Admiral Nelsen

I think that's a fair comment (and being 21, he needs to be getting games now if he is ever to make his mark here). That said, I'm cautious about reading too much into pre-season form. Might be a little risk averse but I think having Vale as our first option off the bench is a fair reward considering where he was in the pecking order last year.

No Gally in the XI Joe? I can see the appeal of going to 343 now that Brittain is through the door, but I'd be surprised if both Dolan and Vale get in front of him (although I'm looking forward to see what Vale can do if given the chance).

He did indeed - that passed me by. To be fair if he's fit enough to deal with the intensity of a league game for an hour or so then I agree that he should be in there. I suspect we'll be seeing Dolan a bit more as a 10 this year though, probably starting on Saturday. Feel a bit of trepidation about this one. I think we'll be fine over the season once we have a few more bodies in, but I can see why lots of outsiders would look at our squad at the moment and put us as lower mid-table. I'd take a horrible 1-0 right now.

I think that's our best team, but I'd be surprised if Dack starts with him only having 45 mins of pre-season. Would probably have Dolan as the 10 with Dack coming off the bench, and have JRC on the bench in front of Garrett.

1. Where will Rovers finish ? Caveated that I expect i) BBD to leave and ii) another four or so first teamers to come in, 12th. 2. Who will be the Rovers (official) Player Of The Season ? S. Wharton. Hopefully one of our attacking or creative players will prove me wrong and be consistently good enough. 3. Who do you think will be the breakout/breakthrough academy player this season ? (Let’s say under 23 at season start & fewer than 10 1st team appearances to be eligible) Vale. Now or never. 4. Who will win the Championship ? Hard one, but I'll go for Norwich. 5. Where will Burnley finish ? 5th. But could be literally anywhere from 1st to about 18th.

Maybe, but the Wigan deal (which I agree is a little strange) suggests that he didn't have too much in the way of suitors at our level or above. If teams aren't making the effort when they don't have to pay a fee, presumably it wouldn't be straightforward to get decent money if we were trying to flog him. I suppose when it comes down to 'protecting assets' - which we've been awful at - so much of it is successfully judging how players are going to develop and what they're likely to be worth down the line. If we think that Ryan, now in his mid 20s, isn't going to get much better then there's a logic in cutting our losses rather than paying him a good whack to stay a mid-level Championship right back.

Even now, I'm not so sure. It's obviously galling in a way, but the fact that he can't attract anything better than Wigan even when he's on a free suggests that he's a long way away from being a decent sellable asset. His strengths vs weaknesses have been done to death on here, but say we upped our offer to a decent level and he signed a new long term deal - that means we could be entering the territory of paying first XI wages to a player who isn't quite at the level we want to progress. On balance I wish we convinced him to sign on but there's risk involved in keeping him on too.

Barnsley fans having a go at him seem to be criticising his crossing more than anything else. That would be at least one difference to Nyambe because he never used to cross the ball in the first place! Like you I'll wait and see before saying that he's an upgrade, but I'm pretty optimistic. He can obviously travel with the ball well, and if he can play in midfield you'd imagine that his all round game on the ball would be much better than Ryan's. Hopefully we don't lose too much on the defensive side.

I was a bit shocked to see some of the opinions of Sheff U fans when someone posted a link to their forum. Can't have set the world alight there. But he was very good at PNE by all accounts, and he's still at a good age, so I'd be over the moon if we signed him permanently. Him on a long term contract alongside Wharton and Carter waiting in the wings is a bit of decent stability at the back that we won't have had since at least Mulgrew and Lenihan, and even then we needed an upgrade at this level.

That would be ideal - although to be honest I'd be surprised. I think the most likely scenario of him extending his deal is going to be through a lack of form this season if we don't sell now for whatever reason, which obviously wouldn't really suit anyone.

It's perfectly feasible that most (all?) of the links we've seen so far are Rovers trying to flog him. I'm just saying that IF we get more than two clubs who like the look of him, then we're not over the barrel quite as much. FWIW I think he's got more about him than Armstrong so it's not impossible, but we'll have to wait and see.

Possibly. Thing that did for us with Armstrong too is that there was only one serious suiter. If both West Ham and Leeds (and/or others) genuinely want him, I think £20 million is achievable.

It's interesting - on the face of it you seem to be linked with lots of shrewd looking long term investments, but not really players with proven records of competing at the top end of the Championship. Don't know if that speaks to the financial situation at all, but with the noises that were coming out a month or so ago I would've thought there would've been enormous pressure to go back up first time (which you still might, of course!) so I'm a bit surprised that you're linked with so many players needing to make a step up.

