Badger

There is no massiver club than them.

True, although the continual qualifying for European football is not a fair comparison that we can necessarily aachieve. Many of the clubs who continually produce the quality players are probably bigger clubs in their domestic set up than we are. Ajax are probably the best example of this, Celtic another.

Good point. Leaving after only a handful of games for us his career could easily go the same way.

My son went to the Cheltenham v skates match. Cheltenham missed a golden opprtunity to make it 2-0 at one stage. On the way back from the ground a civilised skate told 'young badger' that "no disrespect mate but we need to be despatching teams like you if we're seriously looking at going up". Maybe the penny is beginning to drop with some skates.... The other observation was how most people were knobbed off by TCWTB and the persistent ringing through the match.

Some valid points but the comparison with Clough's Nottm Forest is a little flawed to be honest. I recall Birtles and Woodcock jumping ship,and eventually Shilton moved on but to us rather than one of the big four. Generally though you're right he did keep the bulk of his squad together for two/three seasons. But times were diffferent, and possibly there wasn't such a gulf in salaies between Forest and the big four at the time. If you want another comparison, Leicester lost Kante despite winning the league, and offering CL football. They did of course hang onto Mahrez and Vardy although are paying £100,000 wages.Even so, I think everyone expects Mahrez will still p!ss off at the end of the season.

It will be pure pantomime villain stuff really, not even Redkrappp's first return with QPR was that bad despite the gearing up for it on here. After a first five minutes of booing it settled down again. Sad to say, but gone are the days of a 90 minute hate-fest, the sort of thing reserved for John Bailly on his first few returns with Blackburn, and then the dug-out pioneers. Scouse c^nt.

At the time I also remember reading they any deal with his club was complicated as they wanted to wait until the end of the Norwegian season before considering selling, ( more likely that they wanted to await better offers) and Saints desperately needed reinforcements so we went with Egil O. By the time we resumed interest in Flo Chelsea were also bidding and we couldn't match Matthew Harding's spending on wages.

Gets my vote. Beyond belief that no one has tried to replicate it since. I'd also be happy with the navy/sky away kit from that era.

Interesting analogy which I hadn't considered before, but yes it does look a bit like that.

Perhaps its the Chinese equivalent of Secure Retirement or whatever they were called. That worked out well didn't it?

He should fit in well then.

According to that we are paying marginally more than Dortmund. If true, pretty incredible really, that we're paying more than Germany's second largest club who can get 80,000 crowds (even allowing for the fact their ticket prices are more reasonable than ours).

Wasn't he tied up with the Barry the Briefcase 'consortium' ?

Could be a takeover from a Chinese investor:

Does make good reading. Imagine what they'll be like if they get turned over down here. Some good quotes on that link. Some likening it to time under Martinez. Wonder if they've seen him strolling around in training. I'm sure there are more. Glass ceiling, well and truly smashed, but leaving them with shards of glass in their ar$es as they crash through it. Anyway they can content themselves with knowing how they invented dug outs.

Out of interest where does Noah Liebherr fit into the order of things ?

Now that would be a major turn up, if they were to install him as a CEO.

Don't you think Saints & Leicester are possible exceptions to the rule though ? Think Venky's, Tan, Hull City, Villa (Lerner), and so on.

Spot on. Rather reluctantly I have to agree, but my preference is to maintain the stability of the Liebherr ownership. Although Leicester obviously buck the trend, the Far Eastern ownership does not look too great an attraction although its early days for Wolves, Villa and so on. Beware of SISU MK II.

Big Ron rather than Chivers for me. And Channon of course. And Mark Dennis. And Niemi.

There were grounds for realistic concern over the fitness of both Austin and Rodriguez.

Not controversial in the slightest, although I hope it doesn't take the thread off on a tangent. Biggest cause of regret is not reinforcing our options up front, as many posted on here that neither Long nor Rodriguez could be relied upon as regular goalscorers, even IF they are fit. Not sure what the attacking options are for Thursday, Austin, Austin, and perhaps Austin.

Kane wasn't as prolific during hs loans out as you might suspect. 2011 → Leyton Orient (loan) 18 (5 goals) 2012 → Millwall (loan) 22 (7) 2012–2013 → Norwich City (loan) 3 (0) 2013 → Leicester City (loan) 13 (2 Taken from Wikipedia. Roughly one goal in three at Orient, and Millwall. Both at a lower level than Gallagher is currently playing in. To be fair though perhaps Gallagher's time at MK might also be factored in. Of course comparisons are pretty useless, but there was nothing really in his time away, from the stats above to suggest Kane would turn out to be the player he has become for Spurs. Just hope Gallagher maintains his form at Blackburn and returns as the player we hope him to be.

I doubt we'd release Bertrand soon to leave ourselves with two inexperienced and to some extent unproven players competing for that position. At the end of the season of course things may be different. The most likely outcome is the loan out of Targett or McQueen once RB's fitness is fully proven but even this could depend on our likely fixtures in the new year (League, EFL, EL, FA Cup).

Think we should start a sweepstake as to when the press start linking him with bigger clubs, Arsenal in particular. If we knock them out of the EFL Cup then I suspect the rumbles may start in early December.