Thought both Chapman and Wharton came out of that half with a lot of credit.

6ft3 apparently.

Did we pay that for Robinson when Friedel departed?

The problem isn't having Bennett as a back up RB option. It's that Mowbray can't resist playing him there every now and then even when Nyambe is fit. As a back up you'd only expect him to play the odd couple of games to cover for Nyambe's injuries or suspensions. Bennett has shown on occasion that he can fill in reasonably well when it's the odd game, but he should never be considered as a starting option when Nyambe is fit.

I think given where we are in terms of finances and where we need to strengthen, a back up RB could wait until next season. We could do worse than Bennett as back up at RB, but I agree that he needs to be replaced in the squad. I doubt Liverpool would loan Williams as cover and he wouldn't be ours beyond this season anyway.

Yeah plays on the right. He's the sort of player we'd realistically get from Liverpool though. The likes of Curtis Jones & Rhian Brewster - who would both improve our starting XI considerably - are potentially out of our reach given their successes in the first team and out on loan.

He'd probably do OK in the Championship, but whenever I've seen him play, he's struggled. Also wouldn't really want him taking Nyambe's place at RB.

Yes, 100%.

Nice round up Joe. Not particularly bothered about 'missing out' on the players mentioned. Think we'd be missing a trick not going in for Phillips though given our goalkeeping situation and his situation at Charlton. Should be an affordable solution to our main issue.

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.