Maddison ticks all the boxes for us, and I think would be a quality signing that would generate some excitement. He's in a position we need to strengthen in, fits the Mowbray mould of being relatively young, proven at a lower level, Mowbray will know him from last season and when at Coventry. Still don't have much confidence it will be us. The Posh chairman's comments seem to leave 4 potential clubs but I'd still think WBA and possibly Stoke would be in ahead of us. Maybe not Stoke who seem to be shopping in mega money signings but WBA would make sense given they're losing a few. If he has a release clause at £1 million or so I would expect numerous clubs to be in for him and it to then come down to who he fancies playing for/who is going to pay him most.

Maybe they're saving up to sign Jordan Rhodes?

Always had a grudging respect for Uruguay having achieved so much on such a small population, but like most other South American sides they turn nasty when losing. I thought France were garbage in the group stage against Australia and Denmark but with the personnel they have managed to win their group without impressing and are always going to be capable of getting to the final and winning it. I'd much prefer to see one of the others win it than the French though.

Gallagher isn't going to get a look in at Southampton I wouldn't have thought and I thought I'd heard he was approaching the final year of his contract. If so I'd expect he'd be available for purchase. Young, a presence up front, knows the club, knows the Championship, scored a few in a poor struggling side last time round. Could do a lot worse. Speculate to accumulate. At his age barring an injury disaster the likelihood is he will increase in value which should tick the Venky criteria.

No news on the away shirt though?

There would be every point in signing Morrison as he is technically better than those already here. The question is whether or not he is fit enough to play, whether his wage demands would be appropriate and whether he fits in with the preferred model of signing younger players to grow in value. We signed Whittingham last summer and Morrison would be along similar lines to that really in terms of a deal for a couple of years so it's not beyond the realms of possibility but I can't see it happening. Not because he isn't good enough, he almost certainly is good enough to play for us in the Championship, but whether we're prepared to pay the rate and risk it considering he was injured all last season.

Be better if we signed a decent striker rather than loaned one. I'd be quite happy if we kicked off the season with no loans on the books. Not against a couple of them as late options but there needs to be contracted permanent options up front to go with DG rather than game time for someone for 6 months before having to replace him again.

Suspect that Morrison and Brunt are only being 'linked' because they are both known to Mowbray having signed them 10 years ago at WBA. Doubt there's any more to it than that.

Think with laughable outcomes like with Bournemouth today and the QPR saga it is becoming clear that FFP rules doesn't prevent anything from happening if the determination to do it is there.

Makes sense with Mowbray with Morrison being a Middlesbrough lad and Mowbray took him to WBA. Think he'd be a good signing in the Championship but not sure if he's fit, seemed to miss last season with inury.

https://www.efl.com/news/2018/july/efl-statement-afc-bournemouth/?utm_source=Direct Another pay-off on the quiet of just £4.7 million. Not bad in exchange for 4 seasons in the Premier League bringing in hundreds of millions. Not bad business for the EFL either who have now raked in nearly £10 million from Leicester and Bournemouth whilst boxing off a potential headache and embarrassment. Wolves will no doubt be next in a couple of years.

So if Marriott transfers to Forest or Bristol City and notches 20 goals next season will you maintain the view that his 'all round game' isn't good enough or accept that perhaps he is good enough for Rovers? Strikers deal in a currency of goals, everything else is a sideshow.

Nobody has been in an embargo for years now. Nobody who has stayed in the Championship has been fined. Leicester were fined loose change for a Premier League club and QPR were fined yet haven't paid a penny of it. It's a sham. Either the rules are so slack that clubs can dance round them at will or the people responsible for enforcing them aren't doing their jobs. Lots of rumours, suggestions and speculation about various clubs being in trouble at some non-specified point in the future if something doesn't change and yet right here right now none of them have been punished. Wolves, Derby, Wednesday, QPR, Birmingham - just a few examples of clubs frequently spending beyond their natural means who have dodged any punishment. Then there's Villa who last time I checked haven't been punished either despite lots of rumours of it. Facilities/academy nothing to do with FFP rules so they could be funded to a limitless amount if desired. If Venkys wanted to spend £50 million on Ewood Park and Brockhall they could do and it would be exempt from FFP calculations.

