I was gonna say (Keith) Andrews, but a quick look at the wiki suggested he didn't use him much. A closer look now though tells me it was only the last season he fell out of favour with just 5 apps, but that was probably partly cos Sam got sacked. Before then he was a fairly regular feature. Wasn't as dire as Lowe anyway, for me. Poor though for the Prem.

It was athletic performance, or whatever I said before. A technical coach would focus on the technical side of the game. Technique, maybe tactics. Athletic performance would all be about fitness and pretty much nothing else. At least that's how I understand it.

Nope, he definitely wasn't better than Smallwood. Nothing will change my mind either.

Nah sorry he's already done that. I know you don't agree, but he has. He hasn't proven he's a perfect one, but he has absolutely proven he is capable.

You're right, not sure who I was thinking of, but there was definitely a shite player Allardyce persisted with to mass bemusement.

I remember seeing that sentiment several times from his defenders. Proof once and for all that the 'football professionals always know best' argument is complete and utter bollocks. Even Allardyce played him consistently. Yet by his prime years he was piddling about in League Two if I recall. Sometimes the fans can see what managers miss (and yes, sometimes it's the other way around).

Aye, that's the Jason Lowe I remember! No idea where he plucked this one from: Go to just after 1 minute. It even won our Goal of the Season award. It was the only goal he ever scored for us.

Thought Johnson was something like First Team Technical Coach.

We are advertising for a 'First Team Athletic Performance Coach'. My first thought was, is that not what Ben Rosen does? But I guess it's an underling for him. Do we normally have two coaches dedicated to fitness?

I think there was a link for Duffy to Everton about a week ago to be fair.

I know I'm late to this post, but this is the strangest criticism of Buckley I've seen in a while. Pressing and closing down the opposition is one of his greatest strengths! He's excellent at it. That was clear in February too.

Do you not think my suggestion higher up of playing on Sundays rather than Saturdays would mean more fans could attend and also be more beneficial for the club?

It was a minority though, that would defend him relentlessly. In this case you're in the minority in thinking Buckley is shit. I think it's just you and Sparks as far as I can see. A smaller club than Lowe's fan club was. Just saying. Popularity isn't a measure of truth though.

Sadly, today is proving it can.

Sadly, Lowe did have his own fan club on here. Which resulted in an unnecessary amount of debate about a player who was obviously a hard worker but even more obviously shit.

Have Fulham merged with Everton?

I like the look of Garrett, from what little I've seen. Does he not have a bit of history with injuries, or one bad one at least, or am I thinking of Whitehall (who I also liked the look of)? Travis plays a lot, rarely injured, though will miss some games from suspensions. Be interesting to see if Morton or Garrett is first pick for his slot if he is out. It's going to be interesting to see how we slot Morton in full stop really. Surely Liverpool didn't send him here to sit on the bench, but surely we aren't dropping Buckley or Travis to accommodate him, not yet anyway. A midfield 3 maybe?

There isn't much indication we are actually in for him in the first place. Nixon vaguely suggested we were interested a good week or so ago, seen nothing else beyond messageboard speculation and wishing.

Bizarre claims, why not just accept that some people (uh, most by the looks of it) have a different opinion to you on the player, rather than make it some sort of collective cognitive dissonance? I'm on record as having been highly critical of him the season before last. I thought he was too weak, naive, lacking athleticism, and showed far too little glimpses of the talent we were told he had. A certain poster's comments about him being worth 10 million were laughable to me, and I still feel that was a fair assessment by me at the time based on what had been shown. I wouldn't argue he is worth that now, just yet, but at least there'd be a discussion to be had. Last season completely changed my view on him. He got stronger, and seemingly faster and fitter. He learnt the speed of the game, passed with far more consistency, and became remarkably good at nicking the ball off the opposition. Frankly he looked a different player, and is clearly key for us now despite being moved around a bit too much. The only real let down was that patch he had of missing loads of highly presentable shooting chances, that pissed me off a lot. The lad needs to learn to shoot, I said...cue the end of season rocket he scored. There's no face-saving from me here, in fact I had to about-face to form my newer opinion of him. I'll about-face again if he starts playing shit again, because I'm interested in my opinion being accurate more than the appearance of consistency. But at least if I do change my mind on him again, I'll know there's a player in there. How you missed it, I don't know - in fact it comes across a lot more like you're the one trying to save face by refusing to admit he has improved considerably.

Be down to the likes of Annesley and I think Gent and/or Pratt, I think one or both of them is a CB. Would be scary stuff...but apparently that's alright.

10 assists. Buckley got 7 from a different position. He might be able to fill that gap playing deeper, and having another year of experience behind him. Rothwell certainly improved his output last season, no reason John can't.

To each their own but I find it staggering that anybody thinks it isn't a necessity. We are down two of our best CBs from last season, one of the backups is now out for the season and another is out for a month (what the club said if I recall). We have two CBs in total who are proven to be good at this level, and one of them is made of glass. Failing to sign another CB would be footballing suicide.

On the other hand, our academy products don't need to be anywhere near as good as Arsenal's, although our academy itself is nearly as good and competes in the same league. Producing youngsters to win Premier League titles and compete in Europe is very, very different and far harder than producing youngsters to attain promotion from the Championship. What I'm saying is in relative terms, it's easier for our academy to meet our needs than for Arsenal's to meet theirs. You also talked about GB and his focus on bringing through academy players. Clearly the reason he believes in this approach is because it has already worked exceptionally at a club he was at. Bodo pulled off a minor miracle, going from a yo-yo club bouncing between the top two divisions to being Norweigan champions, two years running. They did it with a massive emphasis on bringing through youth players. Yes it's 'only' the Norweigan league, but their academy will have been far weaker than ours. I can understand why he believes this could bring success, and it's probably unfair to imply he isn't serious about promotion because of this belief. Whether it will work is another story. The belief seems to be that the club has produced a bit of a golden generation by our standards, which certainly helps. Personally, I'm of the opinion that we absolutely must bring in quality in key areas (especially CB) and that the untested youth players we have should be brought through in a squad player capacity until they prove good enough for more. Spending more of our limited budget on fewer but better players. Which tbf, is looking like the plan so far.

And the probable £6.5+ mill it would likely cost to buy them too.

4? It's 3 isn't it? Wharton, Ayala, Phillips. Carter is injured for a month.