bluebruce

I think there was a link for Duffy to Everton about a week ago to be fair.

I know I'm late to this post, but this is the strangest criticism of Buckley I've seen in a while. Pressing and closing down the opposition is one of his greatest strengths! He's excellent at it. That was clear in February too.

Do you not think my suggestion higher up of playing on Sundays rather than Saturdays would mean more fans could attend and also be more beneficial for the club?

It was a minority though, that would defend him relentlessly. In this case you're in the minority in thinking Buckley is shit. I think it's just you and Sparks as far as I can see. A smaller club than Lowe's fan club was. Just saying. Popularity isn't a measure of truth though.

Sadly, today is proving it can.

Sadly, Lowe did have his own fan club on here. Which resulted in an unnecessary amount of debate about a player who was obviously a hard worker but even more obviously shit.

Have Fulham merged with Everton?

I like the look of Garrett, from what little I've seen. Does he not have a bit of history with injuries, or one bad one at least, or am I thinking of Whitehall (who I also liked the look of)? Travis plays a lot, rarely injured, though will miss some games from suspensions. Be interesting to see if Morton or Garrett is first pick for his slot if he is out. It's going to be interesting to see how we slot Morton in full stop really. Surely Liverpool didn't send him here to sit on the bench, but surely we aren't dropping Buckley or Travis to accommodate him, not yet anyway. A midfield 3 maybe?

There isn't much indication we are actually in for him in the first place. Nixon vaguely suggested we were interested a good week or so ago, seen nothing else beyond messageboard speculation and wishing.

Bizarre claims, why not just accept that some people (uh, most by the looks of it) have a different opinion to you on the player, rather than make it some sort of collective cognitive dissonance? I'm on record as having been highly critical of him the season before last. I thought he was too weak, naive, lacking athleticism, and showed far too little glimpses of the talent we were told he had. A certain poster's comments about him being worth 10 million were laughable to me, and I still feel that was a fair assessment by me at the time based on what had been shown. I wouldn't argue he is worth that now, just yet, but at least there'd be a discussion to be had. Last season completely changed my view on him. He got stronger, and seemingly faster and fitter. He learnt the speed of the game, passed with far more consistency, and became remarkably good at nicking the ball off the opposition. Frankly he looked a different player, and is clearly key for us now despite being moved around a bit too much. The only real let down was that patch he had of missing loads of highly presentable shooting chances, that pissed me off a lot. The lad needs to learn to shoot, I said...cue the end of season rocket he scored. There's no face-saving from me here, in fact I had to about-face to form my newer opinion of him. I'll about-face again if he starts playing shit again, because I'm interested in my opinion being accurate more than the appearance of consistency. But at least if I do change my mind on him again, I'll know there's a player in there. How you missed it, I don't know - in fact it comes across a lot more like you're the one trying to save face by refusing to admit he has improved considerably.

Be down to the likes of Annesley and I think Gent and/or Pratt, I think one or both of them is a CB. Would be scary stuff...but apparently that's alright.

10 assists. Buckley got 7 from a different position. He might be able to fill that gap playing deeper, and having another year of experience behind him. Rothwell certainly improved his output last season, no reason John can't.

To each their own but I find it staggering that anybody thinks it isn't a necessity. We are down two of our best CBs from last season, one of the backups is now out for the season and another is out for a month (what the club said if I recall). We have two CBs in total who are proven to be good at this level, and one of them is made of glass. Failing to sign another CB would be footballing suicide.

On the other hand, our academy products don't need to be anywhere near as good as Arsenal's, although our academy itself is nearly as good and competes in the same league. Producing youngsters to win Premier League titles and compete in Europe is very, very different and far harder than producing youngsters to attain promotion from the Championship. What I'm saying is in relative terms, it's easier for our academy to meet our needs than for Arsenal's to meet theirs. You also talked about GB and his focus on bringing through academy players. Clearly the reason he believes in this approach is because it has already worked exceptionally at a club he was at. Bodo pulled off a minor miracle, going from a yo-yo club bouncing between the top two divisions to being Norweigan champions, two years running. They did it with a massive emphasis on bringing through youth players. Yes it's 'only' the Norweigan league, but their academy will have been far weaker than ours. I can understand why he believes this could bring success, and it's probably unfair to imply he isn't serious about promotion because of this belief. Whether it will work is another story. The belief seems to be that the club has produced a bit of a golden generation by our standards, which certainly helps. Personally, I'm of the opinion that we absolutely must bring in quality in key areas (especially CB) and that the untested youth players we have should be brought through in a squad player capacity until they prove good enough for more. Spending more of our limited budget on fewer but better players. Which tbf, is looking like the plan so far.

And the probable £6.5+ mill it would likely cost to buy them too.

4? It's 3 isn't it? Wharton, Ayala, Phillips. Carter is injured for a month.

The continually repeated notion that whether we sell or don't sell BBD for £15 million won't affect our budget at all is a delusion.

Not sure about putting them on Saturdays. But Sundays make a lot of sense to me. At least assuming the first team have played on Saturday rather than Sunday. Here's my thinking. Playing on first team matchdays means, as pointed out above, fans can't really attend, at least not at the same levels. But it also means if the first team are playing away, and somebody drops out of the squad, there's probably nobody who can take their place on the bench. Playing the day after first team matches negates the above, and also means that anybody who didn't come off the bench to get some game time can play for the U21s and stay sharp and fit. To me that would be the way to really ensure our bench are always raring to go when called upon. It being just a day after means maximum recovery time too for these players. (And no I don't mean literally everybody who didn't get game time, just the youngsters and the odd out-of-shape senior...I feel it's been a problem in the past when youth players are on our bench a lot and essentially pulled out of the U21/23s, they lose that edge and the confidence that comes with form)

Think that's an astonishingly poor attitude but whatever, I'll say no more about any of this, as I've nothing nice to say.

Prove Peterborough had seen him play? Or prove they were considering loaning him to League One? Their chairman literally said it. It's not really possible to prove such a thing in football beyond that. Strange argument to try on. Wait and see if he's any good? Oh you mean like I keep saying I will?

Still wrong about what I'm saying.

Yes, it matters as it affects the financial wellbeing of the club, which affects our ability to buy more players to perform on the pitch, which affects us as fans. I'm not from the 'stick a blindfold over my eyes and carry on, ignoring what happens off the pitch' clan and never will be. I'm innately interested in such things.

Peterborough had seen him play when they considered loaning him back to League One.

Neither.

Haven't seen that reported anywhere, where are you getting that? Only figure I've seen is 2.5 mill. I don't expect that to be up front, no transfer is. Posh paid 1 mill for him, be odd to say they've rejected 3 bids more than they paid and then only take a guarantee of 500k. I can't imagine they're guaranteed any less than 1.5 mill.