If only that problem could have been dealt with in advance by changing the manager a few months ago...

Tbf, I couldn't completely rule out that being the process with our crazy chicken farmer owners.

They do get paid for an extra month but I feel like I read it was the PFA who cover them for the month? I may be misremembering. Wish I'd been entitled to extra payments and a month's added wages when I left my last gig...they wouldn't have been anything like a pro footballer's either.

We'll be putting our back out a lot if that's our spine.

I'm sure nothing could go wrong with our inexperienced, first timer DoF having full control over the budget without board oversight. Although tbf, in the case of our board, they probably should keep their beaks out...I'm just saying structurally, what he said makes sense at a normal club anyway. The stuff you've said about it going to Pune afterwards is speculation on your part, albeit plenty of chance it's accurate based on past experience.

Who said anything about size? I bet their budget is higher. We are not a top 10 club in this league in terms of our likely performance. If you're going off this season, only I think our second top 10 finish since we came down here, then Sheffield United are a top 5 club. We are a bigger club overall than them, history etc, but players want money above all else. And they're a side that, from a neutral's perspective, has more chance of going up this season than we do.

Is this you making stuff up as per the post you quoted, or is this stuff you've actually heard?

Not his first cap. Just his first in a competitive match.

I'd get used to it, whenever a club is interested that isn't lower end Championship or below, we are probably going to lose.

Absolutely we will rate different players. My point is if all our players aren't good and Preston have some that are, and had a better manager, why did we finish 5 above them? I'm suggesting your opinions on some of these players must be empirically wrong, subjectivity aside. Unless you have a different explanation for why we outperformed them?

So they've got a couple of good players, we don't have any, and we just finished 5 places above them with a poor manager in charge, even after a truly terrible second half of the season collapse. How do you think we managed that?

He already has been proving you wrong about being 'woeful', but you don't seem interested. So far I'd agree with other posters that he looks like an average Championship player. Which isn't the insult most seem to think. Seems serviceable as a squad player to me based on current evidence, after a poor start.

How many of the Preston team do you rate?

https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2022/june/29/charlie-signs-pro-contract/ Charlie Weston signs 2-year pro deal. I again find myself questioning why Gamble only got a one-year, as U18s captain, whilst 17-year old Weston gets 2. I think some fairly kind things have been said about him in here before though. In fact pretty much everyone seems to be getting longer deals than Gamble. They can't think much of him, or his agent does and doesn't want to commit him.

Yeh I literally don't even know who that is and he plays in our league. A quick google tells me he is 2 years younger than BBD and a striker who scored 12 goals this season. Ben had done that by about November? (Yes I know he didn't score many after the new years, there were some mitigating factors there, and I know Ben was doing worse at that age) Certainly doesn't scream 16 million (seeing 20 million quoted too, probably the add ons). I'm sure there's more to his game and potential, Brentford know what they're doing in the market, but still, surely even in his last year Ben is worth more than him in the market.

There's no way Dack is only on 11k, which puts the veracity of the rest of the list in doubt.

I hope one of the first things Broughton does is assess and revise our not-fit-for-purpose wage structure (that's structure not budget) and contract renewal strategies. We can't be routinely shedding millions off asset values every summer like the last two just because of the penny pincher's ineptitude and false economy.

There is some serious over-optimism going on here to think there is a chance BBD is going to sign a new deal here unless he gets a Dack style injury, or maybe doesn't find a suitor this summer and his form collapses back to the Brereton we signed or by some miracle we go up before he becomes a freebie. I can't envision why he would sign a deal on less than 40k p/w, and I can't envision us offering much more than about half that. Tbh I'm not even sure 40k would do the trick when some of the interested clubs would probably offer 60k and a better league/profile. It'll be easier to resign yourselves to the fact the absolute longest he will realistically be here is until next summer, which would represent a disaster as it means a lot of money pissed away. Best we can hope for is a quick big money sale. Not saying we shouldn't try to get him to sign, but that's more on principle than expectation.

The physical side seems to be the most impressive thing about him. 6 ft 5, and when we played Spurs u23s, there was a scrap between the players...the lad who started it was charging towards someone else and Phillips pinned him to the spot with one hand. Didn't look like it was any effort for him at all. Don't worry about the physical side, he's huge and he's strong. The question will be whether he can adapt quickly enough to the mental and positional sides of the senior game.

Why would a newspaper story about him not signing force the agent's hand? Especially when he has told the player what he was leaking, making it an obvious ruse? If anything it just tips off clubs to his continued availability.

No, the house wins more often than it loses because the odds are specifically designed to make that happen whatever the outcome, based on what people bet.

No. They're quite short deals, some of them are still only 18 and may improve, we need to field a competitive u21 side, and the money will be a relative pittance. The only one I've voiced concern on is in fact how pointlessly short Patrick Gamble's 1 year deal is.

Fantastic 🤷‍♂️. I didn't realise we were exchanging schedules, but I'm off to see a show in a couple of hours, then possibly out on the town.

I'm gonna go with 'not'.

That was exactly my thought when he said we had a 'healthy budget'. Glimt did get some decent money coming in from player sales after their success someone said, but I still imagine Championship money is a step up from what they had to spend. On the other hand, he has worked at Norwich before, so although there has been inflation since he should have a broad idea of what constitutes decent money here. Then again, he wouldn't have had close eyes on the budget there in his role. I do wonder if it will surprise him (as it seemed to perpetually surprise Mowbray) if he isn't able to do as much with that budget as he thought. But hopefully his prior experience in England means he has some sense of it. If the transfer budget itself is a few million, I think our biggest issue will continue to be an inability to pay high enough wages. It would be interesting to know how much room is in that wage budget after all the departures the last two seasons. Our 3 contract rebels were probably only on about 20-25k between them though (guessing 4k for Nyambe, 7k for Rothwell and 10-12k for Lenihan). At least a lot of the previous departures were on more so you'd hope for some room. Given we mostly loaned last summer though I suspect the wage budget was cut at that point, unless we just decided to leave a load of room in it (which would mean even less reason to let these contracts expire).