Baird of the land

Annoying that he has left, especially as he’s moving to a mid table club not a top 6 one. All the chat about testing himself at a higher level is clearly bs. Glad at least we’ve got it sorted and got a fee, rather than let it drag on. Hopefully we can quickly sort a decent replacement.

To be honest barring injury you’d expect Ralph to want starting xi to play near enough 90 minutes anyway. wonder if there might be a Covid element, not wanting any of the other xi exposed more than they need to be before they get their own 90 min game.

I’m not opposed to the notion of obafemi going for the sort of fee mentioned but nor am I desperate to see him leave.

Happy we seem to be avoiding him.

The fact is we don’t want to sell, he’s got a long contract, an England international. I find it nuts the suggestion that we wouldn’t make someone pay over the odds (50-60m etc) if they are going to force our hand.

Yeah I can’t see us even seriously thinking about any derisory bid under 50m.

Excluding other important factors and just talking of finances. The instant you accepted that fee(low fee imo), the prices for any replacements would go up x% as teams would know they can get some of that cash, so you’d get less with it.

I’d personally i’d Say given the market, his contract length and his importance to us it would have to be over 50m to give it any serious thought and higher to actually pull the trigger.

Was googling him randomly recently, surprised to find he was without a club. a player I was really excited about when I first saw him and was really disappointed it all went so pear shaped here of his own making and Swansea ended up benefitting and getting that finished premier league product for a number of years.

Doubt Villa are truly seriously interested if that extremely low offer is true.

Would have no problems with notion of him ending up signing a contract one thing I don’t want to see is a contract run down scenario.

Surprised at the fee. Thought he’d go for more.

I’d definitely like to see us bring in an additional source of goals. when the backups are tella who at least to me still seems more naturally a 10 and obafemi who’s definitely still got huge question marks over him after being sidelined last season(out of favour and then injured)

Given their backup left back is injured you'd assume he'll end up having to wait till January to perhaps leave.

Very good display in 2nd half. Redmond looked more like 2 seasons ago version and tella looked dangerous again.

An extra striker and a cover fullback are essentials to me. some competition for Romeu would be nice too. then either ings renewing contract or him sold and a replacement purchased. vestergaard new contract or sale.

Hopefully he can help U23's get some sort of defensive base to build from.

The main thing for me is I’m struggling with notion that Phil Jones is only 29. He seems to have been about forever.

Tadic / katalinic from what was formerly Yugoslavia too. Maybe we should buy more.

He played for Blackburn today. If he was on verge on joining us you’d doubt that would be the case.

While I can understand being interested from a talent perspective, you’d think there would have been red flags if there was background research done. I can’t believe his attitude just developed at his time here. was reminding myself of the timeline of transfers. That Pellegrino time was something special, hoedt, lemina and Carrillo, what value we got from that.

I have concerns about how our u23 coaches have been working to develop players. Slattery just another case of someone with supposed talent who has never kicked on.

Hopefully it’ll help us get him out on loan rather than us hear Ralph saying that Shane being back is as good as a new signing.

Well Motherwell just got embarassed by lower league opposition in the cup, so it'll be interesting to see if he can break his way into their team.

Who is that in Photo 31, one of the academy players?