At least Leeds can console themselves with breaking two brand new records. First Championship team to be top at Christmas and not go up. Also the first Championship team to lose a playoff semi final having won the first leg away. Ho ho ho.

Alright lads, time to unban CP Company?

Leeds/Villa final by the looks of it.

Agreed. We're a football club, not a charity. As I said in the retained thread, there's no reason Gladwin couldn't keep using our facilities to rehabilitate whilst looking for a new club. I don't think anybody would have a problem with that. I don't understand why he needs to be offered a six months deal when Mowbray's comments make it pretty clear Gladwin will be of no use to us in those six months.

We could still let him use our facilities for recovery without offering him a new deal, short term or not. That's how these things normally work. We've already done right by paying him to not play for two years. It seems obvious that he realistically has little to no chance of a long term future with us, so why even bother with the short term deal? It just doesn't add up to me, unless Tony genuinely thinks in six months Gladwin is going to recover and be such a beast in training that he'll have no choice but to tie him down to a longer deal.

We've been here before. Lowe, Evans, Williamson, Steele, Henley, Feeney... if you aren't good enough then you aren't good enough. Loyalty and a good attitude only go so far, at some point you need to add talent in order to progress. Signing and extending the contracts of mediocre players does nothing but promote stagnation. Players on the bench should be able and ready to step in and stake a place for the first team. Let's be serious, the likes of Leutwiler, Hart, Conway, Smallwood, Evans and Gladwin will never be first teamers at an ambitious Championship club. They just aren't good enough. Yet all have been given or are about to be given new contracts despite Mowbray's supposed aim being promotion out of this league. At least the likes of Rothwell, Brereton and Chapman have the potential to step up and contribute in a big way, even if that potential isn't ultimately fulfilled. Those are the types of players that should be pushing for first team spots, not average players who are just there to make up the numbers and "do a job" when called upon.

Gladwin and Leutwiler shouldn't even have been under consideration for renewal, let alone one actually happening and the other being proposed. It's ridiculous. Conway I'm ambivalent about. It's not a huge problem if he stays on a reduced deal, conversely it's not a big deal if he goes either. Downing, whatever. Not good enough for a promotion/playoff chasing team so fine IF we replace him properly, but that's a big if. Tony seemed to think Rodwell was up to the task in January and look how that ended up. His judgement on centre-backs is questionable at best, which is ironic considering that was his position.

I don't necessarily mind Downing being released if Williams takes his place as 4th choice CB, nor would I be hugely opposed to Conway staying on significantly reduced terms with a potential route into becoming a coach, but seriously... in discussions with Gladwin and retaining Leutwiler? Why on both counts? Gladwin has been paid for two years to contribute absolutely nothing, whilst Leutwiler very clearly showed in his brief appearances at the end of the season that he isn't good enough to be a Championship keeper, even at backup. Very worrying signs. Unsure on Rodwell, not opposed to keeping him if wages are sensible but only as a midfielder and not as a centre-back. Not a great start to the summer and hopefully not a sign of things to come, although I'm well prepared for another summer of disappointment under our clueless owners.

Me too, from 1996 - 1998 I loved watching Nitro on Friday nights. Then we switched to Sky Digital around September 1998 and lost TNT my grandparents were still on analogue Sky though, so they'd tape it for me every Friday I asked them to stop around mid-99 as I lost interest in WCW, it was pretty bad by that point. It was all about WWF by then. It was so huge back then, even my parents would watch Raw on Fridays and Smackdown on Saturdays. They'd order the UK PPV's on Sky Box Office as well, so that was great for me! WCW eventually came back on Bravo, I think, but I didn't bother watching it by that point. Anyway, it's really cool to see TNT back in the game with AEW. The industry desperately needs some real competition for WWE, which is dire nowadays, so fingers crossed AEW is successful.

AEW officially announced as airing on TNT, just over 18 years after the network cancelled WCW and stopped airing wrestling. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxe5mi7HvYk/

Even Derby have that awful Frank Lampard FC bullshit that's been so irritating this year. The media will never stop going on about it if "Lamps" gets Derby promoted in his first season as a manager. Would be almost as bad as Liverpool winning the PL.

Villa v Leeds is the nightmare playoff final for me. Two teams I despise, one of whom has grossly overspent to the point of total financial meltdown and yet may be rewarded for it with promotion. Still, I suppose that if Leeds go up at least the Championship will stop being Leeds Utd TV for a season.

