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.

As soon as he was out of the team we noticeably improved and went on a run of good form. If people want to chalk that up to coincidence then OK, but it's a fact that we had much better results with Lenihan and Williams at the back. To say the rest of the team is the problem is burying your head in the sand and ignoring evidence, imo. Mulgrew has been a good servant for us, no question, but his time as a first teamer is over. If the midfielders contribute more to the goals scored column and the defence tightens up we will be fine without Mulgrew's set pieces. That's where we should be aiming.

Not sure about last season, but this season it wouldn't have made any difference as I think we only gained 2 or 3 points from the games he scored in.

I would rather we didn't focus too much on it in all honesty. 0 assists for Mulgrew this season so his set pieces are only useful if they go in. 10 goals sounds good but considering we picked up very few points in games Mulgrew scored in, I'd be happy to go without!

Big wage for a backup defender (who can't defend). Unfortunately I imagine that wage will be the reason we can't shift him.

An all English CL and Europa League final! UEFA will be devastated.

It applies to domestic leagues, yes, but the point of the CL is to bring the elite teams together to eliminate that kind of thing! If it's happening even in the most elite European competition then they've got it wrong. I do agree that straight knockout would be better, with less overall teams. Elite competition should mean elite competition, not try to include everybody so nobody feels left out and/or we can make more money out of TV deals.

For me it's more that the same teams always inevitably end up going through. There's an upset once every few years but whoever gets through instead always gets knocked out instantly in the next round. It's a bit like world cup/european cup qualifying, largely predictable and stale. Obviously the Nations League was introduced to try and combat that, but I'm not convinced it's the right idea and obviously wouldn't work for the CL anyway.

It's just a grand sounding title. It's all it's ever really been. It doesn't bother me. The only thing about the CL that bothers me is the fairly boring group stages. Find a way to make those more interesting and for me the format is all good.

I don't tend to start watching the CL until after the group stages are over. That part of the format doesn't really work for me, but the knockout stages are fine.

The name "Champions League" doesn't really make much sense nowadays when a significant portion of the participants are not champions of anything. It's just what the brand is now, though, and I can't see them changing it.

Yeah, I think football clubs cases are always judged in the context of the impact on the wider community, etc, should they disappear. That obviously gives chancers like Anderson and Bassini an opening as they know that even if things don't go to plan they can probably make their escape with relative ease.

That was Tadic I think. Pitiful attempt to keep the ball in the corner! I guess they aren't used to trying it?

Credit to Ajax for trying to play football right until the end. No shutting up shop or stifling the game, they went for it right until the end trying to counter and get the third goal. Whether it was the right thing to do, considering the result, is up for debate... but that was another great game.

Did @AllRoverAsia really go to bed?!

Absolutely incredible. What a ridiculous two nights of football. Wow.

#GiveThemAChance ! Hogan was on loan to Sheff Utd from Villa btw, I reckon he's on a pretty hefty wage there. Probably out of our price range.

How great is it, by the way, to have four teams in the semis who all want to play football? Not a Mourinho-esque anti-football team in sight.

Wow... game on!

Spurs were second best in the first leg and are second best again this time around. Hard to see them coming back into it, Ajax are playing some superb stuff.

"Knee jerk reactions to poor runs of form" is a bit harsh imo. Under Mowbray we went on the worst run of form since the days of Steve Kean, and it only changed when TM threw his hands up, played an experimental team at Derby and found that it worked. From then on he had little choice but to keep going in that direction. He persisted for far, far too long with a system that wasn't working, possibly partially because of our strange run of good form in January which broke up an otherwise dire period between November-March. That's not just a poor run of form, it's a significant chunk of the season where we really struggled to gain points. It would be foolish to ignore this on the back of a set of wins in mostly meaningless matches, imo. I think the division will be a lot more competitive next season and I'm not sure we can afford to go on the types of bad runs we went on this season. It's up to Mowbray to work out what was going wrong during those periods and ensure we're prepared to counter that next season. He's earned the right to take that challenge on, so let's see what he comes up with. He's talking a big game right now and promoting high expectations, so hopefully he has a solid plan to fulfil that. As fans we have every right to feel expectant when the manager is talking about spending money and mounting a serious promotion challenge next season.

We had a pretty bad November and December. We got smashed by Preston and Wigan remember. It briefly picked up in January with an excellent win against WBA, a really good 3-0 win against Hull and expected wins against Ipswich & Millwall, but 4 of the 5 months between November - March were very poor. Not sure why we suddenly picked up form in January but thank goodness we did, because it meant we were never really in any danger of getting sucked into the relegation fight.