If it is Mowbray's decision to do it that way then fair enough, I suspect it's partly that but also significantly what the owners want to do. But to make out as though any sort of serious spending or increasing of wages is going to be automatically detrimental to team spirit I think is wrong. A balance can be struck between recruiting quality whilst keeping a good spirit around the camp.

Think we are way past that point. If they weren't going to get rid at 50 or 100 million I doubt they ever will.

But going back to the part about Wolves. Last season they used several players who were there before the takeover who had been brought through in League One when Kenny Jackett was their manager. They were retained and played a part in promotion yet at the same time they splashed out fortunes on big name Portuguese players who were almost certainly on much bigger wages than their colleagues. Yet no disruption, no jealousy or falling out about how much people got paid, they got on with it. I'm not suggesting paying those sort of figures out but this suggestion that we couldn't or shouldn't ever spend big money or pay big wages again out of some theoretical potential damage to squad harmony I find hard to believe. If it were the case no club would ever invest significant money or spend big because the disruptive effect would be too great. Forest are on with it too, spending a lot of money on new players who won't come cheap and Karanka wouldn't be there if there wasn't cash to spend, yet they will have other players and young lads on less money who will crack on and play next season.

This talk about disrupting dressing room harmony by paying bigger wages and transfer fees is silly in my opinion. Every club in the country has some players on a lot more than others and they do perfectly well. The only way to avoid it is to implement a communist style recruitment system where everyone gets paid exactly the same to ensure equality. I would guess last season Dack would have been on significantly less than Corry Evans and Craig Conway yet that didn't do him or us any harm. Likewise were we to now put Dack among the top earners I doubt anyone would or could have any complaints as he's earned it. Cristiano Ronaldo will be top earner at Real Madrid and cost more than the others and he's the centre of attention and star of the show and yet the rest of the team get on with it and are successful with a good atmosphere around the place. A more realistic comparison would be Wolves - following their takeover they signed numerous Portuguese players on mega money who were brought in through a friendly agent. Yet they retained a British core from pre-takeover who continued to perform and they got promoted with that mixture. Suddenly splashing fortunes out on big players didn't suddenly mean their existing players got fed up. There's a difference between paying good money out in wages and fees whilst maintaining a good spirit and atmosphere around the place and returning to the dark days of before when Myles Anderson was being brought in on 5 figure a week multi-year deals whilst proven pros were being shown the door.

The matchday programme has been substandard for as long as I can remember. I think we're now at a stage where only the ardent programme collectors bother with it because nobody would buy it to read or browse such is the dreadful standard and poor value for money. I understand that Waggott is talking to fans at the moment about how to rectify this but I think he would be better getting on the phone to Bristol Rovers or Rochdale and asking how it is they manage to produce a quality product every other week on gates of a fraction of ours. No club is ever going to make a massive profit on programmes. I don't think that is the idea. But we're never going to sell many as they are. If they're so disinterested in it then they should knock it down to £1 and approach it that way. Continuing at £3 is an insult. The talk about falling sales and breaking even is all well and good but if I were Waggott I'd be asking myself why it is that a club of this size is incapable of making a do on programmes whilst clubs in the Conference can come up with better for the same price. In terms of the surcharge I can safely say that one thing it will not achieve is more people turning up. It may not actively dissuade people from going, but it won't make people get up on a Saturday in greater numbers and go down to Ewood. As I've suggested above whatever additional cash the club rakes in through doing it is so utterly insignificant when compared against lost revenues through moving Leeds/PNE unnecessarily that it makes the whole thing pointless. I've no idea where the £3 goes but there were ticket office staff getting paid before it was introduced and tickets are still £20 odd even without the surcharge so their wages should come out of that.

