S-Clarke

I think the general vibe is that we will go into this Championship season weaker than we did last time. Last time out we had Tella, JWP, Lavia, Adams, Bednarek, KWP all involved for the first couple of games at the very least. If the club are actively looking to move on from the likes of Smallbone and Edozie then it suggests they've identified the weaknesses correctly, and given the gaps they will leave in the squad - they'll have to be replaced. It would be quite difficult to find players less effective than either of those, so you'd hope by default we'll be stronger with the replacements. We'll find out in Sept I guess.

I still think he'll go to be fair, but there's more of a chance we keep him than Leeds had keeping Raphinia. I reckon...£35-45m ballpark is what we'll look for. That would double our money in a year, which does count as a good scouting success for sure. It's a shame that they didn't equate that scouting knoweldge on our strikers or wide players last season...! With Charly and Fernandes, Lavia etc - they've shown they can pick up gems...but it's often overlaid with loads of rubbish like BBD, Bauznu, ABK, Stewart etc.

Nah not at all, Raphinia had already been at Leeds for 2 years. Finished Top 10 with them in Season 1, so was a fully established top level player. Fernandes has had one season in the PL, good player he is, but it's probably more 'realistic' to see him here in Sept than it would have been for someone like Raphinia - especially given where he ended up.

I mean it's inevitable isn't it? It would be a BONUS if we could enjoy Fernandes and Ramsdale in the Championship, not an expectation. The noise I'm starting to hear now is making me a little more optimistic, we seem to have people now conducting a root and branch squad cull. Taylor, ABK, Aribo, Smallbone, Edozie, Sulemana, Onuachu, not good enough, we know it, and we don't seem to be keen to hang onto them. Which is a positive. (We've already shifted a few) This will free up wages, funds and squad space to replace that block of 4 with better - so even though we lose Ramsdale and maybe Fernandes, we have the potential to be stronger overall by replacing the likes of Aribo/Edozie/Smallbone etc. Could be a very busy 4 weeks. This is when the moves will start to happen, pre-season coming to a close, manager knows who he wants and what he wants - clear picture. Now Spors can get into action. The chink so far is in the Stephens contract, but if they don't blindly fall into Bazunu as first choice and replace the 'dross', then we're in better shape than a while.

Yeah impossible, a lot of these VPN companies are in actually based/housed in florigen territories so they're not bound by 'UK or US' relegations as such. The closest we'd probably get is a media propaganda effort pushing a 'gov.uk VPN - Protect yourself' style service, that gullible people fall into. China don't even ban VPN's - that's how people work over there and get around the 'Great Firewall of China'.

Ryan is a good goalkeeper, certainly a straight upgrade on anything we have left after Bazunu. Where is the link though? I've not seen anything in the media. If that's a goer then it's amazing news as the club powers that be have finally realised Bazunu isn't the one.

Our window last year wasn't much better either, even including that Albert guy we got on loan in Jan. I'm still hoping that Spors will change that dynamic soon, might take a couple of windows to shift the dross we've accumulated...but it would be good to see some 'signs' this window.

But that was primarily from the sale of Lavia really, we were lucky we got the income from him! The losses we made on the rest of them are pretty shocking tbh. Without Lavia we'd have been right up the creek.

I do miss Alpine - wonder what happened to him? Can't imagine what he'd be thinking right now, or the past season!

This is quite depressing to read, but this is the outcome of our ill-fated 22/23 splurge (Summer and January). Kamaldeen Sulemana - £22m. Not great, shipped off to Atalanta at a loss. GONE Romeo Lavia - unprecedented success. No arguments. Signed for £10m, sold for £50-60m. GONE Paul Onuachu - Another big fail, signed for £18m, now sold to Turkey at a loss. GONE Gavin Bazunu - I think we've all said enough about him. Still here. Charly Alcaraz - Good addition, but poorly managed. Sold for what we bought him for, so no loss. GONE ABK - Hmm. We'll get lucky to get a roll of tissue for him. Still here (just about hanging on) Sekou Mara - Signed for £12m, sold to for £9-10m. Another slight loss. GONE Joe Aribo - Not 'terrible', but not great. £8m spent - may get that back. Still here DCC - Didn't work for him here. Loaned out, and then let go to Lyon for a nominal fee - another loss. GONE Samuel Edozie - Looks like he's now off, might just about get what we paid originally. Almost GONE Juan Larios - Doesn't look like a pro footballer, now out on loan in the lower Spanish leagues. GONE to all intents Orsic - Yeah, umm.. GONE Bree - Average, nothing special. £800k isn't really anything to moan about though. Still here Lis - umm yep. GONE AMN - Again, awful. GONE So of both transfer windows that summer, only Bazunu, ABK, Aribo and Edozie remain (I'd expect Edozie, Aribo and ABK to be off in the coming weeks too) Around £154m spent, made back around £90m - and the core of that was clawed back from the Lavia buy. The rest of the efforts by the recruitment team that year doesn't even equate to words really.

Yeah I'm in the same boat, I've seen him play Internationally and he is way too good for our level. Mid-PL quality at least. So I refuse to get worked up about this yet until there is more concrete noise behind it. This is just hopeful rumour.

