Why did we not let Leutwiler go at the end of last season if we're essentially bringing in Foderingham to fill his position anyway?

In fairness I can't remember the last time we signed "a few quality players" towards the end of any recent window. We signed Danny Graham(loan) on Jan 20 in the 15/16 window. We got Mulgrew on the last day of the summer window in 16/17. At a stretch you could include Emnes although for me he isn't in the same bracket. Reed came in on August 27 last summer. That's about it as far as quality first teamers since the 15/16 season at least. Graham's permanent signing was July 1, same for Rothwell. Dack was June 27. Armstrong was Jan 9. Based on past history we can expect one potentially decent signing at the end of the window, but otherwise our serious business tends to be done before then. Could change this season, but it wouldn't be consistent with how the club normally operates in the transfer window.

It's just my opinion. If you think otherwise then that's fine, we'll have to see. Personally I think we'll have a GK & CB in place well before the deadline, as Mowbray will want both players to be able to hit the ground running from the first match rather than having to spend the first few weeks bedding in and getting used to the team, the manager and how we play. A failure to prepare is preparation to fail. In my view (and it is just an opinion) the sooner we get first team players in the better. Padding out the squad or going for a surprise target can wait until later in the window.

£8m for Zahore is madness imo.

How is Craig Conway on trial at Bolton if things are that bad? It's a pretty embarrassing state of affairs there - is it not possible for the rest of Bolton's team to cancel their contracts as they have obviously been breached through non-payment? I'm sure most of them, even Lowe, could find a club willing to pay them more than £0 p/w.

I don't disagree, but at the same time we simply can't wait until the end of the window to bring in a first choice GK & CB imo. These need to be done earlier to give them a chance of being prepared for what is a difficult first month of the season for us. I'd be okay with us waiting until later in the window to add quality in the FB positions, although if I was Mowbray I'd be looking at getting Martin Olsson in ASAP if possible.

Baffling to me that some are happy for us to essentially wait until the deadline to get players in, giving them no time to bed into the squad or have any kind of pre-season getting them used to their team mates and how we set up. Just throw them in the deep end and hope for the best.

Generally just means "in most cases", so "in most cases I would only" makes perfect sense. I think most people would understand that tbh, it seems really pedantic to call it out when the meaning is obvious.

Can't imagine anyone paying that for him. A decent Championship striker but that's about it.

Where is that from? I saw he'd been linked with Swansea. Would be very surprised if he dropped to League 1.

Hard to tell how he's going to fare based on his career so far. Being settled somewhere and (hopefully) playing regularly may well get the best out of him.

I didn't realise we actually conceded the most away goals in the division, even more than Bolton and Ipswich. That's pretty scary! Thank goodness we were solid at Ewood.

Thanks to previous work I skim read very effectively

Bennett is one of them - would not surprise me at all if Mulgrew and Evans are another two who are selected far more than they should be over the coming season. Thankfully there's evidence to suggest Smallwood has fallen far down the pecking order, at least.

I just skip through the nonsense, you can pretty much tell from the usernames at this point how far you need to scroll

There is this thread for people who don't like discussion tbf.

Personally? No, I think it's beyond him. His overcautious demeanour and stubborn loyalty to certain players will likely continue to limit the team's potential. He's earned the chance to try though, so I can only hope he proves me wrong.

We saw a ridiculous amount of HT 0-0's at Ewood last season. Teams did not find it easy to score against us at home. I don't know the stats, but I'd bet it was nothing similar away from home. We can hypothesise as to the reasons behind it, but the fact remains that we were far more solid at home than we were away from home. That's obviously not uncommon, but Mowbray is going to need to work out how to take our home mentality on the road if we are to make a serious push for a playoff spot this season. Improving the defence, assuming we do, will obviously help - but our home form last season showed that the defence in of itself wasn't necessarily the primary problem. It was as much if not more to do with how we were set up.

Yeah, I remember noting last season that there was some significant differences in our home and away stats. If Mowbray could crack setting us up away from home then we would legitimately be in with a shout of the playoffs. We seem to struggle when teams come at us, as opposed to playing at home where we are under less pressure and find it easier to settle.

Actually somehow Coyle was the one who signed DG on a permanent. Maybe the only good thing he did for the club, along with signing Mulgrew. DG was originally a Lambert loanee.

Loans are fine as long as the bulk of the team isn't made up of them. You don't want to be over-reliant on loan players as they won't have the same motivation to succeed for the club as players who are signed permanently (usually, there are exceptions, see D. Murphy, B. Orr, D. Etuhu, etc). Ideally if you're bringing in a loan it's either a player you hope to be able to buy at a later date (Josh King and Tom Cairney are good examples of this) or players that you realistically aren't able to sign permanently, but are significantly better than what you already have. I think we'll sign a permanent GK, but if we got in a really good loan CB and LB I'd be happy with that.

I think he was officially announced as "ill" in the friendly he missed, although my first thought was that the word was being substituted for injured so people didn't get upset. I've said before we simply cannot rely on Chapman being a regular starter for our team. We'll do well to get 20 appearances out of him in a season imo, and that includes coming on as a substitute.

With these owners you never know. History suggests that long-term plans don't necessarily appeal to them though, so the European Global Network Scouting Initiative will need to produce results fairly quickly in order to survive, assuming it is implemented at all.

Yes, except the ground he's planting these seeds on is owned by a group of idiots who like to come around every so often and nuke it into oblivion.

Quite a strange thing for a manager to be in charge of though, don't you think? I mean, if it was coming from the top of the club then OK, great, but this seems to be entirely pushed by TM... an employee whose job is by nature relatively short-term. He may legitimately have left the club before the European Scouting Global Network Initiative gets off the ground - then what? New manager comes in to take advantage, or just dismantles the whole thing and goes in a different direction?