Angry_Pirate

Thinking about it I'm pleased we didn't pay for Bauer for a few reasons. Despite him being a desired option. 1) Charlton wanted £2m with 11 months on his contract. Crazy fee. 2) He says he won't be signing a new contract and Charlton get £0. 3) We look like we're playing 4 at the back and hopefully we shouldn't need him right now and have short term cover in Downing and Williams. 4) We are still front of the queue for him in January and June and will get him for WAY less than we'd have got him for yesterday. ...Unless Charlton are top of the league and certain for promotion.

Is Herman hreiðarsson still playing?

Looks like we're gonna run out of time getting to the magical 500 pages by 5pm. So close... We gave it a right good go.

It'll take 2.5 hours to get to Blackburn from Nottingham at half 4 on a Thursday! I'll see if I'm proved wrong, but we seem to have bid £9m on 2 players we have no time or chance of getting to save face. No one is buying it.

Bottom line is we won't have a new striker and winger in before Millwall on Saturday and if that means Nuttall and Conway coming on around 70 minutes again to try to hold what we have, were going to struggle again. It's blindingly obvious Nuttall is out of his league and we've already thrown away 2 points due to having a poor bench. 92 minutes...

I take it Willy von Trapp missed his flight? Also I see Ivan Toney has signed a long term deal at Peterborough from Newcastle. 1) Wasn't he one some people rated highly, 2) how much did he cost i wonder and 3) does that make the departure of Maddison more certain?

As someone who lived in Ohio for a year, I actually prefer the winter Lancashire weather, it's the other 9 months that Ohio has us beat! Trapp doesn't seem like he should be tomorrow's priority, and if he is he will already be on a plane landing this morning.

The Freeman article made me laugh: Apparently QPR have a reputation of buying cheap and selling for big profit, they signed Les Ferdinand for £30k and sold him for £6m don't you know.... Yeah, 20+ years ago ? See Niko Kalinic is now Atletico Madrids new £13m signing and gets to partner Diego Costa and have service from Griezmann, Lemar, Koke, Saul etc. Who saw that coming, honestly.

24 hours and 24 minutes... Don't know where TM's finger is, but it's time to pull it out!

I still stand by our role in this transfer being a pawn to drive Celtic up to the full asking price. (Due to our good relationship with hibs) Villa are the real pawn it seems. Depends on the lads mindset, settle for a career in the SPL or not.

Grealish apparently not for sale, have Villa confirmed McGinn or have talks broken down, or (more likely) they're adding both and showing their middle finger to FFP and going all in on year 3. This Kepa signing for £71m at Chelsea makes me wonder how much clubs would be paying for David Raya if he was starting at Eibar or Sociadad and not BRFC.

Fully appreciate your perspective, but talking up a player for their role in League 1 and wanting them 'discarding' in the Championship is very different and almost normal. If our first 11 next season includes too many players such as Williams, Downing, Smallwood, Samuel, Nuttall etc, we will be relegation fodder. All I am saying is I view Smallwood as the 3rd best CM in our "proven" squad (behind Bennett and Evans) and I expect it won't take long for Travis and Davenport to surpass him. McGinn clearly is better. He earned his respect and part in the squad, but he will never be better than a bottom 10 championship/league 1 player. Nothing against him, but if he was to leave to make way for McGinn, how would you feel?

And England would have won the world cup etc etc...

Smallwood was given the 'crown' of being Jason Lowe's replacement and that's the only reason he has made it this far relatively critique free. His catchy chant also gave him immunity for a while. I will get killed for saying this but i honestly rate Jason Lowe and even Keith Andrews higher than Smallwood. (All not very much) No dislike to the guy but he simply served his purpose last year and I feel his new deal will be one we're begrudging this time next season as deadwood. Better use of his chant would be Oh ay oh, we've got David Raya Oh ay oh, he's better than De Gea Oh ay oh, he'll sometimes kick it out of playyyyyy. 1 2 3 4!

I really hope that people dont think Smallwood is better than Bennett. Bennett does all the things Smallwood does and better.