We don't actually know what the financial situation is. It is an assumption we don't have enough money to pursue Championship experienced players. That's why I said IF Armstrong is going to cost Championship level money, e.g. a substantial fee and wages, then I might prefer we looked elsewhere. He's not going to make a do at Newcastle in the Premier League, certainly not with Benitez as manager. I accept we have to take risks but don't think that has anything to do with 'financial limitations'. Every club has to take risks on bringing in players and spending money on them. I've said already that I'd like him here permanently but if he's going to cost £1 million and £10k a week I might exercise caution with it.

I'd like Armstrong but there's no evidence at this stage he can hack it in the Championship. If he's going to cost a Championship sized fee then it might be worth looking at alternatives who have shown they can do it.

Get shirts on sale early so people buy them during a heatwave before they go away on holiday, rather than waiting until late July when everyone will be back. Produce a matchday programme worth buying/reading. Have a greater range and quality of merchandise available in the shop. Encourage people to attend games at the last minute by removing a needless £3 surcharge for tickets bought on the day. Make it easier to attend matches on a game by game basis by installing a cash turnstile to avoid the need to queue in the rain for 20 minutes for tickets. Don't move kick off times to noon to accommodate large away followings (guaranteed to diminish the number of home fans in attendance). Don't close 2 stands in 3 years in the process upsetting numerous groups of people. If they did any of those things there wouldn't be uproar, yet they won't do any of them, and instead spend their time coming up with schemes to try and lever a few quid more out of those who go. If 1000 people buy 1875 membership then that's an extra £10,000 for the club. I reckon the impact of moving PNE alone to a noon kick off will cost the club more than £10,000 in lost ticket receipts. If we get 5,000 less people turning up e.g. 16,000 on instead of 21,000 and those people are paying £10 a head on average then straight away the club is missing out on £50,000, before corporate, food, drink etc. Fair enough stewarding would be more expensive at 21,000 but it does highlight just how ultimately insignificant these schemes are when on the other hand they're needlessly moving kick off times around. Even if it doesn't affect the home crowd but knocks 2000 away fans off, say because Leeds fans can't get a train over for noon or whatever, that's still £40,000 in lost ticket sales through moving the kick off, way more than they get back through pointless schemes like £3 extra for a ticket on matchday.

So if we were to sign either of them this summer you'd be unhappy?

No it doesn't. If the owners want to invest more money then they tell the manager that he can spend more, and if the manager wishes to do so then he does. It doesn't have to be a promotion or bust model. If we don't go up we don't have to make massive cuts or sell players to make up the shortfall. We could just do what we're doing at present and did last season but on a bigger scale. E.g. what most Championship clubs do - spend multi millions on new players every year. Do you really think that every club that spends money has to slash costs if they don't get promoted? Notice I didn't say I supported blowing the wage bill right open again, but investing in transfer fees can be done if the desire to do it is there. We need to move away from this ludicrous FFP concern. Cutting the cloth accordingly is a myth unless we sell a player for big money every couple of years. Not many clubs in the Championship do that. Debts are spiralling and will continue to do so each and every year we're out of the Premier League.

Marriott's CV reads similar to Rhodes' when he came here. Early 20s, off the back of an incredible season in League One, done the business for the last couple of years scoring every other game on average, came through at Ipswich but sent out on multiple loans to a variety of lower league clubs, then let go by Ipswich and goes from strength to strength since leaving them. I'd expect he'd cost multi-millions which shouldn't be a problem if the owners wanted to do it but I don't think they really do want to do it so likely won't happen. It would be nice to bring in at least one 'big' signing - a statement - icing on the the cake etc. I'm not suggesting going silly or spending silly wages but someone like Marriott would be the sort - goalscorer, interest from numerous clubs, sought after etc.

I think we need 2 centre forwards. Question marks on Samuel and Nuttall and it isn't realistic to rely entirely on Graham. We need options and the ability to change things up front.