DE.

It's the summer and it's hotter than ever - Ayala will be at the peak of his powers.

Incredible result in the circumstances. Desperately need players in now though. We can't afford to keep waiting.

This is fun.

I think the Toney/Armstrong debate from a couple of seasons back can certainly be put to bed now.

It's a nice idea but the reality is Pep has been surrounded by world-class players wherever he's been. It's easier to implement his philosophy when you have the best players in the league at your disposal. The Championship is a different beast and requires multiple different ways of playing to achieve success if you aren't one of the top clubs in the division. It's something JDT seems to have grasped immediately which can only be a positive from our perspective.

Martin falls into a long line of managers/coaches who struggles to grasp the point of the game is to win the match, not achieve some philosophical or moral victory. Mowbray was like that as well. He'll only realise when he's been giving his marching orders. Dem possession stats tho.

Check the opposition instagram players next time we get smashed 7-0 😏

Let's not act like there aren't comments on here about teams being average or not very good after they've handily beaten us 😅 it's pretty common across fanbases. From briefly reading the thread in question there were a fair few posters noting that if we are average what does that make them? Anyway, BBD's goal was awesome. Lovely cross-field ball, perfect control from BBD, the strength to hold off the defender and then a sublime dinked finish. Absolute class.

Bucko could and should have been off pretty early on last weekend so we can't really complain.

Szmodics straight in, as opposed to waiting weeks for him to "get used to how we play".

ETH called out the players who left before the end of the pre-season game, although I think his comments were mainly aimed at Ronaldo, as none of the others were in the match day squad. If he thinks the club will ultimately back him over the players, though, I think he's going to be disappointed. Just like pretty much every manager since Fergie left, the players will undermine and force him out if he doesn't do as they please. Terrible situation for them to be in. Never mind though.

Well done to the Lionesses 😊

Not sure about Rovers, but Sodexho will basically just be following the rules of capitalism - if people are willing to pay and it increases profits then it's OK. Hence why companies currently making profits in the millions and sometimes billions are still telling us they have 'no choice' but to put up prices. They do have a choice, but it's all about answering to the shareholders, not the consumer. It's more about maintaining and increasing profit levels than making profit itself, the trend is more important as far as investors are concerned. The only way things change is if enough people stop buying the product, at which point profits go down and consumer price will usually also go down to try and compensate. It all depends on where people's threshold is in terms of the offering being too expensive. £4? £5? £10? £20? Wherever the general line in the sand is, that's where it'll stop. Consumers still hold the power in the end, when it comes to luxury items at least, but people have to be willing to go without for a while to enforce a change first.

He'll be around until about November, so we'll need a backup ready by then. Probably ok for the next couple of months, assuming we don't have an unusually cold autumn.

Great result to start the season with. Hoping the team is bolstered asap to improve the overall quality and depth.

He's just not a very good player tbf, a shame we have almost no hope of moving him on.

King Trav 😎

Sounds like it's going well so far

Defence and midfield look okay (from a starting 11 perspective), front four... well, let's see. Hedges and Gallagher need to show much more than they did last season. We need BBD rather than BB, and Vale has to step up too. I'm certainly curious to see how it works out.

Yeah, have to say Huddersfield looked really, really poor. Even with their "better" second half performance they still only had two shots the entire match and not a single shot on target. At home that is pitiful regardless of the opponent. Can't read too much into first day results but the signs aren't good for them.

No idea what to expect today in all honesty. As long as we play a sensible formation, with players in their correct positions, come out looking energetic, focused and motivated then that'll do. It may take a few games for us to hit our stride and that's fine as long as there are positive signs on the pitch that we're moving in the right direction.

And there it is, Vince defrauded the company for $14.6m.

Lol, yeah Vince, probably time to go considering there are a shitload more allegations about to come out.

Idk, I think after the way Rothwell behaved on deadline day most people would have been happy to see the back of him. Can remember a fair few saying as much at the time. With that said, you're right that it would have been considered a factor in our post-Christmas demise, when in reality it would have been nothing to do with it.

Lol, if this was the case there wouldn't be any bookies in existence. More often than not their odds are more or less accurate, which is why the house wins more often than it loses, but there will always be occasions when they screw up - for example BBD last season.