Any decent left back in the academy?

I feel that 'man like Swag' and TM are waiting for the King and Raya transfers to happen before making any movements in the market due to their sell on fees. However what odds on King seeing out his contract and Raya not actually having a sell on % (Shebby forgot to put it in), just a promotion %, which makes his proposed xfer to Arsenal irrelevant. Would sum up the whole situation and then we of course end up back at square 1 with the season already started..

Interesting to note some of the fees that a number championship players have gone or been quoted for to go to the Prem. Watkins at Brentford is close to a £28m (rising to £33m) move to Villa. How many players do we have that are even sellable assets. Dack and Armstrong? A couple of others like Travis and RN based on potential? Shows how far we have fallen. And yet a centre back and a left back and I think we're competitive!

The frustrating part about all of this is that we're only a centre back and left away from a pretty competitive squad for this division. Looking unlikely however that we'll have them for the first day of the season!

I wish bloody Josh King would bugger off and put a few more pennies in the kitty..

Assuming his new signing is a centre back..A new left back is imperative to us having any kind of notable season in this division.. Anything else is a bonus!

Yes that was my thought too. From a wba point of view seems a strange signing. You've £100m in the bank from getting promoted and you just limped over the line with one one of the lowest auto promoted points tally in the last 30 years, one would think you'd need to strengthen significantly. And then turn around and buy a mid table champ centre back for £800k or whatever the 6 figure is.

I live in Christchurch Nz now having been here for just under 6 years. Was an article this weekend in our press about 2 championship clubs sniffing around Wellington Phoenix's 19 year old left back Liberto Cacace. I'd love for one of them to be us.. He's a brilliant young player, a winger almost, but also tough in the tackle. Any other kiwis or kiwi based peeps around? What do you think of the standard, would he be good enough to cut it? Of course all of this would require actual scouting..

I still sing the king of Ewood song to my 3 1/2 and 1 1/2 yr old in New Zealand here. Agree with all the previous sentiments, excellent league 1 players, can do a job bottom third of championship and should have gone last season. All the best to him

We're still waiting for Josh King to be sold. Might have a big contribution in what the final budget might be..

I'd prefer Brentford to go up out of the 4. Partially because they are well run and would be a huge threat next season, but also because it would be a new interesting club in the Prem. Also the other 3 are relatively recently ex Prem so still operating on parachute payments, so must be getting to the point of having to cut their cloth differently. Surely players like Ayew and Mitrovic aren't gonna have another year in the champ?

I'm not saying that he wasn't a good appointment or anything, but Leeds also have the highest wage bill and xfer spending in the division-which kinda helps!! Surely Brentford would be the model that we would be looking to replicate..

Yes almost 15 years ago having spent a load of money on old United pals. Certainly deserves credit for that for the championship title win. But didn't Lambert also record back to back promotions a while ago? Keane's last year at Sunderland was a farce, before a shambolic reign at Ipswich led to him being sacked. Oh and he's been out of the manager game for the best part of a decade. With regards to Samuel, I think that he has a bit of pace and can be a handful on his day. Has got into better goal scoring positions then before lock down. Also how do we replace? DG is done, so only leaves us with 3 other strikers if Samuel goes.

Are People serious with Keane? Has anyone seen his managerial record, couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag. Anyways with regards to summer signings, I think it needs to be kept simple. We need a LB, a CB and a GK. No other position. Retain as much of the current squad as possible except for those whose contracts are expiring and also get rid of Mulgrew and Bennet if poss. I'd only keep Samuel of the frees.

EB seems like a nice enough bloke and I do admire his openness & honestly on Twitter. However he is patiently not good enough for a promotion aspiring team in any position. One could easily argue that he didn't even particularly stand out in league 1 either. This RN/EB debacle was the final straw for me with TM, who I've generally been very supportive of. Dropping our best right back to shoe horn the useless club captain into the team on a pretext of 'understanding the game/system' waffle (what was that? Loose and don't have a shot on target?) is one step too far. Get rid of the pair of them.

Such a crazy division. Fulham getting battered at home, pne loosing at home, wed thrashed at home again, come backs all over the place. I know this may sound outlandish, but considering how determined leeds, fulham etc are not to secure that 2nd auto spot, could we sneak in..?

Agree would rather have beaten wigan and lost to bham. These unbeaten streaks are meaningless if there are too many draws. This mentality is one of the most different aspects of the championship vs the prem. In the prem, it's all about unbeaten runs and ensuring rivals don't pick up 3 points from you, hence draws are important. In the championship it's far more important to win games, I couldn't really care less about unbeaten runs. It is better to win 7 and loose 3 in a 10 game period then win 4 draw 6. Hopefully 3 points vs huddersfield to get us back on track!

Around 2,300 I believe.

I guess it could be worse.. I know we shouldn't be comparing ourselves to the likes of Wigan and they are bottom of the league. But they had £10 all areas of the ground for their boxing day 3pm not on sky ko vs derby (who brought c.3k). Only a total of just over 14k on.

Wigan's Twitter said they had sold 1800 as of this morning. So you would expect 2,200+ come Mon evening with weekend and on the night sales. Hopefully a crowd of 18k plus to see Rovers give them a tonking.

Such a big game this one, for a couple of main reasons. 1.) Our defeat last season marked the end of our 'return to the championship honeymoon' when we were completely battered on a mid week away day at Swansea. This season we're on a great run, so be interesting to see if we can avoid last year repeating. 2.) A victory in this game gives us the potential for breathing space and takes the pressure off going into the Bristol game. If we beat Swansea, dropping points at City will not be too big a deal. But loose at Swansea and also at City and your winning run turns into a loosing run very quickly. Really think that we can go there and win. Swansea have had a days less rest and were battered, so confidence is low. Keep the same team with gally and Holtby ready in the wings and just go for it.

After the Brentford 7-0 Luton score, I can't work out if that makes me more impressed that we beat Brentford or more disappointed we donated 3 points to Luton. When you consider charlton are in free fall, those 6 points plus getting at least a point off pne (a minimum normally after being 2 up) and wed be comfortably in play offs. I guess it's all ifs and buts and it always seems to be with us and the playoffs the last few years.

Anyone thinking that Luton will be a bit leggy.. the bbc match report had them making 10 changes for the midweek cup game.

I would have thought most would have seen him play quite a few times for spurs and Fulham, (albeit on tv) so not exactly an unknown entity.

Chapman nominated for PL2 player of the month in August. Obviously having a shocking time down there and needs to buck his ideas up..?