bluebruce

Looking at that lineup I have to wonder what the game plan is. Looks unbalanced to me. Johnson in the middle instead of Buckley makes us set up more to defend. But in the actual defence, Van Hecke is better with the ball than Ayala and seems to like running the full length of the pitch to try scoring, and Buckley has no defensive attributes other than being a decent presser, so also looks more attacking. I know those changes are at least partly enforced, but still. Don't think it will set us up with much of a coherent system (par the course these days). I'd rather have had Carter at RB, with Buckley in the middle. Johnson too inconsistent and immobile. Carter isn't great shakes as a RB, but neither is Buckley. Nearly scored early though there, good start so far.

🤣It really does, well played AllRoverAsia

I expect today to go badly. Buckley at RB gives me kittens, we are away to a team that hasn't lost at home yet, and we've only won once away. Our manager is a tool, and not a useful one. Best I can see today is a draw, if our attackers turn up.

This is painful. Think what you want, but we will have finished playing three games of football in the space of 170 hours, which is 7 days plus 2 hours. Or 7 days plus 3 hours once you add in the clock going back (which I'm doing by popular request 😉 ). Beyond that, use whatever batshit semantics to call it whatever you want to try to make it sound longer if you like, I'm not going to continue on this inane path.

Much like Wheelton, you haven't taken in what I've said. Let's just fob this off and focus on the game eh?

One where we debated on the merits of the discussion and not via ad hominem. Try again. You're counting the morning of the first day before the first game, and the evening after the second game, that's why you're getting this wrong.

That cheating club...are we not essentially pulling the same kind of trick with the training ground 'sale'? Tbh the rules are such a load of tosh anyway that it's no surprise some clubs don't respect them. 'Fair' play my arse.

The time gap between kick-off on Saturday 30th October and kick off on Saturday 6th November is 168 hours. 168 divided by 24 is 7. We play three games in a 7-day period. If you want to be super pedantic, 7 days plus about 2 hours for the third match to finish playing out, but come on.

You've lost me. Do we or do we not have 3 games in the span of a 7-day period? A week is a 7-day period. I sense you're referring to the beginning and end of a week as the calendar shows it, but that's not the only use of the term 'week', and is immaterial in the sense it is clearly being used here (that 3 games in 7 days is taxing for barely fit players).

If not having a head of recruitment for 5 months doesn't affect our recruitment, it's not a very worthwhile job.

Nope.

When you factor in transfer fees, would those players be cheaper than adding say another 2k per week (100k a year) to the contract offers for players we already have? For me, we need to get these contracts over the line. Obviously if their demands are totally ridiculous, there is always a limit, but within reason, I expect that even if we still sold the players, in the summer say, the increase in fees we could command would compensate for wage increases and loyalty fees in new deals, especially given the wage increases then wouldn't be over the full length of a contract. Yes there are risks to signing players onto decent lengthy contracts, but it's not like all 3 are realistically going to get crippling injuries in the near term, and an increased fee for just one would mitigate that risk. And we have had these lads at the club a while now, we know what they are all about ability wise and in terms of how they fit in at the club. Without being privy to the exact contract discussions, I find it hard to conclude losing any or all of them on frees would be anything other than very bad business.

Why not in the summer just gone? Why not on securing Leninan, Nyambe and Rothwell? Kaminski and Brereton? The 'sale' was made back in June. The money isn't getting spent mate. It's getting used to prop up existing losses for FFP.

Of course those generate income. Not for Venkys, which is maybe what you meant, but definitely for the club's balance sheet so that we can spend without falling foul of FFP.

Agreed. We handled the situation a bit sloppily, but he still got his contract in the end, and earned, for very little work and little benefit to the club, an amount that would probably take me a bare minimum of 10 years to earn, probably a lot more. Boo fucking hoo.

It happened in June and even recently they have been saying they can't really offer any more in contract negotiations to valuable assets. It's definitely only been done to keep the ship afloat and probably to pass FFP.

Apologies if already asked and answered, but I find myself wondering... Why are we only just hearing about this now if it happened in June? The only reasonable non-detrimental reason I can conjure is that we didn't want to put it in the public spotlight incase the league felt under pressure to disallow it somehow, so we waited for official confirmation there won't be some blowback from it. I'm not sure that idea holds up though. I can think of some detrimental or at least manipulative answers to the question though.

First positive I've heard or seen about him in a long time. Was highly rated and linked to Liverpool, went on loan to a low level (Fylde I think), made no impression there and has practically fallen off the radar. When I've watched him hasn't particularly impressed me either. No real optimism for his future tbh. But you never know. Sometimes players lose their way for a while and find it again.

Swearing isn't wrong. It's an entirely pointless taboo that society has fabricated.

I didn't dispute that they were woeful, did nowt etc. I didn't watch it so I have only opinions on here to go off. It being the only game they're getting is why they need these games for fitness. Over the years I've seen and heard of loads of accounts of first team players, including multimillion pound purchase Prem players and supposed mega prospects, do poorly in youth games. Players who have already played at a higher level are less enthused about playing at u23 is my point. They're also not match sharp as they haven't been playing much.

Seems often players dropping down to the u23s from first team are mostly looking for fitness, whereas the other young lads are still hungry and trying to make it, and it's their main football so they put more into it.

Tbf, Clarkson supposedly looked good for their u23s too. It's not always easy to tell if someone is good enough for our first team based on how they play against our kids.

It's the option being hypothetically discussed.

Nevermind JacknOry, now I see where you heard it. Gav, where do you get nearly 20 million from? 15 is the most I've heard.

With respect, you should have made that point then, instead of saying we sold him for 10 million. If you wanted to say we ended up with 10 million, say that instead. We sold him for about 15, we ended up with about 10, as best we know anyway. Just hovered up into the debt black hole of course. Again I've not heard anyone say 20, where have you heard that?