Lighthouse

All those gravy and curry stains will really stand out on a white shirt.

11 years ago today we spanked Gillingham. After an indifferent start and minus ten, it marked the start of a monster run of form, lasting nearly 3 years unabated.

Considering he signed a new contract recently and we’re on the verge of bringing in our third, hopefully decent, new player I can’t see him wanting out any time soon. Carrillo and Boufal will be gone by next summer at the very latest and the end will be in sight for Fraser and Hoedt. That’s some serious meat off the wage bill.

It could have been a grey area and we thought it was worth a punt for the player we would have been getting. I seem to remember Pahars had two applications rejected before his WP was issued, then there we’re all sort of shenanigans with that Ukrainian kid in the academy.

Or it’s part of a negotiation tactic to make other targets think we’re tight for cash (which isn’t exactly stretching the truth right now). I bet if we made a West Ham style statement of backing our manager with big signings, teams would be asking for £20m for the same players.

He made 21 apps, was injured in January for a couple of months, then made his comeback in the last game before the season was cancelled. Not bad for a young player in half a season.

I think Jack Schitt, AR-10, Ekon Okereke, Earthworm Jim and James McCann are going to predict it in about 10 minutes.

21 in all comps, according to Soccerbase.

You're getting upset about imaginary scenarios in your head.

Perhaps it was Roma who made the actual bid, he’s just a few miles out of position.

It’s not really a competition. They’re all lying hypocrites and the only thing they’re genuinely sorry for is the fact that they got caught.

Satisfied but not thrilled, provided the 1 loan is a decent CM to replace Hoj. If Salisu is half decent, we can make par in midfield and up front and eagle the defence. That puts us hopefully a bit better than last year and in the 10-15th bracket in the table. Next summer Carrillo and Boufal will definitely be off the books for good, which gives us a bit more freedom with wages and hopefully a new owner.

Even Pellè I remember as doing better against the worse teams, if anything he used to slow down our counter attacks and some people didn’t like him. He was, however, good at getting the end of something on a cross against teams like Sundeland, Stoke, QPR, Newcastle etc. Bit of a moot point now we have Ings but with GP I always felt we had a goal in us when teams came to SMS to defend.

I seem to remember the vast majority of people had their doubts from the beginning. There was probably some smarty pants trying to be quirky by engineering his goal per minutes ratio to look good but it’s not the forum mantra Turkish has been endlessly reminding us of for the last 2.5 years.

No, you're thinking of Neil Shipperley.

We were basically safe when we beat Palace in mid January. Anyway, Barkley has done bugger all since he was injured at Everton 3 years ago. He could find a second wind at Villa but I can’t say I’m green with envy.

Didn’t really seem to upset Huddersfield defenders in the cup last season.

So you’ve assumed that we definitely won’t get anyone in this week, even on loan?

Toby wanted to go to Spurs, nothing wrong with the terms of the deal as far as we were concerned. I agree with your main point though. If it’s a financial choice between a decent-ish loan player or a crap one on a perm. To add to the collection we’re loaning out next summer, we’d obviously prefer the former.

We already know we don’t have the money to spend on a £30m midfielder, so the meme doesn’t really make sense. The first caption should have read £15m on a cheap punt, like Elyounoussi or Juanmi.

I don’t know the ins and outs of work permits but it could be that his application depended on first team and international appearances being made up until very recently. He could have been one of those who was worth a try, given the price but it was always an outside bet getting a permit. Clearly the club felt that this was worth a try, given our budget constraints.

I don’t remember him ever being ‘abused’. He received a fair amount of criticism but then his performances here were wildly inconsistent. He didn’t look like a world beater until the last 2 months of the 2016 season and had gone missing for prolonged periods of both seasons.

Come off it! As if they wouldn’t have waited another week if there was a genuine chance of another £10k a week in it. This is just a generic, "there were other clubs interested but I had my heart set on Club X," signing statement.

I agree, proven by Peiters, Propper and Wijnaldum.

There’s clearly more to this than is in the public domain. I don’t care what anyone says about big clubs and history, players and agents don’t choose Eredivisie over the Premier League in 2020. As skint as we are, I can’t see that having sold PEH we couldn’t budget £8m for a replacement. If things really are THAT bad, why bid for him in the first place? I think McK was the one we ‘missed out on’.