He's got a winners mentality.

Having seen this league I think almost any decent manager could get Sunderland promoted with the financial advantages they have.

I agree Stuart, good up and coming manager. If they want experience Mick McCarthy would do a " Mowbray " for them.

The Smallwood of the first half of the season, definitely. The Smallwood post January ? I'm not so sure.

I wasn't expecting much backing in the last close season but I was wrong. We did get a bit of money to spend. The problem is a £750,000 player can make a big difference in this league, in the Championship it's £7.5 million players that make a big difference. I'm not sure Venkies want to get back in that game, we'll know before too long. I'm not going into it again but Mowbray has signed his share of flops as well as the success stories. Will they think the money he has been given has been spent wisely in terms of player re-sale value ? Take Dack out of the equation and how many of his signing have increased in value ?

You'd have thought that the " owners " would have turned up for the Oxford game and combined that with discussions regarding next season. If they've not been enthused by our promotion enough to come over when will they get enthused ?

Don't want Mahoney back. He's done nothing since he left. The new Tracey.

Coleman was a good player before his accident. I don't rate him as a manager.

Unfortunately that's what happens at this level. The secret is to keep replacing them with players as good. Not easy I know but that's what the Dingles did. They lost one by one Rodriguez, Austin, Ings, Gray but each time one left they got another one in.

It's not just about what the Chokers or the manager and the club want. We all know if the player decides he wants to leave he'll usually get his way.

That's a great achievement, only losing 3 games all season. Well done to all concerned.

That's because the bids didn't meet our valuations. When the bids do it'll be " thanks for coming ". If we had to sell Shearer, Jones, Bentley, Duff, let Bellamy go to Liverpool etc in the past any of the current crop will be on their way. It doesn't matter what you think or I think , they'll be gone. You keep talking about let's sign AN Other from one club and sign SO Else from another club. We can do that to a certain extent because we're a bigger fish in a small pond. Trouble is there are much bigger fish than us out there. We raid the small clubs and the bigger clubs raid us.

Everybody is available for sale at Ewood. Everybody is for sale at Burnley. That's how football works.

Cairney's not quite a direct replacement for Dack. One makes chances for other people the other one makes chances for himself. Obviously a sweeping generalisation and you can point out exceptions this season but I think by and large that's how they play. Could you have both in the same team ? Probably not.

She might be history by then.

Apart from a brief spell during Jack's reign we've always been a selling club. Just like Burnley, Bolton, Blackpool, Preston etc.

They certainly have with the Chicken Chokers.

He needs to step to the plate on Thursday. He needs to play like he's the best player in this division.

You can play a slight but quick guy up front but the service in to him has got to be first class otherwise it's a real arse kicking job.

Exactly. The whole idea of roughing up one side of the ball is to aid the quick bowlers. So you rough the ball up and don't tell them what you're doing ? Or the bowlers don't notice and can't believe their luck when the ball starts swinging all over the place ? Pull the other one.

Yeah Conlon was bad. To think we swapped Malcolm Darling for him ! One was a footballer and one was a stump. When we moan about our current players we've nobody playing now that poor.

Yeah my redundancy did me a favour also. I got out of engineering and spent the last ten years of my career in a really peaceful job as a technician in a local high school. I reckon another ten years in engineering would probably have seen me off. What happened at Clayton Goodfellow happened all over the country at that time. Lots of blue chip engineering companies went to the wall. Mrs Thatcher had no idea about engineering or manufacturing. Who was it said " We'll let the foreigners get their hands dirty, we'll look after their money " ?

I think I've mentioned before Al that I attended the auction when the assets of Clayton Goodfellow were sold off. We were looking to buy a large vertical boring machine but we got out bid. To be honest unless the more modern machine tools had been disposed of prior to the auction the level of investment on display in the workshops left a bit to be desired. Nothing unusual for British Engineering companies at that time but my experience was the companies that invested in more modern machinery seemed to survive the down turn better. I attended dozens of auctions over that era, it was always a sad business but C&G was particularly sad for me being a Blackburn lad. Seeing the fixture lists taped up on lockers and the Rovers graffiti chalked up in the workshops. I always knew it would be my turn one day and eventually I was made redundant also many years later.

I think the plan was to play with wing backs and Whittingham playing as a sort of " Tugay " style playmaker picking the ball up off the three centre backs. When that didn't work out there was no room for him in a 4-4-2 formation. He's not the first player to get to the " season too far " point in their career and he won't be the last. Trouble is we've got to keep paying him for another season. One or two of us said so at the time but we were told to get with the plan.

Well if it's a choice between Travis and Caddis I know who I'd be favouring.