Admiral Nelsen

We probably wouldn't, but prices are usually inflated in January and teams get desperate. Teams might want to pay a decent fee to avoid having to compete with more clubs in the summer. It's not out of the question that a team throws decent money at BBD.

Partially agree with this, but some of those players were only going to be bit part players. I'm not overly bothered if Phillips isn't fit if Bellingham is playing instead, or that Calvert-Lewin hasn't been on form for a while. Others are more concerning, but (and I'm pinning a lot on this) are going to be playing in a totally different system for England than they do for their clubs. Maguire, despite everything, could easily be a completely different player when playing a deep 3 in the back compared to what he has been asked to do at United for the last couple of years. Grealish hasn't become a bad player either and it's not as though England will be asking him to play the same way as he does for City. Sterling is a bit more worrying as there's nothing about how Chelsea play which accounts for his poor form. Some are coming into good form too. I wouldn't start him, but it's good to see that Rashford is looking more like the player he can be.

I think this would be a mistake, based on what we've seen from the team and the limited bits that we've seen of Dack. But - if JDT has made his mind up - there's little point to keep a player who is probably our highest earner warming the bench, and sometimes not even that.

Completely agree with those saying make wholesale changes. Hopefully gives a chance to the likes of Buckley and Markanday to get closer to the side, although it's not exactly going to be ideal circumstances for them to showcase their talent.

A few wins like this one wouldn't have gone amiss after Christmas last year. We now have around half of what we'll likely need for a top 6 spot - which is an impressive achievement for the management team given the tricky situation they inherited. As a pointless bit of trivia - when you look at our results this season compared to the same fixtures last term, we're 14 points up. Obviously you can't read too much into that, but it's good to see that we're picking points in games that we didn't last time out.

Both of our results today are perfect examples of why next week is going to be so hard to call. If they really click and we don't rise to the occasion there's a pretty realistic chance that they could demolish us. Equally, every week they give teams a chance, and their weaknesses in theory suit us. A team with three centre halves, Brereton and Gallagher should be looking at the chances Sheffield United made today and be licking their lips.

I know we have to drop a good centre half if we're going with a back four, but I hate seeing S. Wharton left out of the side.

I don't think we will get £15 million - probably a lot less. But the circumstances of a January window means that teams might pay a premium. Brereton is showing that last season wasn't a flash in the pan, and any team who wants him will know that they'll be competing with a much bigger group of teams in the summer if he goes for a three.

I'd leave the whole first XI at home for the West Ham game! That's the side I'd go with too, albeit it's harsh on A. Wharton and to a degree, Carter.

I'd be surprised if there aren't significant knock on effects from that bug. If it's flu as has been reported, that's not going to clear up for them all in a day or two. Plus you'd think there's a very decent chance that some players will have developed symptoms later, and they won't have been training in a meaningful way to prevent the bug spreading. They even had to put demonstrably unfit players on the pitch for 90 mins at the weekend due to a lack of options, so they won't welcome another game just a couple of days later. If they can still perform to a good level with all of that going against them then fair play, but by all accounts they were lucky to escape from the Blackpool game without a hiding.

If we were languishing in midtable and managed to get a bid around 8 figures, I'd strongly consider letting him go. Replacing him like for like will be near enough impossible irrespective of the fee, but at least there's a profit on our initial outlay and the opportunity to invest back in the squad. If we get towards the end of January approaching 50 points though, then we'd be absolutely insane to sell for any price. Such a frustrating one as you can see the rest of the squad being in a great position next year (assuming we don't go up this year) but BBD is such an enormous hole to fill.

Robins sounds pretty certain that the match will go ahead, either at Cov or somewhere else. Apparently a flu bug has been going through their squad the last day or two. Could be an ideal time to play them.

Might seem like an odd thing to say, but I'm really pleased that he signed a new contract before being dropped. I've got total confidence that - sooner or later - he'll get back to and surpass his good form from last year. The fact that his contract runs for as long as it does means that neither party should be tempted into hasty ideas of him moving on.

Oooft! That is genuinely worse than us at Elland Road a few years ago, and that's saying something.

For their good points, we used to concede more than our fair share of late goals under both Bowyer and Mowbray. It's going to take a while to get that out of our system!