I think he will be an exception to be honest. A player who was never Liverpool standard bought in a panic and who hasn't made a single appearance for the club in 18 months, even during an injury crisis. They won't give him away if they can help it, but it's a world away from a promising youngster who hasn't quite managed to break through into a great side (who like you say, they tend to sell for big money).

Liverpool seem to see him as totally surplus to requirements, so it could just come down to accepting the best offer that comes their way (including subsiding a big chunk of his wages if they're as high as some are suggesting). That's obviously not to say that the best offer would come from us - I can't see us offering the same sort of fee that we supposedly were for the Bosnian lad seeing as there's little chance of getting a big profit further down the line. We might still be able to offer a semi-decent fee though, which might be enough with a bit of luck.

Good spot. Would be interesting to see what the overall financial package would be then, you'd have thought our absolute limit would be about a third of that if we're paying a fee on top.

I wouldn't go as far as to say people sound stupid - I think when players have had good careers, it's easy to miss how much their star might have fallen in a couple of years. I'm certainly guilty of it. I think it's pretty natural to cast some jealous glances when we need to get so much business done and there's no obvious sign of progress. But yes, I agree that given the circumstances we have to see going for Davies as a good thing. I'd like to think that us taking on his full contract and a substantial loan fee (if that's actually what is going on) might be with the view to a permanent deal next summer, but even if it's not, I doubt that I'd swap him for anyone that will be on Reading's radar this summer!

But they don't have a decent looking squad. They don't have a senior left back. They're even shorter on midfielders than we are! They might've 'survived' so far in that they narrowly escaped going down last year, but they're going into this season as one of the favourites again with a weaker squad and left scraping the barrel for everyone else's rejects to try and make a decent fist of staying up. I don't expect that we'll exactly be splashing the cash, but if we're going to bring Davies in, then that already is an example of a player who Reading wouldn't be able to get anywhere near because of the sanctions they're operating under.

Not sure of this is meant to be a joke or not, but they're literally only signing frees and cheap loans who nobody else wants on account of them being under a FFP induced transfer ban. I don't think you could pick a better example of what could go wrong if you try and cheat FFP and fail . He's had a good career, but he's not scored more than 10 league goals in a season for more than 10 years. He's not scored 15 in the last 6 years combined!

Interesting. Such a big call that. He's obviously a class above the vast majority of players at this level, and could be the difference between going up or not. Having said that, didn't he miss plenty of last season through injury, despite only playing once a week? You might be able to put the decent fee that you should get for him to better use elsewhere. I feel like every post I make on this thread is questioning the fitness and hunger of your players at this level, so I'll try to stop after this one!

Yes (apart from sell them), but then you question how early players make that decision and what else could've been done beforehand. Perhaps one or two (Rothwell - to take an example) were always going to run down his contract because he figures that's always how he gets the best deal in the future. But if we looked at the likes of Armstrong, Brereton, Rothwell and Lenihan and genuinely thought they had the potential to kick on, then we had the chance to offer them improved deals when their stock wasn't as high which would've cost us a bit in the medium term, but could've delivered a king's ransom when they would finally be sold (or even play a part in a successful promotion bid).

Not sure about Rhodes - didn't we get around £12 million or thereabouts? - but generally I think this is spot on. Trading smartly is absolutely imperative for clubs without parachute payments coming in. I suppose that you could argue that we've been slightly unlucky in that a disproportionate number of players have really kicked on to another level in the final 12-18 months of their deals, but you make yourself a hostage to fortune if you're not proactive enough with the contracts of players good enough to be in demand. I'm all for sensible budgets, but Brentford have showed that you need to speculate a little bit to accumulate, and then hopefully grow from there. They sold Watkins for near enough double what we got for Armstrong despite him scoring fewer goals.

Can't really speak for others, but I think most who bring up FFP do so because it means Venkys wouldn't be allowed to spend much more than they do, even if they wanted to.

Jumping the gun slightly here, but did we ever establish how large the sell-on clause was for Raya when we sold him?

Agree completely with your broader point. I think Stoke are quite a good example of how tough clubs can find things though under FFP. My understanding (which could be wrong) is that their wage bill has been cut quite drastically after spending buckets in their first few seasons post-relegation, even though their owner is willing to invest. I'd like to think that the evidence by the end of the window is that we're willing to pay the going rate at least compared to the clubs that we're currently competing with, but sadly at the moment there are probably 6 clubs in the division who have means which go way beyond what we can do. You'd probably expect around four of them at least to occupy the top 6 at the end of the year if recent seasons are anything to go by.