I actually feel people are being harsh on Park, so far. He has only just rocked up really (thanks to our usual glacial recruitment) then been given fuck all budget and negotiating the deals has probably been Venus' area again (for some unbefuckingknown reason). I'd imagine he's wondering what he's let himself in for. There is, after all, a reason Stuart Harvey moved down a league to jump ship. I'll give it more time to judge Park.

If TM had been in charge, Wilcox would have been up front most games even if everyone was fit, with the others out wide.

You mean he picked one up tonight?

I'm guessing he will have made his debut by the end of the season. Already travelled with a first team squad. Once Wharton is fit there will be a lot of bodies in the way though. Matter of time before Ayala is injured and Lenihan suspended, but still. You then have the Van Hecke, Carter, Wharton when fit, and potentially Magloire who might be considered to be ahead of him. We do sometimes play three at the back though.

Decent theory, that I've considered too - we offered him the lowest deal we could that would keep us eligible for compensation (same wages but only 1 year). We probably expected him to leave for compo. But nobody matched those wages (as his main pool of interest would be League One) so he ended up deciding to sign our offer. I would think there would be an opportunity at that point for us to withdraw the offer, but I suppose we thought our squad was thin at the time and there was still a chance of him stepping up to this level properly if opportunities opened up over the season. Plus someone might still have tried to pay a bit to land him (unlikely though). Not to mention it looks bad to withdraw the offer, especially for nice guy Tony who always has the players' financial security at heart...

That's not how probability works, but ok.

Bad night for the u23s in the Premier League Cup. Thrashed 4-1 by Notts Forest, who operate in a lower league than us. They did, however, field a very young side, whilst Forest included Lolley in theirs. He gives our first team a torrid time, so unsurprisingly he gave our kids a torrid time too by the sound of it, including scoring 2.

If you say we need to see how it pans out, then you accept the probability is not zero. Seeing how it pans out won't impact my argument - I only said it could happen, not that it will. And so we shouldn't.

There definitely isn't zero chance. It entirely depends on how good he proves to be. There is absolutely precedent for this at his age. Elliott for instance. If he forces his way into our first team, look how much Bellingham moved for at 17. Not saying he will move for that kind of dough, but moving for a fraction of that would still see him on the 10-15k region of wages. Entirely dependent on how well he does and how highly he is rated.

Zero chance we are offering him that sort of money by next year. Even if we did, they could gazump it easily, it's peanuts to Prem sides now, even the midtable ones, if they rate him enough. Especially when they get the loaning clubs to foot the bill. As I said he wouldn't need to worry about being first choice at one of those Prem clubs cos they could just loan him out.

If a Prem club comes in and offers him 10-15k a week for 4 years, setting him up for life, with the plan of loaning him out to develop with first team football, that would be hard to turn down.

I was pretty clear that I don't consider injury-prone attacker JRC, nor inexperienced primarily CB Carter, to really cut the mustard as backup to occasionally injury-prone actual RB Nyambe. I didn't mention Pike but again he's very young, inexperienced, and an unknown entity at this level.

Striker is still the priority by far, but we are weak in cover for RB. Nyambe gets the odd injury, but JRC is utterly prone. There is every chance that when Nyambe is out JRC also will be. JRC also isn't that great defensively. And Nyambe is very likely a goner next season, so planning long term for that wouldn't be unwise. After those two we have basically nobody. Carter has a little experience playing there, but has been mixed there in the first team so far. Anybody else is a square peg for a round hole (and JRC arguably is too). And I'd rather rim a goat than see Gallagher get wedged in there again, or Buckley for that matter.

Tbf he has only played 17 games in the Championship, when he was 18/19. He lit up League One, but not French Ligue 1. Surprised to see he was loaned to Fulham in the Prem back end of last season. Scored 3 in 15.

Aye, depends on whether Maja saw himself as a winger in future.

I don't think Deadpool is a billionaire. And I don't think Wrexham are Blackburn Rovers. So I don't see how that should matter.

It says something about us though, if Wrexham have more money after we just sold our best asset.

No but it's a bit of a weird take. If you don't like someone's joke, move on.

I prefer coaches for the role of someone at the training ground for the youngsters to learn off. Considerably cheaper, should be more experienced, and specialised to the role. Not that the likes of Ben Benson fulfil the second criteria there.

So your prediction is that in 12 months, our 8th choice CB will be our first/second choice? I think he will struggle to move that far up the pecking order playing at least half of this season in the u23s again.

8th. He is behind Magloire and Van Hecke too.

It sounds like they could have, they said there was tons of interest. They just...didn't.

Very.

We all know the Armstrong money won't be available come January or next summer. Maybe like a million of it if we are very lucky. I think we are now in the position of entirely relying on our academy to produce. Loaning 5 last season already wasn't ideal, as the manager admitted. Ideally we'd have been recruiting permanent players to replace the loans, but instead we have gone backwards on players we actually own. What have we lost, 7 this summer? With 1 incoming. With no real money to spend, we are going to be incredibly reliant on producing our own players, even assuming we manage to tie down next summer's expirees. Assuming no more big money sales of course.

Ooh, tough question everyone... If you could only get rid of TM or SW, which one would it be? (Yes yes we all wish it was both)