Oh weird, the FA Cup goal didn't show up. Maybe it was in a qualifying round? The FA Trophy isn't showing up at all either. Cheers for the corrections. He didn't pull up trees there, but given injuries and being played wide it doesn't seem too bad. Shame the level was low (probably a bit closer to League Two than we give it credit for though) but that means more games. We also don't know how well suited to their system and style of play he was. I've no qualms with him sitting the bench if we are stretched. I remember him cracking the crossbar too, which is Butterworth's main claim to fame, so I don't feel we have downgraded that option. I feel McBride is finished here. It's a truly terrible level he has gone to, and unlike Vale it was during the window so plenty of better sides to potentially go to. What happened to the EFL League One interest he was meant to have from...Crewe was it? Given his contract is up in the summer, I'm not sure what we expect to learn about him in the Scottish third tier in order to decide whether to trigger that extension. Even if we do, that gives him one more year to earn a new deal, at 21 and with his only achievement in his time here being a 12 goal PL2 season (I think a few were penalties too?), which at that point will have been 3 seasons ago. He'll likely have no chance of first team involvement next season and need a damned sight better loan at that point to show us he is worth persisting with. I think he should have been allowed a couple of sub appearances whilst he was hot last season, especially in our dead rubbers, where I still struggle to forgive TM for not trying out more youngsters. I do wonder if these low calibre loans sometimes demoralise the players who feel they're doing well in the top youth league and should either be challenging for our bench or getting better loans. In some case it may fire them up, almost by slighting them, and I think that may have happened with Vale. Plus it's still learning how to play against stronger men. But on the whole I'm not a fan, and I find our loaning out policy confusing. So many times we have refused to send out the 6th choice player on a good loan for a position we are well stocked, only to sometimes send them anyway after the window has closed to a non league team. Meanwhile we just sent our 5th choice CB out on loan, when we play 3 at a time in that position and are challenging for promotion, plus one of the other 4 is highly injury prone. Barmy.

How new is he, a year ago? If so he will have nothing to do with the recruitment of any of the players we are talking about on here I should think. As you know in most cases (other than our Manure, Lpool etc cast offs, which we have been shopping for for many years) we get these lads young and develop them over a number of years. Hopefully his expertise serves us well in the years to come though. Always good to hear we have quality staff, after letting so many go in recent years.

Our best u23s are playing in our first team too, or on loan.

Like I said though, we have signed players before who were said in public to need to work on this before they could be regulars in the team. Poveda, I think Khadra too has had comments to that effect, Chapman, Rothwell. I'm sure there are others I'm not remembering.

I'm a bit bemused that the bookies (Coral anyway) seem to have Swansea as firm favourites for this one. 2.5 for the win, we're 3.1 (draw is 3.1 too). I get that they're at home, but we are 2nd, they're 19th. Our form over the last 5 games is also better (8 points to their 5). We have players available who weren't before (Giles, Hedges, and probably BBD). They've lost their last 2 games. I fail to see how any of this makes them favourites with the bookmakers. Another confusing set of odds on Coral, Zeefuik scoring is about the same odds as Khadra to score. Admittedly Khadra may be absent (probably the only way Zeefuik might play up front) but Zeefuik has 3 career goals in about 170 appearances. Khadra has 3 in 18 appearances.

We haven't let all the reserve forwards go. We have Vale, who has just notched 6 goals in 2 games, something none of the lads we have loaned out have achieved. Soon, our options in that area will be BBD, Khadra, Hedges, Dolan, Gallagher, Vale. 6 players for 2 spots. With Poveda to also be available later in the season, most likely.

I don't know if he is a good presser of the ball or not, not heard any mention of it. Didn't see any particular signs of it on the clips. You would hope we would only sign someone who does that though, since it's fundamental to our game plan, although we almost invariably hear TM saying new signings need to learn to work harder off the ball, so maybe it's more something he intends to draw out of him.

Not sure I'd say it didn't work. He had some injury problems I believe, and was used on the flanks instead of through the middle. 1 goal in 10 league games doesn't look great, but only 475 minutes, so just over 5 full games worth, and from out wide. 1 assist in 2 FA Cup games. . But more importantly, he seems to have come back with a real hunger, or valuable experience of playing with fully matured men, or both. He already seems to have outgrown u23s football just two games later. He is now just a goal behind Sam Burns' tally this season. I felt it was a poor quality loan we got for him, but so far it's looking like it paid off. Might be he gets some time off the bench this season, but if that doesn't happen then hopefully he gets a loan higher up the pyramid in the summer to test himself.

Is it bottom 2 get relegated?

I've never really liked the orange, grey or yellow away kits. Very rare I buy any of the third kits too, though that's largely cos two kits a season is plenty thanks...

