bluebruce

I really don't think that matters when they won 3 out of 4 world cups.

The thing is, you can't really know at this point. Players can falter or accelerate in their development rapidly. At one point, Grant Hanley was considered a superior prospect to Phil Jones. Adam Henley was allegedly being scouted by Real Madrid after putting in corking performances against Manure and Liverpool. We didn't need Zidane because we had Tim Sherwood. Obviously we can't sign them all up, but we should be signing up the most promising ones, and the ones handling their current level best. Not just the ones we currently think are going to be Championship level.

You were expecting a 'hat tricks in the top tier' level of player from him? That seems a bit much tbf. There has been hype but not that much.

Yeh I'm not saying he won't make it, but he doesn't seem to be where the hype train suggested he would be. I had the impression he was going to be a useful squad or at least bench option this season. Now that seems like it's maybe 2 seasons away.

Speaking of compo, did the compensation for Finneran ever get sorted?

A lot of his goals this season seem to be penalties, scored one for the England youth side too. I dunno, despite all the hype I'm not really seeing why he was so highly touted, apart from a couple of nice moments when he first rocked up as a 15 year old. I agree with Rigger, doesn't seem ready for Championship football. Needs to sign that contract so we can get him out on loan. Suspect he will just leave in the summer for compo instead though.

I still consider this a meaningless stat.

Wow, I really thought he'd played 2 or 3 times that much. Maybe we have judged him a bit too quickly, given he actually looked fairly decent in his first game or two. Older players have been crap for far longer than that before coming good.

He's welcome to it.

Hedges would have some serious cheek to ask for a pay rise. He has only just started playing well for a few games. Ngl I still don't care if he leaves at the end of the season as it stands.

U21 version of Gueye?

3 first half penalties is wild.

I've just watched it back a few times. I'd say it wasn't a happy celebration at all, in fact I suspect he is a little pissed off if he has felt the need to shut down his Instagram and is now reacting so minimally to scoring. He also started to run to celebrate then suddenly slowed it down which I thought was odd.

Bizarre to me that he's still in this league. Every time I see him play us, he's a game changer. Must have his share of duff performances throughout the season to have been left malingering in the Championship at Stoke. Or he really, really loves oatcakes.

Forshaw certainly was an absolutely pointless signing

I dunno, sounds like you nailed it to me. So strange how if Dolan had moved in the UK we were due pretty decent compensation. If he was 4 days younger but moving abroad we were due bog standard compensation. But if Bloxham had moved within the UK we were due nothing, yet when he moved abroad we were due what, for him, was pretty good compensation for us. It's almost like the authorities are just making it all up as they go along with no cohesive, rational strategy...

I feel like @wilsdenrover is the only man who could clarify the situation.

I find this situation very confusing, as I was under the impression that compensation was only due when the club have tried to keep the player, not when they release him, and that we would have even less rights to money if the player moved abroad. I understand there's a difference between training compensation and general compensation but still. Also although Grasshoppers aren't giants I'd have thought they'd have enough money to just pay any training compo due for a player like Bloxham, who I think we only had for 2 years, rather than putting a 25% sell on in (unless he's really just there to pad out the youth numbers and they have zero expectation he would make it). Training compo is pretty low in general usually. Didn't we just get fuck all from Espanyol for Dolan? None of this negotiating seemed to crop up then. Think I did read something about us getting a minimal training compo for him (like 200k or something, guess Espanyol would just pay that), but thought I heard it turned out we weren't eligible for it.

I don't follow, am I misunderstanding? If the U21s were playing 2 games in less than 24 hours, that sounds like an incredibly good reason not to enter more competitions?

If I remember rightly, it was last year where we were in far too many competitions and played a ton of games whilst having a ton of players out on loan? Or may have been thr srason before where we were in loads of competitions, but either way they might not want to overstretch the youngsters if they still plan to load a fuckton of them out.

They shouldn't settle for anything. Everton were punished within the rules if I recall.

Fucking hell, recurring theme this. Obviously different and totally unavoidable reasons here, but that's 3 games abandoned in a week, and in the two I've heard the scores of we were winning 1 nil in both. Bizarre.

The rules. The minimum they can be given is 2,000.

Some other team can benefit from the suspension though, whilst we repeat the whole charade and get zero reward for our endeavours, so that's lovely right?

Not even the rules, just an irrational set of precedents. The rules allowed them to replay part of the game, something they're apparently not willing to do at all.