HarvSFC

That's a horrendous take.

Fuck sake. Although, Napoli are chucking in £35m bids for Max Kilman, so...

The Newcastle subs got me. 1-1 after 1-0 up because Selles apparently told the team to sit back for the entirety of the second half. 70th minute comes and he brings on Elyounoussi, A. Armstrong and Maitland-Niles in a triple sub. 10 minutes later and we're 3-1 down.

Our forward play was a lot worse without him at the end of last season, than it was with him. With him we were missing chances, without him, we weren't working those chances. He'll be a good player in the Premier League for a team that plays to his strengths. We haven't by making him the main man for a long time now. If he got a partner like Ings again, him and the team he goes to will be laughing for the fee we can demand in the final year on his contract.

Three far superior goalkeepers to Johnstone and Bazunu were available last summer. Neto, Leno and Henderson, moving to the three promoted clubs, so probably would have been open to coming here too. One cost £8m, cheaper than Bazunu, one was a free and the other a loan. Only issue is their resale, I guess, but then the Premier League money would have counteracted that. Forest didn't ignore the importance of a good goalkeeper by bringing in both Henderson and Navas.

Joe Aribo didn't make it past the first beep in the bleep test.

Liam Delap's going on loan to Hull. Doesn't look like we've renewed our interest after a couple of poor loans last season.

Need a safe pair of hands in the Championship promotion push. The difference between Davis and Bialkowski when we were last down here was night and day in a then very good team. Almost as though a young goalkeeper couldn’t handle the pressure and expectation of the occasion considering he has since become a middling Championship goalkeeper. Goalkeeper’s need a presence, to be able to communicate and organise their box, to pull off a top save every now and then, to come out and claim crosses and in the modern era to kick the ball. All of which I saw none of in Bazunu last season and he was supposed to be good at kicking!

Don't think I'm too far off, you can see the Watford fans' view of him here: https://wfcforums.com/index.php?threads/hamza-choudhury.59615/page-4 A team that finished 11th in the Championship. You'd hope our scouts could find better. Another Schneiderlin would be perfect. "Doesn’t qualify as a footballer for me given his complete inability to play a simple pass more than a few yards. Completely the good bits of his game for me. Seriously hope we don’t mistake undoubted hard work for skill and potential and sign him in the summer. Building a team around him would be potentially ruinous." "Said something similar in the match thread. He's a headless chicken, and one of the main reasons we have zero control of games" "Yep. He's got the footballing equivalent of ADHD unfortunately.I actually think he's not too bad on the ball. He can carry it and he's fairly athletic, it's just he lacks any quality with his passing" "He is good at winning the ball then passing it straight back to our opponents!" "I agree. I like his energy and ball winning, but he’s substandard on the ball. Just gives it away far too often. For £6m I’m sure there are better options for a midfielder with a better combo of a passing and tackling ratio."

From Swansea, I'd welcome Wood, a good young centre-back with potential, frequently in the England youth teams. Manning, in need of a left-back and he boasts a good record in Martin's system. Grimes, good technical player, knows the league and Martin's system. Piroe, much needed goal scorer, and he does a bit more in terms of ball carrying. Like a Championship Broja. Cabango and Fulton who we have also been linked with, don't leave me too impressed. From what I read regarding Cabango, he was Swansea's version of Elyounossi in that the manager kept selecting him, but the fans were left bewildered as to why. While Fulton's 29, played for Falkirk, Swansea, Oldham and Wigan and never been capped by Scotland. Not a great CV. Ex-Martin player, Downes would also be good, a bit of a coup, but would probably require JWP going the other way. Choudhury, I'm not too sure on. We're missing a Romeu type player and Choudhury is a less glamorous version. But, he could also be too far the other way. Choudhury can't really play football, he's just a bit of a thug. Remember him putting in a couple of awful tackles in the Premier League. No red cards last season, but 13 yellows, so while his ball winning stats look good, he is also missing a few games through suspension. I guess he could be the hard bastard we're missing, but again, does such a limited player fit with Martin? I wouldn't be too upset with £25m for Bella-Kotchap, to be honest, either.

