Show me a club of our level or above that lost 4 key players for free in two summers. If you can find any it won't be many. These things don't 'just happen', not on this scale, they happen due to incompetence.

I also don't think a plan involves having three first-team goalkeepers when our wage budget is small and our main keeper is fit for 95% of the season.

I rate Hyam, but due to his age profile I don't envision us making a 6-8X profit on him, and due to Brittain's injury proneness, I can't see it for him either. It would need Premiership money for that to happen with either, and I don't see why Prem clubs would put 9-12 million into injury prone or (by then) ageing Championship defenders. A more likely scenario is we have them for a couple of seasons and then sell them for perhaps double what we paid. The youth player deals for those who haven't hit the heights yet are a lot easier to do than players like Brereton (which the current regime already failed to nail to a contract so must bare some of the responsibility), Lenihan and Rothwell (at the time we looked to extend it...admittedly it may have been far easier if we had done it far sooner). Not knocking getting those contracts signed, but I can't take from it that we won't repeat the scenario. We lack either the funding, the backing or the will/ambition to get expensive contracts over the line. We need to be starting discussions at 18-24 months remaining on all deals, and selling with 12 months left if it hasn't been signed. And that approach provides its own instabilities too.

Don't get shirty about him or I'll cuff you! He's a shoe in for a starting role.

Do they want to send him on loan next season too? For the last year of his deal? I assume this guy isn't joining just for 6 months.

The discussion was about how Raya improved under the tutelage of someone more experienced than Ben Benson, and that Kaminski may well do the same.

Makes half the mistakes Raya used to make.

Yep, whoever is Mr January is always the one they think is most likely to be off in January. It was Rothwell last year.

Why is Sol Bamba getting involved? What connection am I missing here? Is it just because he played for Hibs over a decade ago??

I would guess the LFA do if they keep the gate receipts. So probably not entirely in our hands, though it wouldn't surprise me if it was a Swag move.

A sell on clause has been confirmed before, LT have mentioned it in articles. I think it was somewhere in the region of 20%. I dunno if that's on the profit or outright.

They're not though. It certainly gives them a strong competitive advantage, but numerous teams have come down with parachute money and are still here. We did it, and if you look through the league it's full of sides who have been in the Prem since then. Huddersfield, Stoke, Sheff United, Boro, West Brom, QPR, Swansea, Cardiff, Hull.... Looking at last season's promoted sides, Forest went up but they had been back down for a while, Bournemouth took two seasons to return. Fulham were the only side promoted who had just been relegated. West Brom who had just been relegated finished 2 places below us, lowly Luton beat them to the playoffs, and the only reason we didn't beat them to the playoffs too was because of our pathetic second half of the season capitulation where even midtable form would have seen us finish top 6. It helps, a lot, but the lack of TV money isn't an absolute limit on promotion by any stretch.

Highly feasible, but do the club decide the pricing for it though or do the Lancashire FA?

Hah, I didn't realise the marriage analogy had been touched on already until I started reading this post (I assume we were both writing ours at about the same time too).

Hmm...I probably have mostly lost that loving feeling, but I haven't lost the love itself. Rovers have kinda become like a wife I've been married for as long as I can remember (I'm single, it's just an analogy). I still love her, nobody means more to me, but for the most part I've lost the excitement I used to have when she walked in the room. She doesn't put out much anymore, and when she does it's nice but I know we'll soon be returning to unfulfilling domestic boredom (with the occasional blazing row), so it doesn't feel as great as it once did. The dishes are rarely done and the place has become a mess. She's let herself go and we're both depressed. We never have any money either. We have plenty of kids, but they abandon us for the wider world when we can't pay the going rate for chores and never send money back home. We even paid a lot of money to adopt from Chile, but 5 years on they're flying the nest too. I'm sad about what we and the house have become, but I feel powerless to do anything about it and the truth is I've become distracted by my own life outside of it all. I'd never leave her, I can't imagine myself being with anyone else even if she died (well, I have the occasional dalliance with a woman called England, but she's always known about that and never minded..maybe because England disappoints me nearly as much). I'll always love her, and never love another unless England steps up her game (even then it wouldn't mean as much as '95 did), but that gut-churning, pulse-pounding spark is gone. Maybe not forever, maybe we need intervention, counselling or something, but for a while now it hasn't been what it used to be.

I get what you're saying from a fan perspective, but they will have running costs for putting the match on, I imagine?

When clubs lose a player for free who they have offered a decent contract to, they should at least get a sell-on from any future deals. Wouldn't affect the player's freedom of movement, which is the purpose of the rules. As it stands, I think we got him young enough to be entitled to a solidarity payment for any future transfers, but it would be minor (like 1% or something).

It's probably only fair to point out that you're looking at transfer fees only. When wages, agent fees and signing on fees are added in, especially over contract length, an £8 million influx wouldn't pay for those 3 seasons worth of budgets. Brereton was reported to be on not all that much (the famous flex), so his lost wages won't cover too much more.

So, if I have this right...he was recalled from a League Two team on 37 points so he could be sent out to a League Two team on 37 points. He's 24 so I think this one can be filed under 'deals that turned out to be just as pointless as they looked when we made them'.

Wait, you're not old? I bet you don't even drink Bailey's from a shoe, do you? My illusions are shattered.

Good, I hope they sign him so that we don't.

Wrong, I'm afraid we won't even be receiving any peanuts for Ben.

There's nothing wrong with being versatile, no. But there's a lot wrong with recruiting a player specifically for a position when he has barely played it. If Porteous comes in, the main aim in mind should be to play him at CB. If he can fill in at a pinch for another role and do a good job at it, sure, that's a plus, but nobody should ever be recruited with the primary intent of playing them in their secondary position.

Why is he available?

Honestly, after Rotherham I have finally given up on top 6. We might as well sell Brereton if we get a fairly reasonable offer (I'd say 8-10 mill) and start preparing for the future. Whether we like it or not, it's project time, so we might as well do it properly this time. That means selling assets, especially such rapidly depreciating ones, and reinvesting smartly.