100% Just seen on SSN that Nsiala and Nolan having medicals at Ipswich for combined fee of £2m. Add that to Harrison and Edwards signings and looks like Hurst is making £3.5m worth of signings ready for his push on the L1 top 2 again this season.

Before anyone slags off Bauer for his tweet along with the 'avoid' comment, think about how much of a mess Charlton are in (off the pitch). He is being chased by clubs a division higher whilst at a club who are being run as bad as us circa 2011-2013. He is simply stating he will be leaving on a free in 12 months. Isn't that the same as giving your notice at any job? If I was TM, £400k offer should be going in.

I really hope the Armstrong signing means we can push Bennett back into CM permanently, we desperately need some energy in there. McGinn seems a little far fetched... TM is very close to Hibernian so maybe he is doing them a favour by faking interest from ourselves in order for Celtic to stump up the full £3m. Otherwise, Bennett and McGinn as a CM pairing would be great but we surely would need some outgoings. Tomlinson (loan) and Whittingham to name 2. Evans may even be an outside bet. McGinn, Bennett, Davenport, Travis and Smallwood (in that order) should be plenty with Rothwell, Mulgrew and Lenihan as options there for the odd game assuming we got a proper CB in also. But I'd expect McGinn to be a £3m Celtic player by Thursday.

We've actually done okay in retrospect with SPL signings. Its just some of our recent purchases who were trash (Goodwillie and Stokes) Tugay, Mulgrew, Zurab, Amoruso, Furguson.... heck even Callum Davidson. Shay Given would have been excellent too if he'd been given a chance. Ferguson was a case of right player, wrong time and Amoruso was probably too old at 32 and very injury prone. Zurab did a job when called upon and I think Tugay did okay too We'll forget about the younger projects like McNamee, O'Brien and Greer. Miles Anderson doesn't count.

I haven't seen Smallwood 'chase' anything in 8 months, as that would involve sprinting. Honestly, the only time I've seen him even attempt a sprint since before Xmas was after his goal at Fleetwood. Seriously, watch him.

I really hope that it isn't too long before we start lining up with this front 6 (assuming Armstong signs and no other 'A' listers do) -------------- Graham -------------- -- Armstong - Dack - Palmer -- -------- Bennett ---- Travis* -------- The * could be Davenport or Evans, basically not Smallwood, I'm quickly going off the guy. Samuel, Rothwell and I presume new signings can be our bench options. We can't be having Nuttall and Conway as our 70+ minute options. If that wasn't clear before today, it has to be now. If Maddison is better than Edwards, why hasnt he been taken yet by someone? Edwards at £700k would have been fantastic for our right wing.

Considering the result. The timing couldn't be better, we are crying out for better subs as Nuttall and Conway cannot play that role this season. Williams might need to call 999 after what Edwards did to him today. Smallwood, not for me.

I think as long as the signing of Armstrong hasn't totally splooged the whole of our budget for other 'A, B and C' list players - we will all be happy. If it means we now have to sign a 'Z' forward and CB. Less so.

That stuff makes my blood boil, can't recall the exact quoted figured but the guy has bought the club for £18m 4 years ago and subsequently plunged them down a division and now won't sell for less then £40m. Be like Venkys if wanted £100m for us now... ? (Closing that can of worms) It does feel like Bauer will be a Rover before we play Millwall (and for less than half the £2m quoted). He is probably the 'A' list CB but the 'C' priority signing.

Scary thing is that 2006-2009 Jason Roberts would be almost perfect for us nowadays. Remember us shifting him out to reading and him being the driving force behind their rise up the table and ultimate promotion. I remember saying to all my mates in 2006/07 that if you could combine the flair, control and finishing of Benni McCarthy with the drive, passion and power of Jason Roberts, you'd have Samuel Eto'o. Re loans: seems like we have set the bar pretty high this summer and not falling into the trap of Harper and Byrne. Players like Tammy Abraham and (Patrick) Roberts don't seem as far fetched as they did 2 month ago.