Going into the season with Pears as your #1 is suicide.

We couldn't win a header in our box for months around Christmas. It was baffling.

I've no doubt his agent has put his feelers out to get him away from this basket case club. It might be a pay cut, but he's currently rotting away on the bench here behind a clown. This is an opportunity to rekindle his career.

It's why Newcastle are looking to move on from Pope. He's a tremendous GK, but only so-so with his feet. Modern conventional thinking is that a GK has to be a reliable pivot at the back - even if they're much worse at the GK basics. The game is mad.

Newcastle are buying Trafford for £15m....

The Barnsley fans are hardly enamoured with him.

Didn't we turn down bids for him last year?

Nah, it keeps the club alive too. Without Lenihan, Nyambe, A. Wharton, S. Wharton, Travis, Buckley, Leonard, Garrett, Raya et al we'd have been sunk long ago. We've been badly mismanaged for over a decade, but the staff down at Brockhall keep on churning out Championship calibre players.

9 goals in League One? Be still my beating heart.

Talk about a player not kicking on for 5 years. He's got a bit physically stronger, but he still dallies on the ball and makes the wrong choice with it. He's a very talented player, but he's not going to make it at this level now.

We'd have been paying absolute peanuts to the three loanees - they were all on their second chance that season and we took them on because we were desperate for warm bodies.

The only problem being they'll hang on for dear life and sell everything that's not nailed down first - including the training ground.

What a depressing 14 years (and counting).

So a promising young talent is leaving, a crock is going to get a contract and there's chaos behind the scenes. If Nicko can still get it up he was definitely hard when he wrote that.

Pretty much. He's a good Championship CB, but he's soft.

I couldn't understand why Ayari didn't play more last season - he looked useful any time he got on, always looking to be positive and playing with some aggression (something we lacked last year). Chrisene is a much better athlete than Pickering - I'd play him before I played Harry.

Ayari and Chrisene would see a lot of minutes in this current squad - we'd be excited about them if they were our players.

Why would you want that cheating scumbag here?

I know of three season tickets that haven't been renewed yet and won't be until the club show some fucking ambition in the transfer market. This current squad has relegation written all over it.

If that's what it takes to get this cancer cut out of this club, so be it.

His positioning is very poor so he's not even bang average without the errors.

Especially considering he's played what, 30 minutes of football for England and you're going to be asking him to unlock defences. Baffling management.

Baffling that he's not brought Wharton on.

Mainoo might be a good player in the future, but he's not a patch on Wharton. This game is crying out for someone to start pulling the strings in midfield - Iceland have completely surrendered the middle of the pitch.

Judging by his house (and the grounds it sits in) that's clearly his idol.