Didn't expect that Edozie move, but he's the sort of player I'd put in the bracket of being given a chance - but never really quite good enough to cut it. He had a loan last year to give it a good go but still didn't make a mark. He can beat a man and then do nothing with it. My haunting memory of him came from the game he played under Jones, on the back of our 'mid-season pre-season'. A cup game against a lower league team, somehow he produced the worst miss I've ever seen in my entire life from a professional footballer - well, Adams against Wolves comes close tbf. At that point you could label him as a young player still learning, but 3 years on....nothing has changed, he's still as erratic and rash as he was when we got him. Talented, sure, but will probably never fulfil his potential. There's just something missing in his makeup. This certainly accelerates the need for wide players though, which is somewhat exciting as this will force it as our options are simply horrific on the left side now.

Yeah I've always rated him, does the number 1 thing you want goalkeepers to do - stop shots! Like you say, too much focus nowadays on them needing to play - which even in some cases is seen as more important over shot stopping, which is absolutely mental. I reckon he'll end up back at Burnley, bit of a merry-go-round brewing. Ramsdale to Newcastle, Trafford to City, Pope back to Burnley.

I honestly didn't realise Pope was that old, I still associate him as a young/early 20's keeper at Burnley. A sign of old age that.

It is just the sort of thing we do sadly. Sign highly rated coaches/managers, highly rated American Strikers and Armenian attacking midfielders (maybe), but still continue with Jack Stephens and Bazunu in our back 5. Makes anything else we do null and void really.

I don't think signing young players is a bad move per say, so Joe Shields may have a decent eye for young talent - but there needs to be some sense in the squad selection, he was nowhere near ready to be a first team PL keeper - but whoever was at the club decided he was, straight away. Absolutely braindead. Has his early exposure ruined him? Maybe, too much too soon. He's a bag of nerves now. Keepers do mature later, so he has some leeway - but there are genuine attributes he misses in his game which he won't wake up with one morning, so for that reason I'm out.

You take some strange angles on here to 'debate' people, but this is one of the strangest. If we bring in a new first choice keeper now, the likelihood is that we start next season with two pretty decent GK's to compete for the starting spot. I'd say that's a much more healthy position to be in than having average squad players as your backups to everyone. The drop off from our first team to the squad is way too big, I'm sure the club see it. Any new player coming in will have to be confident enough in their ability to hold a place here for the foreseeable future, if they weren't and they worried about Ramsdale coming back then I wouldn't want them. The club aren't going to tell them ''you're keeping this warm until Ramsdale comes back'', they're going to say this is now your place to keep. Show us what you can do.

Wasn't he going to PSG? Would be surprised to see this one, he's well above us and Championship level.

From our POV we save on wages for a year, and we get an upfront fee as a loan, which I believe will class as direct income as it's not directly linked to any profit made on him - and he'd still be on our books as owned by us.

I'd say Bazunu is one of these 'club pet project' types, so the narrative fed to the coaching staff is to play him I'd expect. This is why clubs appoint yes men as managers, who go along with whatever they pitch. Now, I still hold out hope that Will Still isn't a yes man and he will have his own strong views on the GK situation. He doesn't strike me as stupid.

He doesn't get overcriticized at all. He's judged on pure facts over 2 full seasons with us. Season 1 - worst keeper in the PL by a margin. Season 2 - Worst keeper in the Championship by a margin, promoted in spite of. Season 3 - Injured, went on loan to a very low quality league 2nd half of the season and still struggled with similar 'expected' save stats. He was listed for loan all January, and we had no takers - only ended up at Leige because it was managed by his former youth coach @ City. Even if you take stats out of it and just look at him with your own eyes, you can quickly see that he's not a capable goal keeper at a high level. He's not physical enough, not tall enough and his wrists are not strong enough. He doesn't command and he cannot make saves, unless they are directly at him. I wanted him to do well but the bloke is done and we cannot rely on him next season. Ramsdale may come back to us next summer, sure, but we still need to take this opportunity to move on from Bazunu and McCarthy. This is now the acid test for this 'new' recruitment and club setup.

Dragan did speak about a loan deal for Ramsdale way back, something that keeps him with us, but allows him to stay in the PL. I assume this will be a rather chunky loan fee, probably more than the Bednarek sale. The benefit is that we now have time to replace him. I feared this would drag right up until the last moment, giving us no time to replace. (it still might, but tbh these sorts of things get done fairly quickly as it's just a loan)

Held MGW by gunpoint and got him to sign a new contract, whilst saying how good Mr Maranakis is for the club. (some of that may not have happened)

You'd hope so, maybe we were daft on his initial contract a year or so ago and didn't put a relegation clause in it? I guess that's one way of looking at it, it's a contract renewal to help us financially. But the 3 years still feels too long, however it's painted tbh.

I thought Fraser started well for us, bit of a worker but his quality level wasn't high and I wasn't massively for signing him as a PL side - didn't think he was good enough anymore. He's probably a decent option as a squad player, but we need to sort out that starting left wing berth. Edozie is Edozie, blind allys.com is what he specialises in. I'd personally take the cash if we were offered decent value for him. Fraser is not a starter for a team aspiring for what we're aspiring to do. So, we need a starting top quality LW - assuming Dibling and Robinson compete for the right flank. BBD on the left is a non-starter for me, he's slow, cumbersome and technically incredibly limited. In a team which will rely on width and fast transitions, he's the worst player you could ever have in that role. Sadly, we won't get any takers - so he'll be an option up front for me.