bluebruce

Fair point Chaddy, you were absolutely right about it happening, good prediction. I also think it had and may continue to have a short term boost in that game and perhaps beyond, in terms of his performance. However, and perhaps time will prove this wrong, but I don't feel he has the right personality to be captain material in the longer term. I think it will make him step up, maybe for a few games, but he doesn't strike me as mature enough or selfless enough for it to pan out long term. He doesn't seem like he could pick a team up by the scruff of its neck and get it over the line, not even close tbh. But hopefully we at least see a bump in his own performances, hopefully one that lasts, and he can be a key player for us when on his game.

I think you've misremembered the last two seasons. Last season was a good one (minus our ritual January seppuku), but the season before we were a gnat's pube away from relegation. It's the season before that where we came close again.

That was a purchase dressed up as a loan. The purchase was guaranteed from the start. If I'm remembering rightly it was only a loan initially due to the loan window being open longer than the transfer window at that time. If I'm misremembering then it was probably just to push the accounting further down the line, but it was definitely not an option to purchase but an obligation. Can only imagine how much flak they'd have got if we saw him be worthless for half a season then spent 7 mill on him anyway without being forced to.

If you think the club are beyond spinning it that he covers both positions, it may be an unpleasant finish to the transfer window. This is our last ESC slot I think, unless I'm having a brain fart, and they've struggled to land a RW with a slot available (as they could have cancelled Mafoumbi at any time). Let's not forget De Neve has played a lot of his football as a LB and LWB but he's basically playing on the wing here.

Mad that they do indeed have just this one actual skill, and no others, and it has to be one that actively fucks us over and helps prolong the misery.

I've seen it said that Baradji also plays right wing. So I'll not be 100% surprised if we don't get a separate right winger. What Baradji definitely can't do is come straight into the team (assuming the reason he isn't playing for his club is that he has had the surgery as believed).

49, in all competitions, in 3 seasons. With 3 goals (2 in the league). 23 appearances and 0 goals in his last 2 seasons. He has a total of 89 career appearances and 6 goals, according to Wiki. At the age of 25. (Although the goals column is even dubious when I look closer, as the goals actually shown add up to 5 not 6, and 2 of those are for City U21s in the EFL Trophy)

I don't know if this was intentional rather than a typo, but it really fits.

Yes. Did they congratulate him turning down a new contract though or did they congratulate him on his move with its subsequent wage bump?

The only thing I think it is telling about is that Tom Bloxham is very bitter about not making it here and being released. If it came from someone like Sammie Szmodics, Dolan, Baath etc then it would be very telling as you say.

English qualified players is different to English players though right? So someone like Tavares would contribute to the minutes I think?

Yeh, it's so dodgy it has come out looking like a baseball cap

That would be incredibly easy for now. It would still be best if we can keep it above 35% this year to help keep those slots free in future years.

Obviously just get him before he played, I'm just saying there's still a route. My guess though is we just couldn't agree a fee as our budget is too shit.

I still feel an appeal on Miyoshi would have a strong chance of success. The problem is it would take time for it to go through the appeal process, and in the meantime we wouldn't know if we could sign Baradji or whoever else.

Looks like the same kid probably as they have the same birthday. Now that I think about it, I think it's Turkey where they sometimes have clubs that do both basketball and football for some reason.

Wankers.

I think it's fairly typical for a player to get roughly half the remaining value of their contract when mutually terminating. If someone paid me 1.5 years of work in a flash, to get out of this circus of a club, where I wasn't even anywhere near to making it, I'd consider it a favour tbf. But yes, 'we've sacked him so he can explore other options' is definitely some amusing spin.

I googled his name, and I couldn't find a 16 year old footballer...but I did find what seems to be a 16 year old basketballer...hope we're not just swapping looking for pace with looking for height! https://www.tbf.org.tr/ligler/11313/takim-detay/67423/basketbolcular

I assumed the point he was making was that if we weren't being skinflints, we could afford a high quality winger who already has enough points to qualify. But since we are in the bargain bin, we have to use ESC slots and we've spunked those. But the Mafoumbi thing sure is dumb. Especially since we could have brought him off the bench for a minute at any point last season or this, and cleared up a slot.

SBI is the State Bank of India. We (or Venkys at least, to fund us) certainly do borrow from them quite a lot (I think in the fairly early days we stopped using Barclays, I might be misremembering but I think they weren't really willing to sign off on an increased overdraft facility). I don't know how much of what they send us is borrowed from SBI though. They've borrowed with their land in India as collateral before.

Wow you'd think a first team coach would at least get sent to pass on how people were doing. I know he can hear from the U21 managers, but he'd probably trust someone he works with on the daily with the first team more, regarding who could step up to the first team. JE didn't really attend U21 games either did he? Don't remember ever hearing mention.

I just remembered how JDT used to attend almost all the U21 games to keep an eye on them all. Anybody know if Val attends any games?

Although his managerial stints suggest he doesn't have overall football intelligence! He certainly had it on the pitch though pretty much from the off. I remember they did a documentary episode about it on tv, and when they analysed what he could do and how fast his brain could process it, he was operating at a genius level in this regard. Then he'd open his mouth and it was like listening to a barely sentient scouse potato. One player who impresses me more and more in this regard as I keep seeing clips is Messi. Must be one of the most intelligent, fast-thinking footballers of all time easily. Always seems to know what a defender is going to do so he can jink away from them, usually without any fancy tricks just perfectly timed change of speed and direction (his insane agility etc helps of course). But his reading of the overall game...yesterday I saw a clip of him playing for Miami, and I don't care what level the league is - a pass was played into him with his back to goal, and without looking he flicked it on, needle-like pass through two defenders, perfectly onto the run of Suarez, whose direction of travel had changed, to slot in past the keeper. I've no idea how he processed where Suarez was going to be with the information he had, it was pure genius.

I can't even express how much I hate this, and how unnecessary it is. Total load of old bollocks.