S-Clarke

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.

£60m and Newcastle have a deal.

They're going down the route of $$$$$$$$$$$$$, and it will ultimately buy them a lot of success - albeit very manufactured. We'll probably go down the route of earning any success we get through clever buys and shrewd sales, which is ultimately more fun and more of a ride.

There's not enough info out there yet, but there has to be an improvement from this to a degree. The involvement of Rasmus shows that they're building a football vision, not just purchasing a club for reputation or $$$. That's in my eyes anyway. Interesting reading the Brentford forums who are very complementary of Rasmus, although some of their fans are already saying that 'Phil Giles' is the guy who masterminded their success, not Rasmus. That feels a little bit sour grapes to me though.

Rasmus Ankersen is very highly thought of by Brentford fans. Rasmus Ankersen Leaves BFC (and buys Southampton) | Page 2 | The Griffin Park Grapevine

The amount of stuff thrown Ralphs way for not playing him was ridiculous. He never looked cut out for it, and that was from the B Team games. I doubt he'll ever amount to anything.

I don't think any of that will change if i'm honest. I can see the likes of Steele, Martin and Matt all staying in place with the same structure. They've been driving the takeover talks (Martin in particular) so I don't see that he'd be driving himself out.

To be fair to everyone that was speaking about 29/30th announcement, I think they were pretty much spot on - out by a day or two, who cares! I'm glad that this awful 4 years is finally about to end. I do like the quietness of all this, it shows that they're not charlatans and aren't looking to get their name out there - looks like it was a very thorough bit of due diligence done by both sides. Reminds me of the ML deal if I'm honest, just comes out of no where and puts the likes of Da Grosa into the distance. £100m is crazy though. There must be some sort of deal struck there with regards to our substantial debt. Hopefully 2022 is the start of a bright new era and ownership who are engaged and invested in the club.