DE.

Not sure you can compare Cantwell to the likes of Bellamy/RSC. Both of the latter were proven quality regardless of attitude/fitness issues, whilst Cantwell has drastically declined over the past two years. Signing players with a bit of an attitude problem can be a risk worth taking if they've proven to be very good on the pitch, but when they've been rubbish and injury prone for around 24 months it's a different scenario.

Preston are the joint second lowest scorers in the division (they'd be joint bottom if we hadn't let them score four against us), so not sure where the confidence comes that Delap will get into double figures considering he only has three senior goals to date.

Norwich may be looking at how Peterborough got us to up our bid for Szmodics and think they can squeeze a little more out of us if they play hardball. Evidently they aren't in a rush to sell him and may wait until the end of the window to see if Rangers make their interest concrete or if we are desperate enough to put more money on the table. Personally I'd leave it alone if they aren't willing to accept the £2m offer. Considering the potential attitude problems at play I'm not sure it's worth chasing any further.

Agree with the general point, but I'm sure I remember reading that ground maintanence and stadium investment in general are not factored into FFP calculations - so the only thing stopping Venky's from spending decent money on general upkeep is Venky's themselves.

CNBC now reporting the Saudi sale isn't happening and the rumours were never true to begin with. Makes you wonder what the purpose was of putting this out there in the first place - too much smoke for there not to be a fire somewhere, even if the actual rumour itself was a falsehood. Certainly drove the stock price up.

Most of the rumours are saying the deal is done. One assumes if it is the company will go private, ultimate control returns to Vince, and we are basically in the darkest timeline as far as WWE is concerned. Sami Zayn will almost certainly be unable to continue with the company, you'd have to think, which is a huge shame considering he's at his professional peak right now. Grim for WWE fans, but could be a big boost for AEW - unless the Saudis start throwing crazy money around to pay the wrestlers, in which case it could cause them some major headaches.

It might be easier to find two players who are specialists in their positions than one player who can do a bit of both, but if we had to focus on one position I'd say a striker who actually scores goals at this level is crucial. We have players in the squad capable of providing assists - A. Wharton, Dolan, Bucko, Hedges, Dack, etc - but outside of BBD no genuine goalscorers and therefore that has to be the focus. In fact I'd probably go as far as to say I'd rather we bring in two decent strikers than a striker and a wideman.

Well, yeah. When you think about what he cost and the outlay on his wages, bonuses etc over the past few years, even a £10m fee may actually technically be a loss for us.

Probably not. The only way it would make sense to sell is if we received a crazy bid (£15m+) and could invest at least 50% of that in the fee/wages of the replacement, who would have at this point needed to have been scouted and analysed to a point where we'd be confident of a quick sale and immediate impact. Chances of the above happening, however, are close to zero you'd think, so at this point we might as well keep BBD. For the future though we simply can't let situations like this keep happening if we want to have a sustainable long-term transfer model.

That's exactly what this model demands - it doesn't work if you sell a player for decent money and then spend a fortune replacing him as well. How is that sustainable? You have to take gambles in order to make it work. You can obviously reduce the risk by having a good scouting team in place who understand what to look for. Would I do it now, whilst we're 3rd and BBD only has six months left in his contract? No, that's obviously a failure of the supposed model because these decisions should be made well in advance, but BBD can be replaced in a sustainable way - it's just a case of whether our current structure is capable of doing so.

In regards to replacing BBD being a supposedly impossible task, players who have scored more or the same as him this season so far: Chuba Akpom - bought for £2.75m Viktor Gyökeres - Undisclosed but considering he was bought by Coventry it couldn't have been much at the time Óscar Estupiñán - free transfer Carlton Morris - bought for £2.8m Zian Flemming - bought for £1.7m Iliman Ndiaye - bought for £200k Ross Stewart - bought for £350k Jay Rodriguez - youth team graduate Josh Sargent - bought for £9m Will Keane - free transfer Jerry Yates - bought for £200k Oli McBurnie - bought for £17.5m Scott Hogan - bought for £2.8m Wages probably not eye-watering for most of those either (Rodriguez, Sargent and McBurnie aside). So no, I don't buy the idea that BBD is irreplaceable unless we spend a fortune. He actually has the lowest goal conversion of all of the players who have scored or or the same as him at just 17%. To replace him would of course require some decent scouting and recruitment, but that is exactly what Greg is being paid for. He would have known the BBD contract situation as soon as he arrived, so no excuse at this point not to be on top of it. Sourcing a replacement, presuming he will leave either this month or the summer, should have been #1 priority.