That's why I said we will never know if it would have been different under another manager. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. I'm sure there are managers out there who could have brought the best out of him, but maybe for 90% of managers, or more, it would have gone the same way. Who knows. I definitely saw desire from him on the pitch at times, but I've had the impression his ego is a little fragile and being not even considered for the wing when all we had there was strikers probably did a bit of a number on that ego and reduced his drive. The best personalities brush that off, for sure, but that's not to say there's no way he could have been man managed better to get the most out of him or he couldn't have still made it. But you can't win them all. Sometimes your man management style will work on a player, sometimes it's not compatible. And it's done now, water under the bridge and we are 2nd in the league without having needed to maximise Harry Chapman's potential. As long as the management style works for the majority of the squad, which at the moment it's hard to argue otherwise.

NY Red Bulls are pretty stupid if they decided to wait until we can't sign a replacement to make a move. More likely looking at pre-contract.

Hedges was known about since what, December? In terms of being an option for January or the summer anyway. And I think known about since the summer initially (although that was as a first attempt to buy him outright).

Oh, when did Wales start letting people into stadiums again?

If he's not still buggered.

I have to disagree. Of course the individual progress etc is what matters, but I can't see how that isn't affected by playing against worse teams than in the PL2. Pretty sure even the u23 manager at the time was talking about how the harder league was bringing players along better when we got back into it a couple of seasons ago. It's also easier for senior management to be confident in them taking the step up if the youth level they've played at is at least the most competitive youth level there is.

The issue there is the real risk of relegation, which would see those same u18s competing at a weaker level next season. That won't be good for development. But I'm fine with the loans out we have made (except Carter, I think that was foolish given our first team squad needs, albeit good for Carter himself).

I'm not sure about invariably. Even with BBD for most of it, we only scored 2 goals in the league in January, in 5 games. Goals have dried up lately as it is, let alone if our 20 goal man was out.

I dunno about that second paragraph. We had no RWB cover for Nyambe (hell, Nyambe isn't really even a wingback) apart from injury prone, unfit JRC who isn't a defender. Competition there was definitely needed. We maybe didn't need Brown as yet another option there, but it's clearly been done for very cheap emergency cover, and as someone we own who may be able to step up a bit more next year when Zeefuik and/or Nyambe are gone. Markanday and Hedges are both attackers, which people are still saying we need more of. One got injured for the season, which is highly unfortunate. Giles probably wasn't necessary until Edun got injured in addition to Pickering, leaving us facing probably about a third of our remaining matches with no LWB. He can also play CM apparently, which is an area I don't think we have enough quality cover. I don't object to who we brought in, just that some other core issues were not addressed.

I was just reading about Giles and had a thought. Mowbray reckons his high assists figure is from the quality of his set pieces at Cardiff. Which would have meant aerial deliveries to that monster Moore, I imagine. Or at least with him being a significant distraction for the defence. I trust BBD to get on the end of things in the air now, but I'm not so sure about the other attackers. Thankfully though we have some beasts at the back who tend to come forward. In his general play though I hope he is good at low crosses and through balls, as they tend to be more likely sources of goals for our front line.

Usually, when we are all saying that about a player not being able to step up after a star leaves, we are right. Brereton is the exception, not the rule. You could argue it happened with Arma when Dack got injured, but personally I always rated him. I think it was more split on him than BB. It's unlikely lightning would strike again but more importantly, we can't take that risk right now. All that said, I'm much more concerned about the squad holes at GK, CB and CM than I am about the attacking options, as soon we will have a lot of players available in those areas. But yes I'd have like one more who could be trusted to bang a decent amount in if BBD is out. The cost of that is much higher than the other positions though.

The shift from signings connected to TM to ones who aren't has more to do, I think, with our lack of a scouting network worth the name when he arrived. Not that we have stopped with the old boys network...Pears.

He does, but we have had a fair few of those arrive, meant to be good at set pieces, footage of them scoring some free kicks...then when they're here the set pieces continue to be crap. Maybe because we barely work on them. Douglas, Pickering, Rothwell, Downing, all touted as set piece specialists when they arrived. I'm not sure we have scored one direct since Mulgrew.

Good summary, although as far as we can tell from reports at the time, it turned out there either was no extension in his contract or we hadn't met the conditions for extending it. We in fact got him to sign a new 1-year contract. Lad does seem to have an attitude problem, although to a degree it's been understandable as I do agree he has been mismanaged. At some points I'd even say messed around. We will never know whether the deal could have worked great with a different manager in charge. But we do know the deal as it happened was a waste of money for BRFC.

Yes, 4. We need 3 available at all times, as we play with 3. A good rule of thumb for a football squad is 2 players for each position. Since we play with 3 CBs that would mean we need 6, but since they're interchangeable if need be (though the left footer does bring us good balance), 5 makes sense. We have 4 excellent CBs as you say. After that we get desperate. That's quite the leap, from excellent to desperate. Imagine Ayala gets injured (I know, imagine...) and then one of Wharton, Van Hecke and Lenihan is injured (Wharton and Lenihan have form for injury), has to isolate, or is suspended (Van Hecke and Lenihan a bit heavy handed). Just like that we have to scrape around, with our only options players who aren't CBs, or kids. Risking changing our strongest area of the pitch into our weakest. Another alternative is to change our entire formation, which has brought unprecedented success.