Lighthouse

Surely this has to be a full strength team as they desperately need to figure out how to play together. I'd give McC a game just for match sharpness and rest R Job because of his age but otherwise, full strength. McC Maddy THB Stephens Manning Downes Charles AA MF Fraser Stewart

Well, I for one wouldn’t. More to the point, collectively I’d definitely take the front four options we have now over him and Mara. It’s really not acceptable that none of them are scoring.

Then at least play the ‘terrible’ players in a good system. Have BBD central, AA out wide and at least have something to stick to up front.

We have Archer, BBD, Fernandes, Robinson and Edwards. Plus Charles is clearly a much better player and Stewart is actually available for selection. They’re easily comparable in quality to the players you’ve listed. I couldn’t say definitively which squad is better but we’re not miles apart in terms of quality in the way you suggest. Including Tella is odd, he had already left by this time two years ago. If you’re going to say that then I’ll include Dibling.

We have five very different strikers, four of which have proven to be very capable at this level in the past. Che Adams was not some kind of superstar that you can’t get promoted without. If Still can’t get goals out of those players then we have a serious problem because they would get a game for 90% of teams in this league.

If nothing else Martin knew to stick Adams front and centre, Armstrong out wide and managed to get just shy of 40 goals from the pair of them. It’s early days but things have got to start getting better than this pretty quickly. We’ve got DD, Archer, BBD or Stewart to play up there with Armstrong. You can argue to toss as to whether they are good enough individually but every man and his dog has always known that going for none of the above and putting AA up top alone is the stupidest option.

Mediocre? Which games have you been watching, he’s looked utterly abysmal so far.

F**k me that was bad, from pretty much all involved. Five at the back is fine, if your WBs are pushing high up the pitch but ours seemed to play more like traditional FB just with three CBs in the middle. Nothing in front of them and trying to go long and central to a dwarf #9. At home to Stoke that really is a poor mindset, Armstrong leading the line, Robinson the creativity and nine ball recyclers behind them. Second half we got forward more but it was barely an improvement. Pass, pass, pass, floaty cross from deep straight down Johansson’s throat. Downs, I know it’s early days but he looks like Onuachu with a fancy hair-do. Downes, an absolute mug for their first goal and poor generally. Still took nine minutes to make a sub after the red card, used up nearly a third of our remaining time. Stewart should have been on at HT for Wood, up ahead of AA. Not doing that immediately against ten men, just to see how it goes is really poor and indecisive on his part. Early days but big improvement needed. Still no goals from any striker in four matches too.

This is true, I think CaM's post can more accurately be edited to say:

Perhaps, when you were 19 years old, you were so mentally head strong that you could perform at your absolute best week after week without exception. Perhaps you were imune to the weight of expectation, the scrutiny of the nation's press and the frustration of 30,000 people watching your every move. Perhaps working in an enviroment where almost everyone else was incompetent would never have affected your performances at all. All those things might be true, however not all 19 year olds necessarily have the same levels of mental resolve that you clearly did. Furthermore, he is under no more obligation to sign a contract with any club than I am to renew mine with Virgin sodding Media.

He struggled as a teenage debutant playing in the second worst team in the history of the PL but undoubtedly has talent. Now he's leaving to play in a better team, no doubt for a pretty substantial pay rise. I've seen absolutely nothing about him to suggest that he is acting 'billy big bollocks'. There's nothing to get all precious about here, he's leaving because he has potential far above Championship level, as we always knew he would. He's no different to Walcott, Bale, AOC, Lavia, Livramento and Kenwyne, although the latter was an absolute helmet, granted.

We’ve got the best plugs, by which I mean the electrical variety. If you want sink plugs or butt plugs, go to Slovakia and Equatorial Guinea, respectively.

I can’t see either party wanting to activate a one year extension clause. I’ve no idea what the details are, either of his contract or the loan deal with Nantes, all I know is I hope his is the last we hear of the useless waste of a squad number.

We're enthusiastic because Sugawara is hopeless, Bree is mediocre, even in the Championship, and this bloke seems to have DAJF Brentford getting promoted from this division.

I'd hope so, might give us the option of going straight to a back four and moving Fraser forward. Baz Maddy THB Quarshie Wely Downes Charles Fraser MF Robinson Striker tombola

Merchandise idea; a T-shirt featuring Roerslev dressed up like one of the Gallagher brothers and the caption, ‘Mads for it!’

We were in a relegation scrap last year and let Shea Charles go out on loan, is he sh*te? I know little about this guy but on the face of it, he looks a solid RB for this level with just the right balance of youth versus experience. I’m not sure I quite get this negativity.

What? Having two solid players in every position is pretty much the cornerstone of building any decent squad. If Bree and Mads both get injured, we’ll just have to fill in with someone else, same as we did if Richardson and Butterfield or Cedric and Martina both got injured simultaneously.

Yep, just as I suspected last week. *Runs to Wikipedia*

I think I was supposed to be playing CB, shows how sh*t my positioning was. I think it was the WBA fans game they didn’t turn up for.

They didn’t get him for peanuts. £7m for a Championship LB back then was a very good price.

I still think our squad is light a Jehovah’s Witness or two but otherwise I agree.

I fundamentally believe that any player we bring in should be able to play 90 minutes more often than not. If Downes or Charles picks up my injury for a month or two, how is a guy who’s only fit enough for half an hour here and there any use? I don’t know to what extent his legs are gone, he was never the most mobile in his prime, but I just can’t envisage him bringing ‘freshness’ to any team.