No because they clearly only see him as a squad player, which is why they fucked around for a few weeks haggling over the (for a PL club) insignificant transfer fee. Szmodics owed it to himself to give the PL a go, but he'll have to earn every second of playing time at his new club - they're hardly infatuated with him.

I'll be waiting for the hammer to fall. Squad is way too thin and we have a lot of injury prone players. It's a long season.

We lost about £50k on Ennis in the end.

Sorry, I thought we were talking about Moran. It's been a long day. Yeah I like Ayari, he's got a bit of fight in him.

He has to play as a #10. We tried him out wide and in CM - he was too soft / weak / slow for either of those positions. He pissed me off in the end with his lack of effort after quite a positive start.

Just don't ask him to go in for a 50/50.

We're not a Champions League club where there's a shallow pool of players (that every other Champions League club is also fishing in) that would improve us. We didn't know who Yuki and Gueye were last week and they've both looked up to snuff.

Honestly I think selling Szmodics opens the door for Dolan and Sigurdsson to move inside (assuming they're still here in September). Neither is a winger.

Cult status. What he did last season was astounding. He wasn't here long enough to be a club legend.

Crazy money, but he's young and quick so they fall over themselves for players like that.

That's a tough argument to make. At the start of last season nobody expected Szmodics to score 30+ goals. Ohashi and Gueye already look a damn sight better than Ennis, Telalovic and Gallagher. Weimann looks a very useful addition too. The big loss is A. Wharton, we simply cannot replace him, but otherwise I'd say the squad is about on par with last season. If we sign a few wingers / a LB / a GK it'll be a much better balanced squad than last season.

Tronstad.

£18m kept us afloat for 8 months? Jesus.

It's not about replacing like for like. His finishing is nowhere near as good if you're making a comparison. I'm just saying that Dolan has something to offer at this level as a #10 - he was excellent there against Derby. He disappeared when we switched him out wide after the 3 substitutions were made. I think Sigurdsson could offer a lot as a #10 too and he's a much better finisher than Dolan.

Pretty much. A starting GK, a LB to push Pickering (I'd love someone to replace him, but I wonder whether they'll seriously target a player like that), CM depth and a couple of quick wingers. Move Sigurdsson and Dolan central to the #10 role and groom Gilsenan for that position too. We'd be a better team than we were last year with those additions / changes.

What happened to the Wharton money?

If the Nixon scuttlebutt is true and we were offering him £22k a week, someone needs to man up, pay Leicester their asking price for Iverson and offer him the same contract. A good GK will have as much of an impact on our final points tally as Szmodics would this season.

I'm one of his biggest critics, but he clearly has something to offer playing centrally as a #10.

See if they want to swap GKs.

I'd happily buy Ayari if they quoted us a fair price, I think there's a quality player in there.

The only game that annoyed me was the Sheffield Wednesday one, and that was all about Pears throwing two into his own net, heads going down and Wednesday absolutely flying. The Plymouth draw was credible after we went down to 10 men.

Two games a week w/ injuries and suspensions. We'd be playing unblooded Academy kids before we knew it.

Apparently Everton were quoted a £3m loan fee and over £7m in wages for a Phillips loan last year.

The Szmodics transfer would pay for loan fees and wages. That said it's starting to look like the PL boys have a firm valuation on Szmodics (assume he doesn't tick the right boxes in their analytics - but worse 21 year olds do) and this transfer might not come off.

I still think any reinforcements are tied into us selling Szmodics. So it's Szmodics or a new GK / LB / LW.