Ismael towards end of the season, stop picking Buckley and JRC even for the bench in favour of Forshaw, so from that point onwards and from the style of play Ismael wants to play that both probably/most likely not part of his plans. He wants his centre midfielders to go box to box and quickly which doesn't suit of them. Also both need to play regular first team football now and I don't see that here sadly. Fan of both.

Is this our first Sid since Puddefoot?

And according to wiki one career goal and one assist. At 23, he's either becoming a late developer or he's just not that good...and he won't cost much more than £400k up front. Has to be heavily clause based/future profit to get anyway North of £800k This is clearly a data signing because nothing in his regular stats/game time/highlight reel suggest to me he's the dynamic box to box midfielder we want. On the plus side, he adds height, doesn't take up a special permit place, knows the league and speaks the lingo so that part ticks the boxes. As a bit if a dinosaur when it comes to the data approach (give me the Brian Clough approach any day), I'll watch the lad with interest. If he turns out to be a good find, I will stand corrected and hail the data!

You didn't read my post properly or you wouldn't have posted any of this.

He absolutely isn't a box to box midfielder. This is absolutely spot on

I watched a bit of it in the pub. I don’t recall one ball beating the bat in the time I was watching.

Cheap Trick - I Want You To Want Me

You have to start somewhere and if were honest we are a lower end of the championship team who has over acheived because of recruitment being decent also the players you are stating fit the model of sorts Brittain cheap sell high, travis academy sell high, dolan free should have been sold last summer or this for a fee, baath free so maybe it has begun?. It's always going to be a risk this model but with ffp we have no choice. We can't be afraid to sell keep the lights on and then recruit hopefully if we are lucky with the players we get in they will be better than for example travis and next season we will be saying travis who?

Theres no way its close to £2m up front, the fee seems to have become a symptom of chinese whispers. He cost £400k a year ago and wasnt a regular for his team. He started 15 games and finished 2 of those.

One of either Oldham or Accy won't even be in it....they play each other in a preliminary round Bolton would be decent, wish they'd have come up last season tbh but they went tits up.

The problem with that is it needs highly competent people running the club and identifying players to pull this off. Whilst you are waiting these "few years" for your academy players and cheap prospects to be 'built up', you need to not be shit enough to go down. If we sold Brittain, Travis and let Dolan and Baath leave, and replaced them with people who needed a 'few years' then we would be worse as a team and probably go down.

If a loan player is not used, then in my opinion it is a poor loan. I am interested in what the Rovers get out of the loan, not what the player gets.

I don't think Ayari was poor, just wasn't really used for some reason. It's quite impressive he managed to breakthrough to the Brighton team the season after, certainly can't be based on his time here. Now valued at over 20M.....

Apparently, the last half dozen Tests at Headiingley have been won by the team fielding first. Statistics or common sense, which would you choose?

Stick a massive promotion add on in there then do everything you can to hamper promotion. A foreign team having a quick gander at our league finish last season could easily think a promotion bid is a possibility this season too I suppose....

Its about time the club start doing this right get travis out the door as soon as possible for the best price now. Buy cheap prospects build up if possible over a few years as well as academy players sell in prime or for a good price rinse and repeat this is the club we are now

Early days yet in the window but just wondering from the business already done that there may be less reliance on the loans market this time round.? 3 permanent signings, certainly you could imagine that rather than giving Forshaw another 12 months they could have considered a youngster on loan. Maybe they have come to the conclusion that at the end of the day it's just wasted money ? Certainly, apart from centre halves, the loan market hasn't been that great for us. Tyler Morton, Leighton Clarkson, Andy Moran, ACD, Ayari, were all disappointing midfield signings. As I say, but early yet but maybe a change of thinking ?

Yep a deal 'up to 2 million' can mean any number of things and it's most likely it's a few hundred grand per year then a load of add on's IF he hits certain targets' Still they've committed about 2 and a half million now over the next few years including the Belgium lad so that IS re-investment although we all still dream of a 5 million pound striker ! These lads wages will be low and i'm on the other side when it comes to how these are paid for we don't spend unless there's been some sales or room made on the wage bill so i fully expect by summers end the buys v outs will balance somehow.

I’m still holing out hope that its buckley jrc dolan pears but I fear its a biggy going. I genuinely believe Travis wants to stay but I don’t see our board breaking their useless wage structure

I will be pleasantly surprised if Travis stays - for me it is all about the fee now. Personally I would want £3m for him plus add ons (huge promotion add on).

Still playing for Chorley, had a few unfortunate injury problems that hampered his league career but the signing of a 5 year contract on 5k a week so young did him no favours at all. I doubt Batty has had that luxury yet.

Also, specifically sent to Forests sister club, where he was a regular starter. Would imagine the logic in that was to get him playing regularly and get his confidence back after a difficult period at Porto, with a view to integrating him into Forests squad this coming season, not to flog him to Rovers at a loss

So far they seem to be buying players of a certain physical profile who have potential to improve. It is a high risk approach - coming from different leagues and countries where settling in is a bit of an unknown. Of course, there is no guarantee they will improve - and we will have to wait to see them play t judge whether they are already good enough for the Championship or not.

Do you know what I was thinking about the other night.. The amount of players we've had with names that either match or rhyme.. Duff, Dunn Henley, Hanley Olsson, Olsson Tavares, Travis There's more, I remember there being a few in the academy- minds gone blank though,

I wish I shared your optimism but the writing is on the wall….whether it’s Dolans possible comp fee or the sale of Travis/tronstad I just don’t see a world when it comes august 9th where we still have all the untied players along with new recruits. Bare in mind we still need 2/3 more