Wrexham have had amongst the highest wage bills for whichever division they were in for the past few years. That certainly sounds like paying high wages to attract the players they want ( nothing wrong with that of course). We will of course have to wait and see whether they continue to do this in the Championship.

Lorenzo Amoruso....I think:

Match kick off times are favourable for me so I'll probably watch a few games but won't go out of my way to make sure that I'm sat in front of a TV for any particular fixture. US TV is promoting it well but tickets sales are low. Add in the US government's declaration that immigration officers will be present to aid security at stadiums means that I doubt they'll sell what they projected.

Can I ask who Wrexham have thrown these huge wages at to sign? Players are attracted to the club due to the current high profile, their wages will be in the lower levels for a Championship club. Google indicates that their wage bill is about 2/3 of ours. That seems to dismiss your view of them throwing huge wages at players (unless you think that’s what we do). Can you share where your intel about these sky high Wrexham wages comes from??

I reckon JDT would be perfect for Brentford but he's not even in the running

They should in theory be pretty simple, get us promoted and you're set for life.

ditto jdt,with some financial backing we`de be playing in the premier league now😥

What’s happened here…

Looks like B. Emerton bottom left to me. Is it from that era? Edit: Which would maybe make No. 20 top right David Thompson. And No. 2 in that team (bottom right) was Lucas Neill. Googled his signature and it matches:

I've still got a football certificate signed by Terry Genoe 😃

I didn't mind Broughton. At a well run club I think he'd do the business.

Hes been no miss at all and i knew he wouldn't be, Yuki is twice the player and even Cantwell who probably took his big wage slot has offered more appearance wise.

If players were tied down the likes of Wrexham and Brum wouldn't be after them because they'd have to pay big money and offer big wages. As it is frees or contracts ticking down coupled with the fact these lads have been on low or modest wages means they are easy pickings. If our lads were on decent contracts then head turning is just head turning it happens all the time and if no big offer comes in they just have to get on with it where they are. Again contracts ticking down or short term deals means the head gets turned and doesn't turn back because they are just watching the clock tick down to better money and more ambition. Ok players will always leave or be sold but here now this club has created a noose for its own neck which means in 90% of cases instead of 50% they'll be off. Still, the middlemen and agents are happy and some would say that's no coincidence either.

They were in pots 3 and 4 by merit 😜 I do get your points, but I still feel like that last tournament opened up massively for England. And it’s a good job it did as we still could only draw 4 of the first 5 games in 90 minutes.

Bring back Gregg Broughton. The only man who seemingly understood how contract negotiations worked

In the FA Cup each round is reverted into a lottery. In your example, if Milwall were a country, they’d have faced an Arsenal or a Man Utd in the group stage. As it is, the lottery took that fate away from them Within international football, you balance the odds in your favour by making yourself a top seeded nation. Once you are put into your groups everything else is then decided by the merit of your performances. Had England not won their group, we’d have been more likely to face sides who came first in their respective group, therefore more in form. Most things in international football are by merit - you come Top Seed by merit, you win your group by merit and from there on the route is planned out. If we had come 2nd we’d have played Germany and then Spain. It was the merit of our group stage performances which meant we didn’t. By far the luckiest thing in international football is the country you qualify for. From then on in, merit of your performances are king. And in Euro 24 pots 3 and 4 included Croatia, Italy, Holland and Switzerland who are no mugs. Switzerland especially was a banana skin - as Italy found out in the knock outs, Germany in the groups and France in the tournament before. I was fearful for that game for sure

So you arent alarmed or annoyed by our repeated inability to get our best player signed up? Or even to get contracts in front of them well before now? You dont see a pattern and just put it all down to numerous individual situations? We shouldn't need to offer £30k. We should have offered these players new deals 12 months ago. There is no excuse but the owners and board will be pleased that you are doing your best to defend every single thing they fuck up.

I think there are 2 issues here. Whether we should be being outbid by promoted sides for our captain and whether it should have got to this situation. If Wrexham and Birmingham are offering such high wages then I don't necessarily think we should be paying wages that high. But what is unacceptable is that it has again been allowed to get to this situation. To have 18 months of no contract extensions bar the peculiar Ribeiro situation. And to have not offered these 3 new deals at least by easter and we dont even know if a concrete offer has been offered even now is nothing short of scandalous. We now not only are in a much weaker position but we also have this circus going on whilst we also need to focus on getting players in.

And Andy Cole had a game to forget.

My only point is you can get lucky with the draw. Tranmere and Sunderland both knocked out Premier League teams. You can’t control who you play, but things can pan out more or less favourable. Englands ‘performances’ in the last Euros were fairly poor but they had a kind enough draw to get through to the semi finals and then actually played ok against the Dutch. However we did get a bit lucky with the draw. There were 24 teams, seeded and split into 4 pots. In the knockout stages all three games were against teams from either pot 3 or pot 4. We got lucky being drawn against a 3rd place qualifier in the last 16 and we didn’t play any team from seeding pots 1 or 2 in a knockout game until the final. That’s the only time that has happened since the tournament was expanded to 24 teams.

@arbitro

There are also ebbs and flows in international footy more so than domestic, where large clubs now rule the roost For example we could have played Germany, Brazil, Holland and Spain in recent years and that be seen as favourable as they are going through somewhat of a transition Conversely, Croatia had been there or thereabouts for tournaments leading up to our loss and teams like Switzerland have been outperforming their historic places by knocking out teams like France, and only losing by penalties to Spain let’s not forget This is a bit different from a comparison to domestic league positions

Think any out of work manager with a chequered history would grab a 3.5 year contract that might well give him financial security for life. So presumably you are saying Gestede is out of his depth, totally inefficient and useless? We will be lucky if we retain 1 of Brittain, Hyam, Travis and Tronstad - smell the coffee beans!!! Like we did under Jack! 'Rovers have held talks' - wow, could be as little as 'hi there, how's your summer going'!!! Just why the feck do players NOT WANT TO BE HERE!?!? - aint feckin rocket science Like we did under Jack! You never give us trying to defend the indefensible - can you not see this?

It’s also called trying. Our owners won’t, even though they have the money, especially from selling our best players. Tighter than a submarine door.

This is different to what is being suggested here. The notion is that because we played the likes of “Switzerland, Sweden or Ukraine” in the quarters or “Denmark, Croatia or Netherlands” in the Semi we had lucky draws The suggestion is that unless you play France, Spain, Brazil or Argentina you have had a lucky draw But that happens in every World Cup. It happens in every FA Cup too. A premier league club likely spanked a league 2, 1 and a championship club on their way to the FA Cup final. Go back through World Cup winning brackets and you’ll likely see the winners playing a Sweden, South Korea, Switzerland, Australia, Turkey etc. it is rare that you will play all Seed 1 nations - that’s why the seeding system is around. What isn’t being told is that, in order for England to play Switzerland in the quarters, Switzerland had to beat Italy. To play Ukraine in the quarters, we had to beat Germany. Now in your example I don’t know if Walsall or Tranmere beat better quality teams on their way through. Maybe not. Although Tranmere only made a cup final in 2000 so weren’t a terrible side then either. Beside the point - whilst that route was favourable, it was also a stand out in totally avoiding a higher seeded team until the final. Nothing about Englands routes to both finals were extraordinary. It is quite normal to play the nations we played - the route Italy took to the Euro 20 final of Portugal, Spain and France is outside of the norm in modern tournaments.