Saint_lambden

Downs seems to fit the profile of the type of player we’re looking for and that will fit Still’s system and style so you have to trust Spors and his scouting team. Of the major nations, German football is probably the closest to English football (compared to Spain and France) in terms of style so hopefully he’ll be able to settle in and get up to speed quickly with the Championship.

Sunderland about to sign Petrovic (GK) from Chelsea. I wonder if that will lead us to stepping up our interest in Anthony Patterson who's been linked with us the past couple of transfer windows. Would represent pure profit from a PSR point of view for them and he's likely now to be back-up there which - at 25 - I doubt he would want.

Couldn't persuade him to come here whilst in the Premier League, not sure why anyone thinks we'd be able to in a league lower.

Would rather Tyler Morton

Marco Grüll...

Absolutely no chance with any of those in bold. Even the others we'd be looking at £15m-£20m to buy from direct rivals for promotion unless they're in their last year of their contract.

Don't think it's unreasonable for us to ask them to pay 5m euros for someone who scored 17 goals in 25 appearances for them 2 years ago.

They sold 170m euros worth last summer and only spent about a third of that so will have plenty to play with.

We enquired for Downs but Koln want a fair bit more than we initially pitched at. He's out of contract next summer so if he's not willing to sign a new one (at the moment he's refusing the extension on the table) then they will sell rather than let him go on a free next year, but it will take more than 5 million euros.

Another season in the Championship for Charles, as a key figure in the middle of the park alongside Downes, would be the best for his development. Hopefully then he can win promotion for us and we can be confident he'll be as ready as he's ever going to be to make the step up to the Premier League. Being based in the north and not far from Manchester may well be a pull though, as well as the assumption that Leeds would probably be able to pay more in wages. Anything less than £30m wouldn't be worth our while, especially on his current trajectory.

Apart from two of them being Irish.

Not seen it mentioned on here yet - but we were linked yesterday with Rudoni at Coventry. Excellent player and another who's very good in the air. Looked a constant threat towards the end of the season at arriving late in the box to get on the end of crosses and bagged a few goals as a result. Probably would only happen if Fernandes does leave to fill the attacking midfielder void but you can see the profile of player we're looking at has flipped from being much less technical and good in possession to a focus on tall, athletic types. Long may that continue as we've been missing that in abundance for a long time.

Have renewed. I mean, it can hardly be any less enjoyable than the season just gone so the only way is up in my view. No VAR to contend with; we might actually win some games and we've actually got someone accountable (and seemingly fairly competent) in charge of the football side of things who is not messing around in terms of getting key appointments in place early.

If we're talking about CBs, Tanganga would be perfect. He's a monster in the air so would be a big threat at set-pieces which Still's teams are so strong on, great in the tackle and very athletic. Shouldn't cost too much either as his release clause is only a few million.

Robinson starting, Dibling on the bench. Stewart also in from the off.

Ramsdale, Aribo, Fernandes, Wellington before he came off and maybe Sulemana the only ones that really come out of that with any credit. The rest were shite. All too little, too late in the second half and thank fuck we've only got 13 more games until we can try (good luck to the new sporting director with that) to bin off some of these wasters. Incredible that we continue to sell out every week home and away. We deserve better.

They both scream of a complete lack of strategy. Our 'development' signings (Edwards, Wellington, the lads on loan in Turkey, O'Brien-Whitmarsh etc.) look promising but we're getting 1 or 2/10 right on the senior side of things, not helped by lurching from one style of football to another with each manager change we make. If you look at our signings, they are pretty much all players that cannot get in the first team of their existing clubs, even the 'marquee' ones from this past summer like Fernandes and Ramsdale fall in that bracket. So we're regularly gambling that they might be good enough for the level rather than knowing they are. Of course the latter comes with a £ premium but the likes of Bournemouth; Brentford and Brighton put us to shame with how many 'hits' they have compared to our misses. The new DoF/Sporting Director will hopefully go some way to improving things.

Was 12,000 there for Swansea game. I'd guess after the win last weekend, because it's a better opponent this time, it being Saturday 3pm rather than Sunday 4.30pm and the fact it's not on TV will push it closer to 16k this time around. No idea why the club think the stadium being half empty benefits the atmosphere, their finances or the players. Should be £10 for adults, £5 for kids and you'd be looking at closer to 25k attendance.

Only a £2m release clause in his contract apparently. May be he gets snapped up by a PL team for that price, then.

We should be all over Tanganga in the summer. Been colossal for Millwall this season.

Anthony Taylor refereeing too, which should cheer everyone up who's feeling down about the game.

We struggled to beat Stoke's reserves mate so don't give up hope yet!

Let's be honest, Onuachu isn't very good.

In not sacking Martin, Ankersen seems to have gone from “If it’s not broken, break it” to “If it’s broken, don’t try and fix it”.

We have a 100% chance of going down with Martin in charge for the foreseeable future. He won't last the season but like with Nathan Jones, if they leave it too late and past the point of our more winnable run of fixtures (post Wolves basically) then it'll be too late, with the chances of any manager worth their salt coming in very slim indeed. With a semi-competent manager installed now/very soon that survival likelihood reduces to maybe 70% but the board's delusion and lack of ambition forever astounds me. All we want is for the club to give itself the best possible chance of survival. If we fall short in May after giving it a real good go then so be it but at this rate we'll be effectively dead and buried in a month's time like Sheffield United and Burnley were for so much of last season. Perhaps SR are comfortable in the knowledge that we should be fine financially if we go back down as we're sitting on a likely £40m asset in Dibling that we'll be able to sell to a top club and sustain a promotion push again, along with one or two others (Fernandes, Ramsdale etc.) that would attract good fees.