Those sorts of stats aren't easy to compare reliably. He played for a relegated team who will have been under the cosh more than we were. Different system, lots of variables. Besides, Nyambe can lose a 'ground duel' (not even sure how that's defined) and still be fast enough to get back around you and take it back. Still not seen anybody who has actually seen him play say he's a very good defender. We will see, looking forward to judging him with my own eyes. I wouldn't have laughed in your face, he was obviously a good defender. That spree of own goals aside, which was a blatant and disgusting attempt to get a move (and I still suspect involved some dodgy gambling in the background).

Fuck knows how you draw that conclusion. We are three good players down from that lineup and have only brought in one. Edit - alright sorry three, since we signed Hedges and Markanday in Jan and that was a last summer lineup. But I don't see how those two trumps having Lenihan and Rothwell.

I'm not remotely panicking or hysterical, thanks. Ask the Barnsley fans if defending is Brittain's forte. I've heard utterly nothing to suggest it is. It was definitely Nyambe's.

And then there's also the incalculable factor of how many 'not conceded goals' we need to replace, with the three key defenders who have left. Only one of them replaced so far, with someone who the stats suggest will help us bag a couple more goals, but likely isn't as good a defender.

We definitely aren't just sitting on our arse playing with ourselves. The lack of noise doesn't concern me, but I do feel we need to be getting a player in before QPR really.

Flip side of that, the league starts earlier than it did last year.

A CB isn't an option, it's an absolute necessity.

Be fair. He's a good League One fullback. He's a bog standard Championship full back...if he can regain his earlier form with us.

Agreed. We could rue it of course, he has the potential to rip up this league if he finds himself. Brereton shows how quickly that can happen. But as it stands, I'm OK with this.

Not sure how you get Dembele and Jed Wallace for 2.5 mill total. Sounds like bollocks. Transfermarkt reckons Dembele alone cost 2.38 mill.

Permanent? I'd only seen that it's a loan so far. I'd be curious about the fee too if it is... I'd prefer to buy him (cheaply) than loan him again.

Yeh that would piss me off. Very likely to be cobblers though.

Nah we definitely need more than one more permanent player, no matter how good that player is. Have to start building a squad of assets again.

They haven't signed any I've heard about, but they will have been assessing their personnel through the summer, and that's what was said would happen with JPVH. They might not have been as impressed with him as we are, or he just might not have been quite on his game at this stage of preseason. Or maybe he's been more the kung fu kicker than the rock we saw. The fact he was the only one of 6 CBs who didn't make it onto the pitch in their last friendly suggests he isn't very high up the pecking order. Although admittedly, there can be all sorts of rationales for why certain players play at certain times in preseason. Aye, he was impressive, but we don't know how impressive Davies and Anel are, especially since we have a different managerial setup who won't have seen all his games from last season. I don't really know about either player, but they might also be better with the ball or something that suits them better to JDT's intended approach. No I don't see it happening either. I just don't feel it should be totally ruled out, like I did a couple of weeks back. Unlikely though.

I'll be on drums. You must be on the guitar since you're 'pick'. Chaddy can be the singer if we make positive uplifting songs, or we can bring Jal out of board-retirement to be the singer if we want to make music like The Smiths.

Yeh none of those were ever going to make the Manure team, or Liverpool. They only made a 'mistake' in the sense that if they'd kept them around they could have likely loaned them to the Championship, earning some fees and then maybe a sale. Which isn't a practice I'm fond of (unless I'm playing FM, when I absolutely do this to an extreme that would make Chelsea wince...not cool to do it in real life though).

Dunno who that is, but I think the narrator is terrific. As well as the animations and the information, which they research heavily. Fantastic channel, well worth checking out their other videos. All sorts of science stuff, but also a few about mental health, and some stories, my favourite of which I'll post in a bit.

I just came here to post about this too. Will be a good experience for our young guns.

I don't think this logic tracks. Someone has to be below the two we have tried for. Whoever we go for next there is a genuine target. Are you going to ask that of whoever we go for next, 'Why would he be so far down our list if he was a genuine target?' Besides, like someone else says, he may have been considered unavailable earlier whilst Brighton assessed their squad, and become available now or later.

If it really is only us out there. I find that really hard to believe, and it would be so sad if it's true.

(Hoping none of this triggers the mods, I'm only mentioning religious stuff passingly and in reference to how it relates to the sciency stuff...no offence nor argument is intended) Well, I got A* for RE at school and 97% on my Philosophy of Religion module at A-level, so yeh I do feel confident about the nature of the elephant. But that doesn't mean I know for sure and there are many secrets in the universe, so who knows. You're talking about the teleological argument (the argument from design), and in fairness it's one of the better arguments. Heavily covered by scholars on both sides of the debate and well worth reading up on if you're interested in such things. Obviously we're not allowed to go over it here, so agreeing to disagree is cool. I don't really have the patience for that debate I used to have anyway, nobody ever, ever changes their mind on it even when they acknowledge they have no counter-argument. Anyway bringing it back towards the science side, something I've reflected on more in recent years along these lines... as we know, the universe is unfathomably vast. There may well be multiverses too. You'll all have heard the argument that if there are multiverses and existence is infinite, everything that is possible must happen somewhere (a lot of sci-fi films and shows with parallel universes use this). Our level of understanding is still extremely primitive by the standards of what there is out there to be known. If it is all infinite, super-advanced life must emerge somewhere, and may have learnt nearly everything there is to have learnt and developed insane technologies we don't think are possible. Whilst I don't believe in the version of God presented in monotheistic faiths on Earth, there's the famous old Arthur C. Clarke quote of 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. What I'm saying is, within all this vastness, something could have emerged, through evolution and technological progress, so powerful that what it's capable of would be indistinguishable from a God, or Gods. Alien life could exist on a level that it controls much of what we do, or even creates whole universe. There's a whole branch of scientific speculation about this too, really. Something called the Kardashev scale, which defines civilisations by their ability to harness the energy of first their planet (like we do) then their solar system or star, then a whole galaxy, and potentially a whole universe. Quite crazy interesting stuff. In fact here's a cool video by my fave YouTube channel about it: "What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean." - popularised version of a quote attributed to Isaac Newton

Whereas Berg and Appleton barely lasted any time at all. They're either ruthless or complacent depending on whether they like you, it's not as simple as it being really hard to get sacked here.

Good that he's scoring. Probably get a decent loan. But his goals were, am I remembering right, 3 or 4 against Darwen? The two just now. So one inbetween? Darwen are very, very far below our level, and he has only gone from 5 to 7 just now when our pre-season is done. I don't think it's too strange he wasn't involved, we had more senior options who needed to get minutes in before the season. Friendlies aren't too critical for much more than minutes anyway, and he'll have had more of those playing for the kids. Like I say, a good loan should be his next step now.

We could have had him for a cracker too.

How has he helped BRFCS?