absolutley awful personality around the place which is why he's been told to stay away from Staplewood. I don't personally think he downed tools, but I also don't think he's a particularly nice character. The fact we're getting £12m for him is a mega bonus, I'd have taken a nominal fee for him at this stage just to get the bad egg out of the place. There's nothing racist about any of that.

Maybe one day club owners will stop considering Wayne Rooney. He'll ruin Plymouth and it'll be too late for them this season before they realise.

I wouldn't pay much attention to any of these predictions at this stage, the transfer window in the remaining weeks could shape or kill a teams season. I include ours in that.

They're doing their own separate fans forum, which makes more sense.

If the GK is better than McCarthy, and he's signed before Friday this week, he will start on Saturday.

But those 13 games are all we have to go on, before that he'd never played above L1 level. It could have been a freakish purple patch, carried on from the momentum of the year before, or he was actually good for Championship level. The fact is that no one actually knows if he is any good above L1. We spent £9m on someone who was injured and had very little exposure at a high level. We dropped another almighty bollock with that signing, no two ways about it. If he comes good for us count me surprised, but in my eyes he's dead rubber for our needs at this level and we should not be counting on him.

The disease is back. Sounds like this is a forever problem, nothing can be done. "Simply put, the GLS disease, which will never leave now we have it, came back again with the weather as a contributor. "We've just raked out the dead, non-recoverable plants and overseeded - we've learnt a lot from previous years, but have to deal with it again. "We've raked the worst of the dead grass and removed it. We overseeded pre-friendlies and post-match and hope to see signs of new seedlings. "We have had experiences where they can die off too. Anyone at the games will notice it still plays very well, just looks terrible." Silvestri continued: "Our understanding is that as a fungal spore-spreading disease, it's always there, but if the conditions are favourable for it, it can strike. "The humid and occasionally wet weather has contributed, but unlike Athlete's Foot, there's no cure yet. It's extremely disheartening after all our hard work! "Over the years we've adjusted our practices to try to cope, but we have been backed by the club and Russell and the coaches have been very patient."

He has missed an entire pre-season, he will not play for us to any standard this season - pointless kidding ourselves otherwise. A loan would be good for him, as if we're honest - no one knows if he can play anymore.

Agreed, I have no idea where all this ''We aren't spending money'' waffle is coming from. We've spent more than most this summer, and that's without any substantial sales.

Still hoping to get '1 or 2' in the door this week is what I heard. ''Sometimes they seem closer, then it goes away again, then it comes back to life again''

Dull as dishwater really, I thought Getafe were the most anti-football Spanish side I've seen in a while. That was our 11 for next weekend - still some glaring holes we all know about, but they will get filled as we get to the end of the window.

I think the club are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the fans this summer. There is a general illusion that we haven't spent enough or improved the team, but we had to spend a £40m outlay on two players to ensure we kept them. So there's £40m there to just stand still, but it was necessary and I can imagine there would be serious uproar had we not got either through the door. Add the signings of Yuki, Edwards, Wood, BBD and you're looking at a current spend of upwards of £50m. For a club of our size, curtailed by FFP/PSR bollocks due to our splurge two years ago, that's a pretty heathy amount to have spent without any sales. We clearly now need to get money in before we can spend anything else, which is probably the case for most clubs. Unfortunately we're in a league where Bournemouth, Fulham etc have upwards of £50m to spend just from player-sales. Loans in the final week are where we will get our value. Convinced of it.

Personally I'd needed to have seen something from Sulemana, Mara, Bazunu by now. They even came down a league with us and still couldn't impact or develop any further. Edozie is on the borderline for me, he's technical and quick, but his end product and decision making is woeful and really should be improving by now at his age - jury is out on him. Sometimes players develop late, as with Morgan and Lallana, but sometimes you just have to look at what's in front of you to realise you're just hoping rather than expecting them to get better. There are certain 'young' players in our group that we should just accept defeat on and move them on, I include the 3 i mentioned above on that list. When I look at SAA or Dibling I see totally different players with genuine potential, and they're 4 or 5 years younger than the ones we bought to 'develop'. Charly is an interesting one, he wasn't signed as a young player to develop, more of a here and now kind of signing. The problem with Charly is that he doesn't suit Martin's style, I think there is a genuine clash there. That's not to say he's a bad player at all, but he's very loose with the ball and that isn't going to get you game time in Martin's teams. I would imagine the club would sell him for the right fee.

