Admiral Nelsen

Looked at the thread on their message board about him this morning. Looked like around November/December time he was getting some really impressive reviews. By the end of the season, less so, but with many fans saying that they'll still have him. Something worth considering is that when you've had a few years in the top division, your frame of reference as to what classes as a good player changes a bit. Young lad playing his first full season in defence in a team which is expected to go up, but doesn't have the overall quality to do so (exactly like we hadn't) is a tough gig. He'll be better for the experience.

One saving grace. Some attempt to at least make it 'halved'. This is not a good kit

Looks like Chapman got 45 minutes in the behind closed doors game earlier today. Hopefully putting worries that he's still injuted to bed

Exactly! Good managers want to surround themselves with talented people. Insecure ones want colleagues and employees who won't answer back.

Agree. Can't have unrealistic expectations of reserve keepers at this level, but I think we've seen enough of Leutwiler to see that whilst he has good points, we want to keep him on the bench as much as we can. I'd be absolutely delighted with Ruddy, but I think all the names mentioned would be entirely acceptable. Can't quite believe that so many are dead against Hart either. I know he's not at the same level as he has been, but look at how players like Pantilimon who are accident prone in the top flight look a different class in this league.

Would be the best of the names mentioned for me.

Under the same circumstances? I.e. we have recently been champions of England & had Shearer in his prime? Basically as much as Kane would cost in the current market, comfortably in the hundreds of millions,

Has wonderful talent, but no. 1 - we're well stocked for players in is position, like you say 2 - I don't think he's reliable. Not saying that this is necessarily down to a bad attitude, he may have just been a confidence player, but for whatever reason he goes for long spells playing within himself. In the latter months under Bowyer he should've been our main creative outlet, and he consistently under delivered. Wish him well, but not for me.

Sounds like someone's trying to get us to commit to a higher fee. Be patient at that price, if Brentford want to pay it then good luck to them.

Appropriately, the one Nuno is wearing actually looks pretty good to me. Less said about the other two the better

Nyambe certainly not and I agree with those who say that Bell is improving. Someone said in another thread that if we go three at the back with wing backs, then it does change things because all of a sudden they become much more important players and need to have good delivery. If we stay with a back four, no major issues for me.

Option two, with a loan option for a back up striker would be my preference by far, assuming that this is a fair reflection of the budget.

Hopefully the lack of competition means that we can get them down to a more reasonable fee. Looks like the consensus on here is that he'd be a useful enough addition, just that you can do more with £5million

saw something on twitter the other day, showed Jansson to be amongst the top 2 or 3 defenders in the division for a bunch of different measures, but amongst the lowest 5 or 6 too, including aerial duels, which seems incredible given his status as a dominant centre back. I can see why at this point no prem teams wanted to take the risk on him, and probably quite a few championship clubs (us included) would think that he can't be trusted for that price. I think you could probably say the same about Duffy when he was here in that he was brilliant at certain things and woeful at others, and he's made a good top flight career albeit playing in a team which plays exactly to his strengths.

It will be interesting to see if he is considered a starter next season. I would like to see him there and for him to kick on, but bringing in Downing (which I'm not against, in principle) could mean it's him on one side and Rothwell on the other. Something which stood out to me last season was how many times AA hit the post/bar when cutting in from the left. Seems like he ad the same curse as Kalinic had when he was here! Still managed a healthy goal/assist return though, I think there are certain deals which can definitely be debated, BB being the obvious one, but I'm very confident that when we all come to judge TM's time at Rovers, bringing Armstrong in will be seen as a good move for the money we paid.

I think we could get away with just the one extra centre back of the right quality but other than that I agree completely. Much easier to get a promising forward on loan from a top-flight club than a reliable defender.

I thought AA was cheaper than that? £1.odd million guaranteed was what I have in my head, could be wrong though. To be fair I still think £3million will turn out to be good business, can have quiet games but he contributed well last year imo. Will only get better too.

That's where I am. Reading between the lines he'd like to be here and we'd like to have him, but the boy will be 24 in a couple of months. If we had a bottomless pit of money he could well develop to be worth more than that in a couple of years, but the odds don't seem great to me.

Totally natural that Travis will be on the radar of plenty of top-flight teams. Part and parcel with having such a top young talent. Anything less than an 8 figure bid shouldn't be even considered

Like Gally. All things being equal I'd be happy signing him. I can't see £5milion being good business though, amazed that Wigan are going that high.

Totally agree. I'm in a different place about TM, but I think those of us in the /sun shines out of his arse' brigade recognise that bringing in a good centre back (and now a good keeper) is absolutely massive. I'm comfortable with Ben and Gally, if that's who it turns out to be, fighting out to be second/third choice. Plenty of three game weeks in this division, and whilst Graham is having an indian summer, wouldn't bank on him staying fit throughout. They'll both get gametime imo.

Scott Dann too, recently

I hadn't realised that Ruddy was in the form that he was for Wolves in their promotion year - it seemed to me as if he was going through a Robinson-esque premature decline in fitness and form. The he got into the team of the year as recently as the season before last makes him an absolute no brainer if he's within our budget.

I've said this a few times over recent weeks, so I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I really think this is a massively important point which can't be overstated. I don't like using the language of assets/liabilities - we're a football club who exists to win games, not post profits. But there's no getting away from the fact that if you were to look at that team in financial terms, we were littered with toxic assets that were unsellable due to age/form/size of contract, or loans. We managed to get a fee for Steele somehow, other than that there was only really Lenihan who could have realistically fetched a fee into the millions, even then perhaps £2million. Fast-forward to where we are now; a squad that definitely needs improving significantly, but one where we can actually operate as a trading club, where we own our best players and where they're of a good age. Obviously we want to keep the good ones, but at least it gives us options and a platform which was a million miles away from where we were.

Good thing about Downing is that he fits just as nicely across all of those three positions behind the striker. In most games, I'd be looking to get Armstrong in there, but as a part of the squad I agree that he looks like a good option.