Public transport in general needs to be improved massively if the Government are serious about reducing car usage/emissions. It's well and good telling people to use trains/buses more often, but in this part of the country at least both of those options are extremely unreliable. Buses turn up whenever they want, rarely on time, making scheduling around bus travel almost impossible. Trains meanwhile are expensive, often delayed and if you're on a rush hour train good luck finding a seat. I can't blame people for choosing to drive over public transport because the latter is just not up to standard. I have less tolerance for people choosing to drive short distances rather than walking, excluding issues like bad weather, medical conditions, travelling somewhere else afterwards, etc. To me that's more to do with laziness and a contributor to the poor state of public health in general.

In fairness he did state permanent signings at the top of the post. I pretty much agree with the assessments, although I'd say Paul Downing was a success overall as he did much better than expected, and Nutall could probably be considered successful as well due to the low fee/wages and the return we got on the pitch and in the eventual sale. On the whole though our permanent signings have been pretty poor. No point anybody taking about speculative squad value as that only counts when we actually sell somebody for decent profit. Dack in particular is a total question mark after his injury.

Sorry that wasn't aimed specifically at you, more a general reflection on the idea that FF7 needs to be revamped for modern sensibilities. I don't really care that they changed the combat system for new FF games. It's their prerogative and the games continue to sell in good numbers so if they want to do that then that's fine. Just because it doesn't appeal to me doesn't mean a lot of other people won't enjoy it, and they obviously do judging from FF15 sales so that's cool. I have other franchises I can go to if I need my old school JRPG fix. Hell, there's a ton of older JRPG games with the traditional combat systems that I've never played, so I'm not starving for new content in that regard. Funnily enough I think implementing the 'new' combat system was probably just easier for them than reimagining the traditional turn-based system. They basically just lifted what they'd already done on FF15 and tweaked it a little, rather than designing a new system from scratch. I get it even though I don't like it. Potential storyline changes bother me a lot more than the battle mechanic.

I haven't been able to get into a FF game since 10, so the 'new' style definitely isn't for me. All I wanted from a FF7 remake was: - next gen graphics - a better translation and more effective telling of the story, which admittedly is a bit confusing in the original game That's it. No storyline changes, no major gameplay changes - just some very minor tweaks to the original translation and upgraded graphics. The idea of the older gameplay not appealing to 'new' gamers is just nonsense to me. Persona 5 showed that the traditional turn-based combat system can still be utilised effectively and that game had huge sales. Granted P5's overall sales are probably half of FF15, but I don't think that's down to gameplay - it's just that Final Fantasy is a much bigger brand with a larger fanbase than the Persona series. Admittedly some of the FF7 minigames would probably need to be reimagined or removed for a new release as even in the original they are a little clunky and wouldn't work in the same way with modern consoles, and the world map section of the game would probably need a bit of a redesign as well, but these are minor tweaks. The battle system did not need to be overhauled and changed. Storyline elements did not need to be altered in any way. These are additional tasks Square has taken in which are, imo, totally unnecessary.

I agree that it isn't a good situation, and it's not the first time we've been in this position over the years. We lost money on almost every signing in the Kean era, and although we did a lot better during Bowyer's tenure we still gave certain players contracts which made them essentially impossible to move on, even on a free. I dread to think the amount we've wasted either terminating contracts of players we couldn't sell or letting contracts of useless players run down because nobody else was willing to pay what we were. I thought that kind of mismanagement might be behind us after the dual-accountancy firm audit a few years ago... but here we are again.

Absolutely, certainly not arguing the case for Smallwood being here, I just think there are bigger problems - the manager's transfer and contract renewal policy being one of them.

As he's not even in the match day squad and probably won't play for us again his appearance bonus won't count for much tbf. Even if Smallwood is on upwards of 7-8k that's still a lot for a League 1 club, especially considering sign on/agent fees. I imagine most of them will be waiting until the summer when Smallwood is out of contract and his demands may be a lot lower. This contract will probably be the best he'll get for the rest of his career, so I imagine he'd want more to move now than he will in the summer.

Perhaps, but I don't think Smallwood being here is a massive barrier to deals being done this month. With only another six months to run he'll surely be gone in the summer regardless. I'm far more annoyed by Mulgrew coming back and taking up a much larger slice of the wage bill with him likely to have minimal impact - and his contract runs until summer 2021 ffs. I genuinely think even if Smallwood had gone on Jan 1 we'd still be in the same position now in regards to incomings. I don't think it makes any difference.

I don't think Smallwood's wage being on the books is that much of an issue as he can't be earning much more than 4 or 5k a week. Mulgrew meanwhile is probably like having 4 Smallwoods on the wage bill with the same impact (nothing) so for me that would be a far bigger concern. Also far from convinced TM would put any wages to better use. Would probably still end up with nobody coming in, just like when Paul Downing left last January.

Traffic here is absolutely awful as well. Almost impossible to navigate down some residential streets due to the amount of parked cars littering the sides of the roads. I walk whenever possible but it's definitely not a mindset shared by most people around here. I live next door to an Asda and see neighbours literally drive into the car park just to pick up a bag's worth of shopping. It's ridiculous.

