Yeah sorry, not that recent at all. Danny Graham! Armstrong is a cracking example though too.

? we wish!

One of our better signings of recent years signed up permanently after a loan spell. It can work if you go for the right players.

Well it would be 5 players in a match day squad. Let's not fall into semantics. The point is that if a team full of loans (5 in a match day squad) had the quality for us to challenge, who cares if we don't own the whole team. Our recruitment in general is poor and we haven't got the best out of the loan market. It's definitely something we can improve on.

And if you actually read my post, you'll notice that I never mentioned anything about loan players we've had before. I quite clearly stated that if we were to sign a team of loan players that were good enough to challenge at the top, I'd be happy with that despite the club not owning them. I agree with your point that the loan players we've had haven't been good enough for us to challenge at the top. Our recruitment is way off the mark. We have of course had exceptions over the last couple of seasons, but those were in isolation alongside poor permanent signings.

Who's not good enough? The players we've been linked with on loan? You're writing off a whole transfer market because it doesn't fit your argument. Just from memory the following 3 loan signings would've IMO got us closer to the play offs than we managed. All attainable given they were all playing in the Championship last season. Lossl (GK) Loaned to Huddersfield from Everton Adarabioyo (CB) Brewster (ST) Loaned to Swansea from Liverpool That's without properly looking at the Championship teams last season. I'm not having that we couldn't afford those. Lossl would've been instead of Walton. Brewster instead of signing Gallagher.

Considering the damage they've done to the club is self inflicted, does anyone actually care about the financial argument over paying another club to loan a player or signing a player permanently. All this "waste of money" talk is irrelevant whilst Venky's are in charge and to a lesser extent Mowbray. We waste it by the millions on a monthly basis. That isn't likely to change while they are here. All that matters is that we sign players that are good enough to improve the first team. At this juncture I personally don't care if we have a first team full of loan players, as long as they're good enough to achieve the goal of getting us back to the Prem. Football is all about entertainment and progression. If you're not providing either or aren't interested in trying, then you may as well pack it in and let someone else have a go.

I think most people are just saying that Wharton should be given a chance to see what he can do before he's written off. At that stage people can give a more measured view of him in the context of our squad. JRC has already been afforded that chance, albeit playing out of position for the most part. The contrasting views you're seeing is understandable given he's been played out of position, he's played in a team that's underperformed at the end of the season and not everyone has seen him regularly for the U23s, so potentially don't know what he's about.

I'm not sure what a highlight of a goal for our U23s proves. I could post a video of Derrick Williams pinging in a goal for our first team. It doesn't make Williams a potent attacker.

I wouldn't go off the information on those sites as gospel. In fact it's almost embarrassing to do so, unless you're being tongue in cheek. You only need to watch a couple of our games to see that Gallagher is the closest we have to a target man. It's why, even when he's played out wide, we lump the ball up to him in the air in the hope that he'll win a header.

I wouldn't go as far as saying that was one of our main tactics, but it certainly gave us the most penetration. Although the passing was through the opposition midfield, we typically play with two banks of midfielders (a defensive unit manned by Travis and one other & typically a three man attacking unit behind the main striker), so those passes were still hitting our midfield and the most 'creative' ones at that. If we're being honest it was ponderous against the more open, attacking sides as well, but we certainly had more of the ball against more defensive sides. The point about needing a plan B & C leads back to the initial conversation about target men that are available and could do a job for us. With Graham gone, Sam Gallagher is the closest we have to that in the squad. I completely agree that the defence needs sorting. Will be interesting to see who we go for.

Holtby would've been a much better fit than Downing in centre midfield. Some of our worst football last season was played when Downing played there. It's a big reason why opinions on Downing and whether he should be given another contract changed drastically after Christmas.

Yeah, I agree. Missing out on McGinn a couple of seasons ago was a massive blow.

Yeah I agree with every word. Stats wise it looks nice having lots of possession but if all we're doing with it is passing it around the back safely, I don't see the point. The only penetration we had was with Nyambe dragging us up the pitch (but with no final ball) and via Tosin's incisive passes through midfield. Our midfield struggled to create enough clear cut chances. It says a lot that most of the goals scored by our top scorer came from his individual brilliance, as opposed to from genuine creativity and team moves. Maybe that will improve with Dack coming back into the fold.

There's an argument to be made for another striker coming in if Mowbray insists on playing those three out wide. In my opinion, the only one of the three that should be playing out wide is Armstrong. He's proved that he can score from that area of the pitch. Striker isn't a priority area at the minute though, considering we're short of 2x goalkeepers, a centre back and a competent left back.

That's been the talk coming out of the club (Mowbray) for a while, but countless times last season we resorted to Lenihan or Walton lumping it up to the likes of Armstrong. There's little evidence that the transition in style has worked. We relied almost solely on Tosin passing it out from the back to get us up the pitch with the ball on the floor and he's gone back to City. If we don't sign a defender who has a similar passing range to Tosin, we're going to see more of Lenihan lumping it forward and that's just a fact. I wasn't actually saying I would buy those suggestions by the way. Merely just agreeing with the sentiments that Chris Martin could do a job for us and offered up Steven Fletcher as someone who would be of a similar vein. It would make sense to have a variety of options up front though. All I've seen of Vale is from his cameo appearance at the end of the season and although he looked bright, I can't comment on whether he's a viable option for a Championship front line at the moment as I don't know enough about him. Happy to hear your views on him and his playing style if you've watched a number of U23 games he's featured in.

With Mowbray seemingly looking to move away from the style of fooball that would require a target man, I can't see it being a goer. I think he'd do a job though. Could probably get a good year or two out of Steven Fletcher as well.

The issue with that is if you're talking about a player of Dack's quality, if you keep hold of him he could be the difference in a promotion push. As we've seen for years with Rovers, if we get a reasonable offer for Dack (taking into account his contract situation), we can expect very little of that to be spent, on more than likely a player of lesser quality than him. Or even more likely, the money won't be spent at all and we'll 'replace' Dack with Holtby, Rothwell or Buckley and the money disappears into the ether. I'd rather have him around than cash in personally. As someone said above, lets put all our efforts into getting him to sign a new deal. If the release clause is too low, so be it. It will have kept him around long enough to see if we can sustain a genuine promotion push and will have guaranteed us a bit of money when he does leave.

Yeah, but bear in mind that's from a commentator who had us winning that match for the whole of the 2nd half. Watching a different game to us.

Apart from the odd tidy touch, what does Rankin-Costello offer? Probably more of a question for someone who has watched our u23 games, because I know he's had some good reviews at that level. I just don't see what we're getting with him. I appreciate he's being played out of position.

Providing his ACL injury doesn't take something from his game, imagine how good Dack is going to look alongside this lot next season.

He's had some decent touches in all fairness to him. Think he's looked pretty decent.

I'm not sure whether anyone has covered this in any other threads, but Downing as a centre midfielder just isn't working. Thought he was effective from the wing and left back in the first half of the season. His left foot was a real outlet down the left side. However it's no coincidence that his influence and form has dropped off since he's been moved to centre midfield. He's not dynamic enough for it to work and we seem to be squeezing him to the detriment to the team. If Mowbray plans to utilise him like this, I'd be happy for him not to get another contract. I thought that was unthinkable after the first half of the season.

Does he not have 2 league goals this season? In not that many starts as well. He scored a good few when he first signed in L1 but overall that season he was awful as well. A new contract for him shouldn't even be an option.

We're seeing nothing new from Samuel here. The odd goal here and there doesn't gloss over the fact he isn't good enough for us or this division.