Smallwood right wing? Mmm, ok.

Here is an analogy Your young lad wants a pair of Nike trainers that cost £100. He has £100. His granny gives him £100 for his birthday. He buys the Nike air max for £100 and he has £100 left to buy a pair of Adidas trainers. Which £100 did he use to buy which pair of trainers and secondly does it matter?

Yes, he wanted to leave Yes, the money went towards the striker purchase, meaning the money we would have spent is still there. The splitting of his words looking for something has hit peak silly season ?

Ya, shop window and all that.

All speculation so far. We do have the youngest squad in the league to be fair. So I think that ties in with Johnsons strengths. Of those only Buckley and Butterworth could realistically breakthrough this year. I suppose the weigh up is keep them around and give them cameos or send them to league 1 to play 30 games plus. Need to make sure the loan move is the right one though.

I don't think we will have a difficult time finding someone to loan the majority of them

Which doesn't work a lot, leading to us needing to pull our inevitable second half fight back out of somewhere. Absolute classic rovers. How many games do we just take the lead in say 1-0 and hold? Never straightforward. I just want some straight forward 1-0 wins this year. We can score early or late. Just score and win. No drama. Please ?

I reckon Downing is a fit lad for his age,but I think you are right. The modern full/wing back needs to have a serious engine. I wouldn't be expecting a 34 year old to do it at this level. He needs to be further forward linking up with Dack, Rothwell and whipping balls into the forwards. We would just be complicating the left back position putting him there.

I don't buy the Downing to left back/wing-back stuff. He has said in interviews that he was frustrated under his previous managers at Boro due to where and how they asked him to play.

Whoa, whoa, whoa........ source??

Johnson is a better option in the middle than Reed and Rodwell , neither of whom really played there enough. Obviously if either were played there, it could be a different story. The "good" thing is I don't thing Johnson can play anywhere else. Downing is a big upgrade on Conway and could even be a better option on the wing than Reed imo Gallagher is a big unit who will be a great addition either starting or from the bench. Gives us another option. The goalkeeper situation is a bit underwhelming due to the fact we sold an academy player and replaced him with a loan, but the signs suggest we may be better off in the short-term with that. Not amazing , but moving in the right direction. Compared to other clubs , I think we are doing ok.

Ah oh, there he is!

Oh God, I find Armstrong very frustrating on the wing. Why beat a man once and cross it when beating him twice and then hitting him with the ball is available as an option?? I hope we play 2 upfront and then we see variations of; Armsrrong, Graham, Brereton and Gallagher. Downing should not be anywhere near full-back in my opinion, but I notice he was moved there against Rangers. Hopeful just a pre-season thing.

Downing is a proper winger. I think we will see some great deliveries from him this season into Graham or Gallagher. We have badly lacked having a good crosser in the team. Graham did remarkably well considering.

Fair play @OnePhilT the new site is like night and day it is such an improvement. Enjoy your retirement Just on the bans/moderation etc, I think sometimes posters are warned or banned over "trolling" when it is such a subjective thing. People have definitely being banned for trolling when the person they were writing too didn't even think they were being trolled. I appreciate how difficult it is for mods, who have other jobs, to just come in, catch up on what is happening and deal out bans/warnings. As long as there are no personal insults, I think pretty much everything is fair game. Hate speech or discrimination on gender,sexuality, race etc being not acceptable goes without saying. At the end of the day it's a great site with a lot of regular users. The progress on things like the site, podcast , archive etc is really quite impressive in such a relatively short period of time. Group hug?

Duff would have been epic. Celtic first team coach now. Quickest promotion ever.

By the sounds of things, Bury might be playing in skins.

2 draws would be typical rovers

I don't know about that. I know our under 23s did better than "big" clubs, but to be kept around at city tells me that the player has something about him. Starting for West borm last season likewise. Would the 3 guys you mention have started for West brom last season? This season even? Would they be kept around at City? He is miles ahead of them.

Well if a player is impressing for a team that's struggling, I would say that reflects well on the player. It's easy to look good in a team that's doing well.

Ha ha, I would give it about two pages before we got one of them. Should have signed a left back and centre back... Definitely get "too late in the window now, hadn't had time to settle" Although I think if we did sign a centre half for that much, the widely general consensus would be "thank God, praise Allah, nice one budda, we love you Tony we do"

The odd time the thought comes to my mind. That's what Tony is getting the money together for. A nice juicy £6-8 million pound bid for a centre half. Ooh ya now you're talking. We can hope....

One poster said they watched him play in league 1 too though where he was good. I suppose that doesn't count either though

Or maybe fans are just entitled to their opinion that he has improved?

He has shared pics on instagram with his girlfriend. Either that or he is very close to his sister. He isn't from Burnley though, so hardly that.