Mashed Potatoes

Wonderful win. Wonderful day. Our new management team of Broughton and JDT are impressive. Interesting to see that clubs like Bristol City and Middlesbrough who "got their transfer business done early " have made poor starts. In contrast Broughton took his time refusing to be panicked in to signings for the sake of it and made sure he got them right. Plus bringing JDT in. He looks a big asset for the club. Hedges looks excellent, 3 assists already. Underlines that new players should always be given a fair chance to show what they can do rather than judged on their first few games.

You omit the relevant facts about Luton's relegations. They had very serious financial issues which put them in to administration, one season getting a deduction of 10 points and then the next season a deduction of 30 points. But, heyho, let's blame the guy who was in the Academy.

Reliance on loanees is a fact of life for Championship clubs who are not in receipt of parachute payments if they want to access players of the calibre required to win promotion to the Premier League. In each of the last 4 seasons 2 of the promoted clubs have been in receipt of parachute payments and just one each season were those who were not. Of those 4 clubs Brentford achieved it with their own players but Wolves, Leeds and Forest all made significant use of loanees.

Forest were promoted with 5 loanees.

Great start to the season. The ability to keep clean sheets and win games 1-0 is the hallmark of successful sides.

Nonsense ! Markanday is 3 years older and needed to get away from Spurs to develop his career. He may well be on a higher salary with us as his reputation is not on the same level as Phillips.

Have a look at their 2019 accounts, the last year unaffected by COVID for which accounts are available. They show turnover of £460.7m and pre tax profit of £87.3m. Our 2019 accounts show turnover of £16.7m and a pre tax loss of £18.2m. Who do you think is going to be able to make the better financial offer ? ( A clue : it won't be us )

I think the problem is that £10k per week may fall somewhat short of what Phillips, more likely his representatives, are looking for.

Why do think our revenue is "absolutely pathetic" ? The most directly comparable club to us over the last few years in terms of division, area and size of town is Preston and yet we consistently have a higher turnover than them.

How can we hope to match the offer of a club in the Champions League who will have a turnover running in to hundreds of millions of pounds compared with ours of £17m or so ?

Fulham got £1.5m plus a further £2.8m in contingencies dependent upon the player's performance. Elliott had already played in the Premier League when he moved to Liverpool. The £250k quoted for Phillips is clearly too low and probably just a case of Daniel Levy trying his usual hardball negotiating - which in the past has been known to blow up in his face. If the player is as good as some are saying perhaps our best course of action is to keep him for the season -which from some of the posts above it appears we can do - hope that he is good enough to play quite a few games, plays well, and then the tribunal will place a high valuation. Even better we might get promoted and can then afford a much better offer..........

He appears to have said there was an agreement - but as we know it can't be binding. You just want to run Waggott down.

What more could he have done in these circumstances ?

Waggott and the club appear to have done the best they could do - they can do no more than that.

Someone else will be able to answer your question. I suspect that if he waits until the end of the scholarship the club gets no compensation of any kind - perhaps someone can clarify. We've seen with the likes of Harvey Elliot and before him, Jadon Sancho and Raheem Sterling, players moving in their mid teens to Champions League clubs and their previous clubs, Fulham, Watford and QPR getting a fraction of their market value in compensation. I know there will be people who want to blame the likes of Steve Waggott and Tony Mowbray but it's not their fault.

He's waited until the offer has firmed up and he and his family and agent have decided to go for it.

This will be about money and the glamour of being at a Champions League club. Getting a game against Hartlepool in the League Cup is not going to change that.

I'm afraid you can't get a player under contract until they are 17 - and Phillips was 17 just over a month ago. This is down to the way the system works and not the club.

Correct. None of the 3 clubs promoted last season won their opening game.

Thank you for this and well done to all those who give up their spare time in working with the club.

In my opinion anybody putting JDT "under pressure" a few weeks in to his tenure is foolish. It can take time to get things the way the manager wants and, unless he proved to be completely hopeless which I don't think he will be, I would wait until the end of next season to assess him. Corberan at Huddersfield finished 20th in his first season before taking them to the play off final the next season.

Plain wrong. He got them straight back up in his first season.

How many millions was that ? As I pointed out, parachute payment clubs have an advantage - you don't hold that against the manager and call them a fraud. Dalglish had a huge financial advantage managing us in the Second Division but had to rely on the play-offs to get promoted. Was he a "fraud" as well ?

2 promotions in a career of just over 3 seasons probably explain it.

Nothing there justifies the use of the word "fraud". Most teams who get promoted from the Championship have spent millions because the parachute payments system gives them that advantage - albeit often they will have raised millions in transfer fees through sales of their 2 or 3 best players. All the manager can do is get his team promoted, which is what Parker has done in his 2 seasons in the Championship. Good managers do get late wins - Paisley and Ferguson were masters at it.