HarvSFC

6. Why don’t the club announce contract extensions for McCarthy and Stephens, who are first team players. We find out their new deals through reports in the Athletic.

Kane to beat Shearer's Premier League goal scoring record at Newcastle.

Man City brought in players such as Jo, Ben Haim, Wright-Phillips, ageing Bridge, Bellamy and Given, alongside the big name signings of Kompany, De Jong and Robinho and the ever consistent Zabaleta in their first window after the big takeover. Taking them from 9th to 10th under the guidance of Mark Hughes. The next summer they brought in more Premier League experience in Barry, Santa Cruz, Tevez, Adebayor, Kolo Toure, Lescott and Vieira. So, it took two seasons before they worked their strategy out and targeted mostly star names such as Boateng, Yaya Toure, Silva and at that time Balotelli. The current Newcastle team is also worse than the one Man City started with and even Everton, who went on a spending spree the summer of taking Koeman, so it doesn't guarantee them any success at the moment. Everyone thought QPR were here to stay when they were signing Ferdinand, Kranjcar, Hoilett, Cesear, Park, Remy, Bosingwa and Samba, but they were all over the hill and looking for one final pay day.

Just to continue the Mike Dean hate train, he went to view the monitor for the Jan Bednarek penalty in the 9-0 vs Man United last season and still decided it was a foul.

Yep, we saw how well VAR can be used in the Euros, it was working in the background, taking nothing away from the match itself. Whereas, in the Premier League, it's still the forefront of matches and causing much debate. The standard of refereeing in this country is just shocking, and what's scarier is that the Championship officiating is still much worse than what we see every week. A lot is said about how great the league is, but the officiating quality doesn't match and it's the same old officials getting it wrong every year. Seems to be a job for the boys. Just the other week, Anthony Taylor showed himself up by giving a player who hadn't been booked a second yellow card and then sending him off. Embarrassing. Lets not start on the ex-referees who are used on TV and are too scared to go against the decision of their ex-colleague, again all very cliquey.

I expect he’d go to a better club than us, unless we try the offering of first team football tactic and then he’d be quite the coup. Interestingly, Fulham regularly seem to be allowing their brightest youngsters to run their contracts down and leave for a pittance. Both Dembele and Elliott have left for compensation fees in recent years.

Nice. Hopefully this and a well earned rest from his suspension will motivate him to get back to where he was last season. Not that I doubt his attitude, it just isn't coming off for him so far this season.

It still bewilders me how Cedric, Hojbjerg, Vestergaard and a past his peak Bertrand earned steps up to the clubs competing for a top six place. I suppose at least Hojbjerg does a job, despite a lot of his game being average. But, none of them stood out here when they left and it's not a surprise to see they aren't enjoying any success at their new clubs. Just earning more money, I suppose, which is the key.

The issue with Dean isn't that he has a dislike/vendetta against us, it's that he thrives off the attention that comes with being a referee and enjoys making the big decisions that seem "soft", because he knows it will get people talking about him. This has always been clear when he's the match referee and has been thrown at him many a time before. Now he can do the same from the VAR set-up and even as a fan of Tranmere, when he knows the Sky cameras are about, he's going to put on a show.

Of course they have to put the momentum back with Chelsea, the match was too even.

McCarthy’s having a great game.

Ah well, see you in two weeks.

Him and Jordan Robertson were quite the strike force. Artur Boruc is also at Legia, but wasn’t playing tonight.

It’s getting close to the winter months too, so Pelle wouldn’t be any good.

Wanyama retiring at 30. Perhaps he is older… Edit: Oh, it’s an international retirement from Kenya.

A draw will do in the manufactured rivalry. Stops the rat from going top and keeps Crystal Palace within our mini-league.

Serious suggestions only. Looking at Derby's current status, he has a similar effect on clubs as his uncle did. Finished 6th in the Championship with a team of Mount, Wilson, Tomori, Cole and many seasoned Championship players, who wouldn't have been cheap. They signed Waghorn for £5m under him... Jumped at the chance to manage Chelsea straight away, who were jumping on the bandwagon of the former legend turned manager fad, and also because they couldn't attract anyone under the embargo. He did well in his first season, finishing fourth. But, the 12 defeats that season was still the joint highest amount of losses they've suffered in a season since 1998, and like Gerrard, Solskjaer and Rodgers, when it comes to Europe, they're found wanting and out of their depth. But, we won't have that problem. The second season, was when he fell off. I get that they weren't all his signings, but Tuchel's showing the strengths of that squad now. There were also reports of him alienating players during his second season and the squad were turning against him. Rudiger, who is now Chelsea's second best defender behind Silva and Tomori, who's proving a success at AC Milan being two of the most heavily reported. This aligns with the way he was reported to be like as a player in the dressing room alongside John Terry, as the "bulldogs", getting manager's sacked and alienating the foreign group. Ultimately, he's just a bit of a prick, and Jody Morris isn't too great either.

Who would we even attract to the club when we tell them they have a transfer budget of £0, until we sell your best players and replace them with bargain copies? Howe is the name constantly spoken of, and he didn't work with those constraints at the much less reputable Bournemouth. It's the ownership that is the problem at this club and we're not going anywhere while Gao remains in charge. If this was Newcastle, Everton, West Ham, who actually still get investments put into their club, you wouldn't hear the end of it. But, nothing comes from Southampton, for whatever reason. The academy's now non-existent, the first team is seemingly scraping by and looking for three worse teams each year. I don't know what it's going to take.

That’s well shit from both centre-backs. Completely sold themselves and let him through on goal.

We saw Bertrand’s best years, and in those years he could have made the step up to a more prestigious club, but stayed here for whatever reason. Vestergaard, yeah, we were fortunate to get £15m for him. No better than Yoshida, bar the diagonal passing.

Nigel Adkins masterminded a 2-2 draw against the Skates.

They only scored 16 first half goals in the entirety of last season. Their fans might as well switch on after 45.

Coventry top of the Championship. They’d be an interesting promoted club, still owned by SISU.

Looking at it regionally, us and Brighton are the only two south coast clubs playing in the Premier League's youth set-up. Brighton, however, are currently joint top of the division one alongside Man City, while we are joint bottom with Nottingham Forest and Burnley in the division below. Brighton are our nearest competition in the youth set-ups and they've leapfrogged us massively, even if we did beat them to Livramento, which I suspect came down to who could offer more first team football. I wonder what they've been doing, that we haven't. We certainly got complacent with the academy set-up, that much is clear.