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.

Possibly. At the start of the season I'd have had them right down at the bottom though, and their recent away form is pretty impressive. I'd still back us to win at Ewood, but they're no mugs this year.

They're a different beast this year, or at least have been so far. New manager seems to have a lot about him, but hopefully our home form will see us over the line.

This is it in a nutshell for me. Ultimately JDT has to call the shots. If he doesn't like what he's seeing from Dack in training, or that his injuries have taken their toll, then he has to be backed to select whoever he chooses. He'll live or die by results, and so far they've gone brilliantly. BUT when Dack has got on the pitch this season, he has shown that his talent hasn't disappeared. Away at Wigan, or away at Luton, the team were putting in absolutely woeful performances and were screaming out for someone with more guile and attacking nous to help us create or score. Dack was the obvious option, so I can't fathom why he has been so sparingly used even as an impact sub.

Again - that might or might not be true. It's not been obvious from what we've seen on the pitch this year that Dack isn't physically up to playing at the level required.

I think the point there is that we don't know. He got a handful of sub appearances last year where he looked off the pace but still scored and showed glimpses. This season he's looked a different level to the opposition in the league cup (can we read anything into that?) and produced a match winning piece of skill in one of the few games that he's started against Blackpool. It's nowhere near enough to say that he's back to his level, but we haven't really seen much evidence that he's done either. All we have is Dack obviously upset about not playing whilst saying that he's fit, and JDT saying that he's not ready. As fans it's impossible for us to be too confident one way or another in terms of whether he can still contribute.

I'm 100 percent not advocating letting Dack go, but he's not going to take much replacing if he isn't even getting on the pitch! I hope that he'll be able to show his worth in the few chances he'll have before January and force his way back into the reckoning. Obviously seems very unlikely at present.

I did think about Harper, but like Clarkson last year, when it became apparent that he wasn't doing the business he was binned off. Branthwaite was to cover an injury crisis if I recall. I'm afraid we'll just have to disagree about him only playing youngsters when he had to. He didn't have to play Dolan who already is approaching 100 appearances for us. He was happy to start JRC until his injuries. For all the talk of him not rating Nyambe, he started him in a large majority of the games where he was fit in every season he was here. He didn't have to play Travis when he did either, but he took his chance and hasn't looked back.

To be fair, JDT has brought in Morton. Mowbray only brought in youngsters from other clubs if they were instant first teamers like Elliott or Van Hecke, and if they weren't up to that then they didn't play. He also gave at least eight academy players their league debut since the L1, some becoming mainstays of the team before he left like Trav and Buckley. JRC and Butterworth would've played more too had it not been for injuries. This isn't even including the players like Dolan who he signed as an academy player and brought straight into the first team, or Nyambe and Raya who weren't established first teamers before Mowbray took over. I know we're all glad that he's not here anymore, but saying that Mowbray didn't bring through young players just doesn't tally with the evidence.

I hadn't heard that to be fair, so that's good news. His hobbling in front of the BBE looked quite severe! So I was expecting a muscle strain.

A key part of that was that he was started against Sheffield United! And then carried on playing after his performance. Before then he had played a few games in L1, looked okay but got a stupid red card in the run in which could have cost us. At the same time the much maligned Evans and Smallwood had us winning plenty of games until we approached the end of the year, so no surprises that he wasn't getting a look-in at that stage. Like almost all managers, Mowbray wanted a blend of youth and experience. But you don't end up playing (usually multiple) academy graduates in every single league game over a five year period, and having near enough the youngest squad in the league, if you never give youngsters a chance.