In a season of fine margins you don't want 4+ games to drift by before you bring in reinforcements. They should be in for the majority of the pre-season so you can hit the ground running.

Colwill is leagues above this level - what a classy CB.

As I said on my comment about the video of the players getting off the team bus - they did not look thrilled to be there. I'd guess most were just going through the motions to build up some match fitness.

Probably why they're being linked to LBs in the transfer window then.

We need a starting CF and a starting RW at a bare minimum. Ideally you'd bring in a #10 to back up Szmodics (or steal his job). You have to contribute to the wages of loanees, so that budget will be extremely tight if we do this right.

Did Dolan have a poor season last year? 5 goals and 5 assists whilst playing all over the front line - not bad for a 20 year old. Vale was completely anonymous, mind.

Ask him how Batty looks.

There's a lot of very bored looking Spanish girlfriends in the stands for this U21 Final: "Fancy a weekend break to Georgia, honey?" LOL! Also Kane had better be immortal because they're playing Gibbs-White and Smith-Rowe upfront. Where have all the big, athletic strikers in England gone?!

He still has to get paid - you think a 32 year old POTS is coming in for peanuts?

I don't mind the Batth signing - it's always good to bring in quality - but if funds are tight and we're clearly 2 short up front it seems odd.

Hopefully he's convincing enough to stop the Batth transfer and allow those funds to be allocated elsewhere.

Still playing JRC at RB. Interesting...

Good lord they look thrilled to be there.

It's not just Livingstone, although he's been particular poor this season - how he's captain I'll never know - but you don't see top teams relying on a 37 year old Croft, Vilas, Jones or Wells (who wasn't even playing T20 cricket before he got to Old Trafford!) in a crunch quarter-final. The IPL trio have flattered to deceive throughout the entire comp - fair play to Salt he's turned up in the County Championship so I'll curb my criticism of him somewhat. It's time for a regime change at Lancashire - we last won the County Championship in 2011 and the Blast in 2015 (you have to go back to the 90s for the one day game, which is now a second tier competition thanks to The Hundred). That's unacceptable for one of the major forces in county cricket.

We have half a dozen that are Test standard with Foakes at the front of the queue. No idea why Bairstow keeps getting picked.

It's nothing to do with form - he's overweight and wasn't the most mobile to start with.

This match is a hard watch. The two Yorkies dropping absolute dollies and a slogger smashing a century in about a session.

Well that person needs to be fired today.

How is it not the same? Our unique selling point is that our kits are famously reversed blue and white halves. The away kit should be reversed halves too if the marketing team has anything about them.

As it would be if Newcastle ran out in horizontal black and white stripes...

We say quartered cos the halves should be reversed on the back. If you want to say it should be blue and white halves with the halves reversed on the back, fair enough. I prefer to say quartered. It's not a Rovers kit, end of.

Halved again, not quartered. Hate it - it's simply not a Rovers kit. Why do they get such a basic thing wrong? Tell Macron to deviate from their cookie cutter template or get out of the bloody contract.

I'll never forget the look of shock / admiration on the faces of the NFL players (Giants v Dolphins) for one of (if not the first) NFL International Series games in London when the entire crowd starting singing the national anthem. It might be a dirge, but it's our dirge.

I'm sure they could have if they'd wanted to - I bet there would have been minimal complaint from the Australians. However it's just easier to put the decision in somebody else's hands isn't it?

He was also theatrically confirming with the umpire at square leg that the over had been called for the rest of his innings - he was being a pantomime villain at that point to make a point. Much like he asked Cummins if he thought that was out too, when he grassed a C&B from Stokes. While I'm replying to you I'll also add (rather than finding the exact thing to quote) - they're only a good Australian side, but Test cricket has fallen off so much since the invention of T20 that good is enough. They're by far the best Test side in the world.