Business as usual for Rovers then.

WBA got absolutely battered after Brunt got himself stupidly sent off so they can't have any complaints.

Am sure our Lowey was on the verge of being on the streets after the paltry wages he received here. What was it, a measly £20k a week or so? Where's his Asda vouchers?

Warnock staying on as Cardiff manager next season. A shame, that will likely make them competitive.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/48268140 Grim stuff. The PFA managed to get the players paid though, so that was the important thing.

I can remember seeing Silver King on Nitro back in the 90s - Juventud Guerrera too. The video of him collapsing is strange. The guy is literally laying there for minutes before somebody finally comes out to help.

It's pretty old-fashioned to still see computer games as childish. Of the three big companies in console gaming I'd say only Nintendo market more towards children than adults, and even then most of their sales probably still come from players 16+. There's big money in adult gaming and has been for literally 20 years now.

Granted I haven't accounted for the mythical flex, but even so I doubt all of those players are on huge wages. Some of them, for sure. The loan players in particular are probably on a decent wedge plus any loan fee that was paid, but even so, you tend to get what you pay for as far as wages are concerned. Even if some of those non-loan players are on, say, £20k a week, that's a flat rate of about £1m a year. Add in bonuses, etc, and you may get up to £1.5m or maybe even £2m. Over the course of a 4 year contract that's still around the same kind of money we paid for Brereton alone. Add in his wage which I'm guessing is around £10k p/w and you're looking at adding another £2m to his transfer fee on top of the initial fee, and that's not including anything like bonuses, signing on fees, and so on. Obviously you can adjust the figure up or down depending on what his wage actually is, but even so, over the course of 4 years it's unlikely he's going to cost less than the likes of Maupay, Pukki, McGoldrick, McBurnie or Sharp, for example. At the very least it'll be pretty close.

The graphics look gorgeous. Not sure about the battle system, will need to see more of it before judging. Looks similar to FFXV which I wasn't a massive fan of, but we'll see. Hoping there will be an option for dual Japanese/English audio tracks (with subtitles obviously), although the mouth movements at first glance seem to have been created for the english track, so... we'll see. June will be very interesting!

It's very rare that this type of appointment works out. Lampard has done alright at Derby this year but it's not often that rookie managers get promoted out of the Championship. I wonder if they're struggling for cash after their £100m spending spree in the PL? I'd say unlikely considering Khan is funding a ridiculously expensive wrestling venture (AEW) in the States, but maybe FFP comes into it? I don't know. I'd be worried if I was a Fulham supporter.

If you look at the Championship players who got fifteen or more goals this season, very few of them cost close to 7M... Pukki - 29 goals - free Maupay - 25 goals - 1.6m Abraham - 25 goals - loan Sharp - 23 goals - 650k Gayle - 23 goals - loan Rodriquez - 22 goals - 12m McBurnie - 22 goals - 315k Adams - 22 goals - 2m Bowen - 22 goals - £0 Grabban - 16 goals - £6m Dack - 15 goals - 750k McGoldrick - 15 goals - free Wilson - 15 goals - loan Now I know part of Brereton's fee was 'for the future' and because he was young and had potential, but at the same time should a club just promoted from League 1 be splashing £7m on players 'for the future' when there are positions in need of attention in the present? To my mind, the answer to this is no. That type of money should only have been spent on a player who could have an instant impact, irrespective of their age or potential. Literally the only player to cost more than Brereton in the above list was Jay Rodriguez, who WBA bought when they were still in the Premier League. I don't think there is any real excuse for the fee we paid for Brereton, especially when you see that the likes of McBurnie only cost £315k, Maupay was £1.6m, Che Adams £2m, Billy Sharp £650k and even our own Bradley Dack was only £750k. It's very hard to argue we did anything other than massively overspend on Brereton, almost to the point of total madness.

Mulgrew's contract isn't up until 2021 so unless somebody else picks up his wages we're stuck with him.

I won't be devastated if we keep Mulgrew, I'd only be concerned if he was a starter come August. He should definitely be a bench option, and perhaps even as a DM/CM rather than a CB. I wouldn't expect him to be able to play the whole match in midfield but I'm sure he could manage 10-15 minutes.