Cool, so all he needs to do to impress you is score more goals than anybody has ever scored in a Championship season since 92/93.

Only played for our u23s as you likely know, on a youth loan, but did well enough that we were interested in signing him at one point.

In 'fairness' he wasn't selling the whole academy...just demolishing their great training facilities and supposedly rebuilding them on a cramped site with the first team in an exercise that apparently wasn't going to make us any money and may even cost us a bit (I assume that's after the Coventrio took their cuts).

Predictions if all of our usual front three are out: 1. Buckley to play on the right or middle of the three. 2. It to fail again.

Pike is back at the club. Due to an injury his loan hasn't been extended.

Absolutely signing him was a very good deal for us. We got a class player for a while and a big profit, not disputing that at all. And I know he went on to sod all but that's hindsight. I'm saying at the time I feel we should have held out for more. Those other two factors don't affect that. Not sure how many times I need to say it but I don't give a solitary shit whether he liked it, whether he sulked, etc. Not. Interested. He wouldn't be the first nor the last player to have been denied a move they wanted. As I already said, he sucks it up and gets on with it so big clubs are still interested, or he sabotages his career. Few choose the latter. If we are going down the hindsight route, it's not like we replaced him with our 6 million anyway. Selling him just lost us a class striker and encouraged other players to want out.

I already told you, I don't care about that. Nobody else bids higher, he stays. Then he has to either suck it up and get on with it - a continuation of form would have seen somebody willing to part with 8 - or risks his career. If it was the only bid, we accepted the first bid that came along, which again shows that we have no idea what Villa or anybody else would have paid. We were soft touches, just like with Cairney and Raya.

We will never know if anyone would have paid that price, that summer or later, because we accepted the 6 million. I don't care whether players want to leave, and I don't care if 6 million was the most Villa wanted to pay.

No, regardless of how Rudy's career went afterwards, we should have been getting about 8 million plus for him at the time.

Not long ago I was saying I feared we had let Forest put a sell on clause in the deal and now rumours suggest this is indeed the case. I can only hope we weren't insane enough to make it 40% again, or anything like it.

Would you agree there are exceptions to this? When we had the dead rubbers at the end of last season it was ridiculous we kept playing all the loans and other players definitely leaving, instead of blooding for the next season and beyond.

What a piss take from some greedy professionals. They don't really care that their data is being used this way, they've just been told by an opportunistic lawyer they can make some more money. Pretty sure this use of data falls under legitimate purposes too. Otherwise I look forward to the whole nation sueing our bosses for using performance data. 'What do you mean my productivity is low and my punctuality is poor? How dare you use my data...'

Nobody in the league has more goals than him. Are there no good attackers in the league?

Why do you want a release clause in his contract, especially one that probably isn't too different to what we can expect next summer if he keeps this up? We should avoid release clauses wherever possible, only agree to them when truly necessary, and put them as high as we can.

Not sure where this argument is coming from. 18 months ago possibly not for some, but I wouldn't have complained as he was starting to look useful. 6 months ago? Absolutely. On bumper terms like he can command now, no, but by the summer he had shown he was improving markedly and that he was a player worth at least a few million. Given we had invested 7 million, were about to sell our best forward and didn't know yet about the 12 month extension option, why would anyone not have wanted us to extend his contract then? I feel like the pandemic is making people lose track of time. After the first lockdown, Ben came back looking a much more useful player. Then came last season, where at times he was one of our best players and we frankly missed him when he got injured, our form dipping. He did take a little while getting back up to speed when returning from injury, but that's fairly normal and ole' Tone likes to rush people back from injury.

Still, his statement that he is the best forward on our books was rather silly at this stage. If the manager isn't going to start giving him chances to see if he can handle the step up, we need to look for a decent loan for him in Jan.

Lol I wish it was for nothing. Was reported as something like 300k. To think we could have probably used his contract's wages to add another year to Kaminski's deal instead, and still had 300k left over.

3-2 win against Boro u23s in the Premier League Cup. Burns, Horlock and Leonard with the goals. Run out for Davenport.

Not wanting to rehash the whole Raya thing, but Raya won us more points with saves most keepers wouldn't make than he cost us with errors. That's not revisionism btw, I said the same repeatedly at the time. And that he would reduce those errors over time is hardly surprising.

Damn, what a time for me to be isolating! Would have been able to make that nearly any other Friday of the year.

A lot is made of the Chilean callup for bringing him along, and I agree it has helped, but after the first lockdown is really when he started making strides. I don't think Chile would even have been interested until then.

Who cares how he goes at Rangers? It's a dogshit league. Even if he does well in the Celtic games and handful of European games, it will be too small a sample to be useful. Personally I do agree the manager has misused him at times, which hasn't helped at all. But there is a degree to which Joe is responsible for not fulfilling his potential too. Ultimately he is brilliant at running at people as we all know, but his decision making and finishing is sometimes suspect. All players have weaknesses though.

Well, it won't mean a thing if you don't put it in the public domain. Why can't you share these emails if you're theoretically willing to in future?

No. That's not what I'm getting at. I'm not saying owning us earns them great respect or garners attention anymore, I'm saying having us go under would reflect very badly. Another poster explained it isn't the culture in India to let businesses you own go under, it causes a serious loss of face.

When I initially saw this on Facebook I assumed it was the league player of the month. We are doing our own club player of the month award now? When did that start? Seems a bit pointless.