No - but they took two 16 year old CBs...

Pretty much. I used to live across the road from the Etihad Stadium (in the old athletes accommodation for the Commonwealth Games). I'd pop over to the Academy stadium to watch the City women play if I had a free weekend - it's when they had Bronze, Christensen, Beattie, Bardsley etc - a veritable who's who. It was enjoyable for what it was, but it was worse than men's non-league standard.

Speaking of - no Walker again. Is he just not highly thought of at Rovers? He's 20 now and plays wide - should be knocking down the door if he's got anything about him.

Looked pretty standard fare to me - the Championship is a clogger's league.

A goal and two assists for Leonard, right? Judging by how he carries himself (he was the only one seriously warming up at half time at the end of last season - rather than just kicking a ball about in a triangle) and the brief glimpses I've seen - I reckon he'll go on to make it. He seems to have excellent movement - he's there for a tap on in JRC's first goal, for example.

He was the main man upfront last season too. Look I'd love Gallagher to turn his career around, but if he scores 20 this year then JDT and Reijnierse deserve a statue next to Jack Walker's.

I'd be curious to know where they're predicted to finish - I have serious questions about the quality of that league now.

No, I just don't think we have a plethora of players in the squad / Academy that can play in the '3', so we adapt in these double headers.

Is this game available via stream?

Poor sods.

Yates to Swansea - rumoured to be £2.5m + Joseph. A very good deal for Blackpool in my opinion.

That he's well over the hill?

I care, it's information (biased or otherwise) to sift through until we can form our own judgement. Have to chuckle though that ol' Pilgrim isn't bothered about him leaving, despite stating a paragraph before that he basically carried them to promotion at the end of the season.

One of my closest friends is a Plymouth fan. He's very touchy if you ever mention that they've basically just existed.

No, I don't think the Rao family read our local paper.

Glad to see they've clipped when he had that little to-do with that scrote, McClean. Not a big player, but he stands up for himself - others in the squad could learn from him.

The previous manager loved small attackers. Still does by the looks of it.

I think Szmodics is too much of a 'cheeky chappy' to be captain material. I think Hyam is too quiet to be captain too.

I call Hedges the nearly man. He's nearly a fantastic Championship player - hopefully he can kick on this season.

Pretty much - passing out from the back requires the CMs (and FBs) to show for the ball from the CBs to play a simple pass to them. As great as it was to watch Adarabioyo and Mulgrew act as a playmaker from CB, that's not actually the requirement in this system. It's no coincidence that the good run of performances post World Cup coincided with Buckley and A. Wharton forcing themselves into the team - both can receive the ball in tight spaces and play on the half turn (Garrett has shown some ability to do this, but obviously not enough for JDT). Morton hid too often (and then usually just gave the ball back to the CB anyway) and Travis was taken out of the firing line and told to line up next to Szmodics when we had possession after that PNE calamity.

Mowbray turned us into a club again after the disaster that preceded him. He stayed 2 years too long.

The money is in white ball cricket. You have white ball specialists like Sneed who have turned down a red ball contract with Somerset (and has never played a first class match) cos it's peanuts compared to the money he can make in T20 comps around the world. That's just the way the game has gone - those gritty, technically sound batsmen are a thing of the past it seems.

Undav would have easily scored 10 in half a season if we'd got him in January. You've just highlighted the problem there - our current strikers couldn't score in a brothel.

Based on the fact: Niall Ennis has 30 senior career goals and 18 assists. Vale and Leonard (combined) have scored 3. Their fans were disappointed to see him leave ("oh he's tripled his wages!"). Sondre Tronstad was integral to a Vitesse team that qualified for Europe. He was in some Eredivisie teams of the year that season. He has played for his country and their fans were sad to see him leave. Arnór Sigurdsson has 31 senior goals, 17 assists and would be playing Champions League football for CSKA Moscow if Russia hadn't invaded Ukraine. He's an Icelandic international who has scored at the Bernabéu against Real Madrid. When was the last time we could say that about summer signings in their mid-20s? As I said, we still need 3-4 more - evidently so does the manager. Ideally I'd love a RB (backup), a ST (starter) and a RW (starter) and for S. Wharton to buck his ideas up.

You can't tell me JRC is playing RB there. He has to play CM (or further forward) this season, he has the potential to grab games by the scruff of the neck.