Absolutely, any money for ABK at this stage is a bonus. Need him out of the club ASAP, horrible influence who is being kept away from the first team setup. One of our worst ever signings - added to the long list of worst ever signings in just 3 transfer windows.

What have Ipswich managed? They seem to have created this illusion that they're having this mega, block-buster window. They signed Hutchinson for £20m, signed him from loan like we did with THB and Flynn for similar fee's. Jacob Greaves, talented CB from the Champ. We signed Wood, and Edwards from the EFL. Liam Delap - £20m unproven at the top level. Connor Townsend - Champ full back. Ben Johnson - full back on a free from WHU. We signed Suguwara and LB Charlie Taylor. Not seeing anything ground-breaking there that we're being left behind on, if I'm totally honest.

Probably one of the more fortunate 1-1's we could have had, Lazio were better than us for periods. McCarthy farting around with the ball is like asking a cat to swim in a swimming pool - it's lunacy and will only end bad. The club must know this and will get a 1st choice in, if they don't then anyone at any decision making level needs sacking! Parts of the 1st half were good though, BBD with that goal gave me Ings vibes - been a while since we've had a CF who is happy to take a pot shot from outside.

Well said, people do miss this point quite a lot. A few good transfer windows and you're set for a few years (in terms of sales/profit etc), a few bad ones....and you're screwed for many, many years. We're still reeling from those mental Hoedt, Lemina, Carillo, Boufal utter wastes of money. Signing Ross Stewart last summer for £8m didn't help either. I do think our big signings this year are THB and Downes, they will be supplemented by really good loans towards the end of the window - that's how I see it going and why we've not used any of our loan spaces yet.

Good post, well summarised. The jury for me is still out on our perm signings, although I think Downes and THB will clear that issue. Not sure in what universe Ross would have ever been worth double what we paid though, he'd only ever paid 13 games above L1 level. We overpaid at £8m by some distance.

Martin confirmed Sulemana is out for the start of the season, couple of weeks out at least (not much loss mind, might put off any suiters though annoyingly). Mara should be back for the mid week game. Stewart may be involved in the game next Saturday, i.e. our last one - emphasis on 'might' and they'll have to 'wait and see' - what a see on what, who knows. He hasn't been able to take part in a pre-season for 2 years.

It's a bit of a stretch saying we've lost Rothwell to be honest. He was nondescript for us. As a number, yeah I'll give you that, but as someone who contributed we haven't lost anything. I still expect us to sign a wide player, a number 10, a proper number 9 and hopefully a goalkeeper if the blind spots are removed from those at the club. If those signings take until the final few days to get right, then let it take that long - these signings are being talked about as critical for us, which they are, so let us make sure we get the right ones and not jump early and miss a potential opportunity that only comes up on the final few days.

We're certainly not weaker, not sure where this is coming from as I've seen a few mention this. We're on par with the side that started the playoff final. If you think Brooks - we've got Charly back. Fraser, we've brought in BBD. I cannot get behind the notion that we are weaker, on par yes, but not weaker. What happens in pre-season friendly's is largely irrelevant, but I still wouldn't expect us to have all our signings done by Newcastle. Come the start of September I'd expect us to have a squad that can compete in the PL. Count me disappointed if we don't after then, but I'm not going to get all panicky before. Let's not also discount the guys we've already bought in, i.e Downes/THB - they have a chance to prove themselves as PL players.

And that approach was a raving success. They were still embroiled in a relegation battle, a massive squad of players who have never really clicked, hit by points deductions because of their spending and further sanctions on what they can do this year because of their daft approach. So, yep - please don't do that Southampton.

I don't know why people are so panicky at the moment. It's been absolutley evident that our squad isn't going to be finished before the end of August, it will go right up to the deadline. We were never going to have all of our requirements filled by the Newcastle game, there is not a scenario in the world whereby that was a possibility. We may need to roll with the punches a little bit over the first couple of games, but the messages I'm seeing about the club being slow, sluggish, losing their way, asleep on the market, penny pinching, only focused on Gozepte etc are just nonsense. (that's not a dig at you personally by the way, it's all the things I see over social media from so called fans) As has been said so many times, we will wait for opportunities in the loan market - top level players too - they will only become options and available as we reach the end of the window, the same can also be said for guys like Matt O'Riley - as we get closer, he may push himself, which will force Celtics hand (to Atalanta or us). I think we've had a really structured and sensible window up to this point, we got the early deals in we could get in, but we have to be patient to get the quality enhancement signings we are clearly still after.