I think there's an element of not wanting to make a premature call on him, and there's definitely been some of that. Players do sometimes come back from serious injuries and be just as effective, but usually that involves a bit of patience and letting players get back into the rhythm of playing. Obviously you have others like Jansen who was given years to try and get back but just couldn't manage it. We still don't know which of the two Dack is going to be, and we won't until he gets a consistent run of games.

Brighton have tended to be pretty good at not losing their assets for less than their worth, so I suspect they'll have something up their sleeve on Van Hecke. No idea on what sort of fee he would command or whether it's remotely realistic that we could get him, but if we could put Ayala's wage to getting Van Hecke next year then that would be a tremendous bit of business.

Agree with this. I almost prefer the goals against Big Club and his first against Boro more than his screamer. He's always had the odd special goal in his locker, but his bigger problem is that he has lacked the instinct to get tap ins.

Such a strange player Johnson. Misplaced an unbelievable number of easy passes for a player who genuinely had decent ability.

Agree with this - but even if we can't get a decent fee for him, his wages will be significant. Ideally I'd like to put that outlay to good use by giving him more of a chance in the team, but if we're not going to be doing that, then letting him go in January might give us more wiggle room to bring in players.

They did, but Wigan won the League game by about 80 points. I think the reverse fixture was much tighter, and Wigan scored some amazing tries that you wouldn't see in a thousand games of Union. You're right though, the technical differences between the two games were too great for even that great Wigan team to overcome. I love watching the old Middlesex 7s games from that sort of period when Wigan and Bradford were invited at different times. Giving the likes of Edwards, Robinson and especially Offiah that much open space is only just short of cheating.

I think a lot of this is fair, especially in terms of some of the other players you mention copping for too much, too early. About Vale specifically though, it's also fair to point out that he has shown very little in his first team appearances so far, and so a three year contract extension was always going to raise a few eyebrows. He'll be 25 by the time this one expires, so it's significant in terms of length, even if he doesn't get a particularly big pay rise. You're still right of course that this shouldn't mean we write him off.

I suspect we might listen to the same podcasts. The guy on the Second Tier who every week says something like 'well, the underlying data shows...' like some kind of expert when you know full well he's just looking at xG and using that a proxy for 'who played well'. Very annoying. The proof of the pudding is in the eating though, and if a metric doesn't have at least pretty strong relationship with results, then like Joe says, it wouldn't be used in that way. Taking a non-football example that I'm more familiar with, you'll often see political commentators & others spend a lot of time discussing perceptions of the party leaders from opinion polls, or the extent to which people think either Labour or the Tories are competent in running the economy. Even though neither of these things properly capture the full range of what people like/dislike about each party, they both correlate very strongly with who people vote for when it comes to election time. So it's a pretty useful shortcut, even if not a perfect one.

In retrospect, one hundred percent. To be fair a lot of big teams across Europe were still playing 442 until after the 2006 World Cup, so it wasn't just England being slow on the uptake. I think even putting Scholes to one side, playing 442 was most harmful because it meant that we weren't even getting the best out of the other two that we had left. There was an interview a couple of years ago with Rio, Lampard and Gerrard. It hit the headlines because Ferdinand said something about putting club before country and the players not really getting on, but Lampard was more insightful when he said that they were constantly being outnumbered in midfield, even by more minor nations. Playing Carrick (or a fully fit Hargreaves) behind them solves that problem and would've allowed them to focus more on hurting the opposition. It probably wasn't realistic to expect this during the Sven era, but the way the game was going after then, McClaren then Capello had every chance to make more out of the players they had. Either of the below going into the 2008 qualifiers would've been far better for me. Carrick is central to both. Robinson Campbell Ferdinand Terry Neville Carrick Cole Lampard Gerrard Rooney Crouch Or Robinson Neville Ferdinand Terry Cole Carrick Lampard Gerrard Cole Rooney Downing

Would have complemented them too if we played 433, as was becoming more common in the mid 2000s. To be fair to Sven, that would've also meant dropping Beckham and Scholes (or playing them badly out of position) which would've been a massive call. After 2006 though, he should've started every game as a key player. Scholes retired. Beckham not exactly retired but on his way out and increasingly playing in more centrally anyway. Only Rooney as a genuinely top class striker, so no real need to keep two up top. Yet somehow we carried on playing 442, handing out caps to far worse players and squandering one of the few areas that we could claim to be world class from 2006-2012 or so. Gareth Barry has almost 20 more caps than Carrick. Absolutely insane.