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.

I think pony is putting it a bit strongly. But there's no doubt that he's struggled to make an impact on the (admittedly few) league games that he has played in. Some nice touches in here and there, but usually I've come away thinking that he's not been able to get in the game. Maybe more first team experience will do him the world of good, but as was mentioned on another thread, he turns 22 this season, so he can't really be judged as a young lad for too much longer.

I'd absolutely snatch your hands off for 4 points! Like you I wouldn't be looking to alter things if we can avoid it, but no Brittain and no Hedges makes it tricky at RWB. If you really pressed me I'd probably play Carter there and have either Ayala or Phillips in the back three, but it's far from ideal. Buckley could be another option, but again, far from ideal.

Being truthful, I'd need to see more of Dack on the pitch before I can make that call, which doesn't look like happening any time soon sadly. There's not been that much evidence of very intensive pressing in the matches so far, and I've no doubt that a pre-injury Dack could've dealt with how we're playing comfortably. We've seen enough glimpses since his return to suggest that his talent is still there, but not enough to really judge how well he can cope with being a regular starter. Either way I feel desperately sorry for him. Having two years taken away when he was entering his peak, and now he can't get a game even after working hard to get back to full fitness. I can totally understand why he'll be a man in a hurry to get back on the pitch and wouldn't take kindly to getting 5-10 minutes at the end of games. I suspect he'll be off in January, which would be best for all parties if JDT isn't going to play him anyway. I think he definitely warrants being used more from the bench before then though.

People were complaining about first teamers leaving for free. I don't think anyone was complaining about not renewing Davenport's contract for instance (even if he was a little unlucky not to get more gametime, but that's a different story). If Vale ends up turning into a decent player and contributing at this level, then full marks to the club for getting it right. He has a long way to go before that point though. I can't see it being a massive pay hike, so to be fair it might be a case of seeing what he can do this year and then if he hasn't broken through by then, reassess in the summer.

21 isn't that young for a striker yet to really make an impact on the first team Chaddy. I really hope he kicks on, it's certainly a huge vote of confidence in the lad's potential. I suppose one thing that you'd say for him is that strikers who lead the line often develop a bit later than others, but he'll need to improve enormously on what he's shown so far.

Yeah, I must admit it's not obvious to me what the advantage is. I suppose playing first teamers in these fixtures blocks the progress of the next crop of lads, so they might be wanting to have a game to keep fitness up whilst at the same time letting some of the kids play a competitive game?

Think JDT said something about us playing an internal game tomorrow including some of the U21s and the first teamers not in today's squad.