Mowbray will probably want to keep Smallwood around for emergencies, especially with Evans out and Johnson's fitness and commitment questionable. Bennett and Tosin could play CM but Bennett is often needed for RB cover due to Nyambe's own fitness issues (although personally I'd rather play JRC there) and we need Tosin at CB due to the lack of decent cover there, too. I suppose theoretically Mulgrew could play DM in an emergency as well, but he has his own fitness problems and with his legs gone I'm not convinced he'd be able to adequetely protect the defence if put in that position.

I'm sure I read somewhere (possibly on this thread) that Mowbray and Brereton have the same agent which if true lends more credence to the idea that it was Mowbray's decision with perhaps some influence from his agent. As for why Brereton isn't being loaned out - the only reason I can think of is that Mowbray doesn't want to lose face by loaning out a guy we paid a lot of money for only a year and a half ago. Not a good look for him to say the least.

The nostalgia brings a warm feeling to my chest. Good memories all around. The peak of the Venky era, no doubt.

If Brereton is still here at the end of the window then IMV that is a failure on our part to help this kid out. He clearly needs to get out of here for a bit and rediscover his form. Keeping him here for u23 matches and playing the odd match here or there, largely out of position, isn't protecting the player or our significant investment. It's just making a bad situation even worse.

I'm certainly not writing off the season at this point as thanks to the division being incredibly inconsistent we are still very much in the mix. However realistically I'm not anticipating a top six finish because we are one of those inconsistent teams who goes on very good and then very bad runs of form. Until we stop doing that (and there's no evidence of that issue being solved this season) we most likely aren't going to get into the playoffs. There's obviously also the fact that under Mowbray we're yet to get into the top six even momentarily. Even under Bowyer we only managed about three hours in 6th briefly. Breaking into the top six, even if only temporarily, and stopping a bad run of form before the rot really sets in will be indications to me that we might be ready to make a genuine challenge.

Yep I'm pretty sure all the quirks and silliness that are part of what makes FF7 so loved will be gone, replaced by a slick but largely soulless production. Barret's dialogue is basically just sound bytes from Mr T, but who cares? Everyone loves Mr T. Now granted I wouldn't be against a bit of a translation clean up as the original translation was adequate at best and often made no sense or mistranslated entire portions of the plot making the story impossible to follow. I'd be okay with those problems being fixed on the proviso the tone of the original is retained. In fact I'm sure there's a fan patch for the PC version that pretty much does this.

On a game that is literally a remake of something from 1997 I would have preferred them to retain the original battle system and tweak it for modern sensibilities (ala Persona 5) rather than adopt FF15's battle system which to me feels completely out of place in FF7. It's funny but I think the thing that bugged me the most on FF15 was the translation. I pretty much always have the original Japanese voices on, and even though I speak practically no Japanese I still know the subtitles are incorrect as they're just repeating the English voiceovers. It's something small which really annoyed me.

It seems like the battle system as a whole is basically lifted from FF15. Unfortunately turn-based combat in general seems to be obsolete these days with a few exceptions such as Persona 5. Funny thing is P5 was wildly successful so clearly turned-based combat is not a deal breaker to many people.

Technically yes although it's the same "new" battle system, you can essentially just pause/slow it down whilst you're deciding what to do next. I feel like it kind of defeats the purpose as the whole point of this newer combat mechanism is to make fights more fluid and realistic.

Appreciate the sentiment but the best thing to do if you feel a thread is veering wildly off-topic is to either hit the report button to alert us, or send one of the mods a PM. We can then either move the posts to a more relevant thread or advise posters to continue the conversation elsewhere.

I don't think it's pessimistic, it's just looking at things realistically. I appreciate that there's a bit of a high after the Sheff Weds result and that's understandable, but the reality is we see-saw in form and results throughout the season because we have an inconsistent squad that mostly belongs in mid-table. That's just where we are right now and to improve on that we either need a significant amount of recruitment across the board or to hope that we have a hell of a lot of young talent coming through that can hit the ground running from day one next season. I don't think either scenario is likely so I am expecting another mid-table finish next season unless we have one hell of a summer recruitment-wise.

You could argue we'd need two left backs as I don't think Del or Bell are up to it as back-up for a club with serious promotion ambitions, and we're also weak at RB as Bennett is really not good enough even as second choice and even though Nyambe has improved a lot he seems to be fairly injury prone. We also have Dack out for at least the first six months of next season with as of yet unproven replacements within the squad for his position, although if we change our regular formation that may not be a pressing concern. There's a lot to do so yes you would have expected us to try and get a jump start on the summer with at least a couple of permanent additions this month. It may still happen but the clock is ticking. I'm not sure one permanent and one loan does a whole lot to prepare us for the summer, unless the loan is a genuine first team challenger with the option to buy at the end of the season.

I don't have iTunes but I assume he's just talking total shit as usual. Not sure I've ever heard somebody say so much containing so little value as Shebby Singh.

We all look forward to the Leeds post-Christmas collapse.

I don't mind the thread taking a temporary detour as there isn't much transfer activity going on (as in none) but I agree that any further discussion on TM and his performance relative to our club's size/expectations should probably go in the Mowbray thread going forward!