The issue with last summer was the lack of a plan and the old belief of maintaining the £15-£20m price range, which doesn't get a lot in the Premier League these days. 15 players signed across both windows, too scattergun. We could have signed 4 players for £35m - A goalkeeper, a centre-back a centre-mid and a striker and the team would have been serviceable depending on the quality of those coming, while spending the same amount of money. We bought VvD for quite a high fee of £13m eight years ago, making him the most expensive Dutch defender. But, we still made a £62m profit on him and there probably wasn't as many add-ons as we see in all our deals these days because we paid a good initial fee. The club, weirdly has just been ignorant to inflation. You see Brighton making £40m bids for Levi Colwill this summer and Brentford bidding £30m for Brennan Johnson. The two current benchmark clubs. But, you couldn't imagine us spending fees like that, which is what you need to pay to get a proven player these days. £10m is expensive for a Championship signing, Ruben Neves and Britt Assombalonga are the record transfers for this level at £15m, so we should at least be able to sign some top players down here.

A club who signed Chris Wood for £25m and Anthony Gordon for £45m and a club who now has infinite resources can't pick up Livramento for £12m. Livramento has three years on his contract and a £37m buyback clause, meaning that if it wasn't for his injury, we expected to him to at least become a £37m player when he signed, and is still possible. £12m is a joke fee to start, Bazunu cost that and Ryan Fraser is a horrible little mercenary given what he did at Bournemouth and would only add to the reported poor atmosphere at the club.

The Swansea coaching team, apparently. Probably the most concerning thing about the article, we don't have any senior coaches at this moment in time, which is why they weren't announced alongside Martin. While a lot of clubs started their pre-season testing on Friday. After the shambles of last season and the past year of Sports Republic's ownership, it would have been nice to not have any early summer drama going into the new season.

The overriding memory is that "header" against Grimsby. Get rid, need dependable, safe players at the back in a promotion run. His erratic play could cost us a lot.

I thought I may have missed him doing well at Bolton, but he only scored one goal in 13 appearances there. Amazingly, he made 12 Premier League appearances. No loss at all.

Anyone know when pre-season starts? A few clubs in the league went back yesterday.

Martin and Kraft have talked about winning promotion this season. That's the expectation, for once we're talking about ambition prior to a season, now it's over to them to prove they're not just words. That's what they need to be judged on, once the competitive fixtures start.

Look at Bournemouth showing off by sacking their manager and appointing a new one on the same day. We did it once with Pochettino and have been relaxed ever since.

Nope, JWP, Romeu and Tella were the players the summer Ings left. Ings did the summer before, the sash and blue away kit.

Normally a player in a kit unveiling means they’re staying. Interesting that it’s JWP and Mara. Two players I would be supportive of staying. Or, it’s a case of if JWP wasn’t in it we’d all know that he was obviously leaving.

Neves leaving Wolves for Saudi Arabia is a bit of a surprise.

Sorry lads, but I don't think there's a chance Swansea are in agreement with paying Martin's wages because we don't want to announce him until we can officially reveal Jason Wilcox has completed his notice period and has joined the club. All media have reported the contractual fee dispute, which is probably the reason. Personally, don't think we have much to stand on legally either when it was out in the public that we were approaching Martin while we still had at least one Premier League fixture left to play, as a Premier League club. At the end of the day, we're just being our usual ponderous, slow and "relaxed" selves, as we were in January with a striker and as we were last summer, again with the striker. Not too much to worry about at the moment with players on holiday, but we're hardly an attractive place for new signings at the moment, who you'd expect talks to start with now given we can kind of say Russell Martin is the new manager, he wants you, but it could fall through and we'll appoint a different manager who won't play you.

After the China experiment, I wouldn't be too surprised if he tried out Saudi Arabia.

Reading are a mess: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65929124