I think he meant versus the offer we have made rather than the deal he was on.

Christ, if we haven't started discussions with Brereton a while ago, I truly despair! On principle mostly, as realistically there is no way he signs a new deal. If we couldn't get two players who came through our academy to stay, one of whom we had made captain, there is no chance in hell we persuade (and pay for) the 22-goal Chilean superstar to stay.

Believing something is imminent for 2 years is stupid.

I don't think it puts that to bed. It's still a reasonable explanation to say he got fed up and had doubts about signing a new deal because of Mowbray, but now at this late stage he has had his head turned by better pay offers and perhaps already been planning for his new home by the time we showed our managerial hand.

But we just lost our captain to another Championship club who some on here are claiming are paying a lot more than us.

Firstly, no. It's their money, sure, but it's also the club's money. We support the club. The amount of money they get or don't get for players affects the ability to get new, better players, which affects our enjoyment of match days and the club's overall fate, which we are invested in emotionally. I actually think most of us care more about that than Venkys do, and they can certainly shoulder the losses so I doubt they're crying into their fried chicken. Secondly, I could be wrong here, but I think 14 million is still above what they can put in for FFP calculations, and they just put that in to keep the club solvent. I could be wrong though as I say, not clear on the current FFP rules. On the third point, they aren't mutually exclusive, and we had more time left on Travis and Kaminski to resolve those anyway. I notice you didn't say 'and Sam Gallagher' 😉 Maybe if we had made proper overtures at 18 months left like with those players, they would have signed and saved us the pointless expense of replacing them. Or at least we could have sold them to fund replacements.

The same 28 year old centre back with tons of experience and no fee is exactly what was on offer to us too. And our need for CBs was more pressing than theirs. Yet they're paying him about 10k a week more than we pay any of our best players? For a CB? When they have plenty of good ones. Nah not buying it.

I don't believe that at all. Maybe when the signing on fee is factored in or something. If Lenihan was already on 14k here I can only assume we offered him a pay rise too. 14k or more means 30k would be more like 2x not 2.5x.

Do you know what they were offered? If you don't, then I don't understand how you can be so confident they were offered what they were worth, other than by adopting a blind 'the club knows what it's doing' mentality that has no room for facts. Lenihan at least, probably was offered what he was worth...by Boro.

The only rumblings I've heard about what they offered is that it was a bit more, but not tons. 2.5x what we offered is extremely unlikely. At a guess, we were offering him at least 12k p/w at the absolute bare minimum (we're bloody idiots if we weren't). I highly doubt Boro offered 30k p/w for a CB in this league when they were already pretty well stocked there.

There were problems with Derby before that, some of their points deduction was for FFP violations, so without the administration they were still going to lose points. Clubs have been sanctioned, it's not a myth. Hell, we have been sanctioned before. You used to be able to work around it, and I agree we should have done that a lot more in days gone by if the owners were as willing as has been claimed. But these days the league don't take kindly to trying to skirt the rules. It's probably still possible to get away with it, but it's now a risk, one that could cost more than it's worth. None of those clubs you named have gone up. There's no point throwing loads of money at it anyway until you've got the right management to spend it properly, hopefully we do.

The way I remembered it, he went bankrupt further down the line. At least, I only realised years after, and it softened my tears a bit. I was never mad at him leaving though, I was hurt lol. Whether it was before or after though, clearly he felt he needed the extra finance. We had helped with his academy though, albeit not financially I don't think (beyond his healthy but beatable wage).

Like the bid we rejected for him last summer, then.

Honestly, and people will disagree with me but it's simply not up to them, Dolan. Love his work rate but most of all I love his magic lil feet. The only player in the last two seasons who I would get genuinely excited whenever he gets the ball. Seem like a genuinely good lad too. Nobody pop up with arguments please about how you don't rate him, not enough end product blah blah. I've seen them all and I'm not interested, I really like him and that was the question. That said I don't get too attached to anyone since Friedel left. I always thought he would never leave us for money, then he clearly did. Turned out he was in a bit of financial trouble tbf, but since then I've known any player can leave at any time, especially for money.

Absolutely there are. But in the price bracket we are operating in, it's really hard to know if they're up to Championship level until they play for a season. We already know Nyambe is up to Championship level. I'd say he's one of the better 8ish RBs in this league, some might disagree but I'd be stunned if any significant number of us think he just isn't up to this level at all. Since it's unlikely we can afford a proven player at this level, it would be far better to keep Nyambe, sign our 'Tooting & Mitcham' type future replacement and let them understudy. They'll break past him if they're good enough, then sell a (contracted) Nyambe for actual money. People need to stop acting like losing these valuable players for nothing is totally fine. My original point though of course is just that it doesn't matter how good another RB we definitely can't buy or loan is.

I didn't see him, or I don't remember it at least, but it's utterly irrelevant even if he is world class. Completely unobtainable player who is playing in the Prem next year is better than Nyambe? So what? Tell me about some bargain bin 500k RB who is better than him and that might be of some use to us.

Long gone. Last summer I think it was.

But they did that with the 14 million ot so they spent on buying the training ground...where were they going to get another 10 million from without breaking FFP?

That's not any stranger than Saadi's 2 year deal. At least Butterworth has played for the first team. He also doesn't have an ability issue, he has attitude and fitness issues. There's a player in there, we will just never see him. There could be a hope that a year out on loan for him will kick him into gear. It's highly unlikely but I can at least see the thinking. I've no idea what the thinking is behind keeping Saadi til he's 22, potentially 23. He is very far down the CB pecking order even though we barely have any CBs. My only thought is he might be kept around so other young CBs can break through to the first team without weakening the u21s too much.

Seems odd to me that he has signed a 2 year contract (with a 1-year option) given that at 20 he doesn't really seem like one that is fancied to ever make it here, whilst we only gave a 1 year contract (no option mentioned) to the U18s captain Patrick Gamble. Especially with the U23s becoming the U21s again.

That's no good unless he signs a new contract. We can't afford to lose him for nowt next summer.

There's no if, it is exactly what is happening. Was announced ages ago.

It'd do for all of us, but there isn't any chance it happens.

Two new recruiment analysts have come in, which it sounds like Park was at least partly responsible for bringing in. Tom Sutton from Oxford United and Karl Newton from Stockport County. They don't have the best calibre in terms of their previous club, although the lower leagues is inevitably a market we have to look at.

In what way? How much of a role he played in it is in question, due to the nature of a youth development, but what Glimt did was pretty Leicester-esque. If anything, better, as they sustained it. The only other real difference is they finished 2nd before they won it (then won it again). But they'd finished towards the bottom end of the table the year before that.