Irrespective of where we differ in terms of our opinions, this much we can both agree on. Let's hope the JDT/GB duo can finally give us something worthwhile to invest in.

Then you sell them before it gets to the point where they can walk for nothing. Otherwise the model doesn't work, and indeed it hasn't really worked for us so far outside of AA. If you're relying on players to sign any new contract offered and to only sell when it's most convenient for the club then I think we can conclude from the past few years this is not sensible. Either we are not adhering to the model in question, or the people in charge of the operation were completely incompetent in executing that plan. The players running down their contracts is irrelevant as any worthwhile plan will factor contract length into account and ensure arrangements are made to either renew well ahead of time or sell if there's little hope of a renewal and only a year or eighteen months left. There will be cases when for whatever reason the player can't be sold or refuses to leave, but we already know that wasn't the case with Rothwell or BBD, and there have been bids in for Lenihan in the past so I am sure we'd have gotten something for him if we'd made him available. Nyambe I'm less sure about, but the point is the club had options in most cases. We chose, and with BBD are seemingly continuing to choose, to let players leave for nothing rather than sell them when appropriate.

That and it puts paid to the idea we have any kind of 'model' that involves developing youngsters and then selling them on for big profit to further reinvest in the team to eventually achieve promotion in a sustainable way. If we're just going to let players' contracts run down, as happened with Nyambe, Lenihan, Rothwell and probably BBD, or sell them cheap as we did with the likes of Raya and Cairney, we might as well just buy players who are ready to impact the team now rather than players who take years to make their mark. If we end up making zero or barely above zero on them anyway then it doesn't really matter whether they're young, in their prime or in their twilight years. You'd just be aiming for players who can come in and do a job now if there's no serious plan to sell at the right time and reinvest the funds. Armstrong is increasingly seeming like a one off rather than an example of what we're trying to do.

At this point it'd just mean that Newcastle win the PL every season, so I don't think it'd help much. Best case scenario a few of the traditionally upper-middle PL teams end up with big foreign investment and we're back to where we started with a handful of teams competing and the rest existing.

Try as I might I can't even get a glimmer of satisfaction from Chelsea's potential decline. The PL is just so soulless... utterly empty and devoid of any true value as a competition, unless you really enjoy billionaires using sports teams to amuse themselves and/or sportswash a regime or two. The Championship may be a significant drop in quality but, for now at least, it still feels like football in a form I recognise. Perhaps not for too much longer considering the increasing power of clubs coming down with parachute money, but the only way I could even feign an interest in the PL now is if Rovers were in it. Even then I am really not sure how I'd feel about it. It's obviously critical to the club in a financial sense to get promoted, but I know it won't be the same as it was the last couple of times we were there.

JDT/GB dropped a bollock in the summer with this one. We are fortunate Leicester were willing to take him back and another club was interested in bringing him in. I can accept that both JDT and Broughton had limited time in the summer, though, and hopefully this is a lesson learned. Probably won't be lucky enough for lightning to strike twice and for Mola to also be recalled, but one dreadful signing off the books is better than none.

I was there for that one too. Very strange atmosphere from the away end. Plenty of support for the lads but the anger towards Kean was still very much there. Not quite as vociferous as the middle and end of our final PL campaign, but still a very strong and vocal resentment as soon as he slithered out onto the touchline.

A couple. Pears was very good today, deserves credit for his part in keeping a clean sheet.

Seems that we just have Norwich's number this season, 25 shots to 9 but still managed to win 1-0. Had to dig deep to win that one, but kudos to the team for hanging on. A resolute performance.

Have to say this game has reminded me why I wasn't particularly bothered when Hanley left. So clumsy.

Can only be a good thing to have Vale's confidence boosted.

Think he has the makings of a decent League 1/League 2 player. Expect that once we get a little more depth that's where he'll end up, either on loan or permanently. In the meantime just have to hope he's in the right place at the right time to nick a few goals for us, as Nuttall managed before finding his proper level (although admittedly I didn't think Nuttall would be playing as far down as the National League at just 25).

Hirst will probably be alright in L1. The quality of that league is a massive step down from this one, as we saw the last time we were there. Having gone to a few Ipswich matches this season it actually seems to have gotten worse somehow since then. Hirst is only the answer for Ipswich for as long as they're in League 1 though. As soon as they're promoted he'll be out of his depth even as backup.

Possibly just because we started late, thanks to Venky's usual glacial pace of doing... well, anything, and panicking a bit to get bodies through the door. Hopefully not a mistake that will be repeated, and at the very least it seems like Hirst may be recalled if we're lucky.