bluebruce

If his career goes nowhere because he made the wrong choice, that won't soothe for long.

That's gratifying. I hope he felt like an idiot.

The levels of delusion on the LT comments and some on FB are insane. I bet they're largely people who have been praising JE, but now it's all 'oh he's not that good anyway, there's loads of better managers out there we can get' and even some 'get shut' type comments. Honestly, some of our fans deserve what they've been getting and will get.

Minus the good season part. I don't see how he'll have one of those.

Why would he care if he looks good in the eyes of the owners if he was retiring soon anyway?

I don't see how an entire season of reviews from other fans and it's too early to judge, but 2 games in our shirt when he's spent most of the season getting splinters in his arse and won't have that sharpness that can only come from playing matches, and it's fine to criticise? I didn't think it was like you to judge so early. Do you rate Pears?

Are you not going to give him a chance?

How strong a side did Wolves put out?

I had to put up with Pears being shit for over 2 years, and he's still not great. I can give Toth more than 2 games.

I'm not watching, I'm at work, but my answer would be the same - I've no idea cos we've barely fucking seen him play and he's been getting splinters in his arse all season. Given how many howlers of Pears we have had to sit through, and even some balls ups recently, remains to be seen.

No, I'm really not expecting him to go to Derby whatsoever tbh. Not until the summer.

I'm sure he was made promises here. I suspect he'll be more reluctant to listen to those now.

Do we have any idea why Markanday was benched and didn't get on, considering it was against top tier opposition? I had thought his loan there was going well.

January isn't a great time, I think it didn't fit well with some big clubs' FFP cycles as they'd already more or less maxed out. Or they were looking for players they had more confidence could play immediately, or specific positions due to their needs mid season. So, wait until the summer when the bidders will be stronger and we'll get more, or sell mid-season for a bargain price and get less time with Adam ourselves. Obviously our fuckwit owners took the latter route as it stopped them sending a cheque.

Not taken it well then. Hopefully we can get a deal done for him to leave, don't want him stinking the place up. Personally I think the squad registration rules are a load of old bollocks, but it is what it is and he probably wasn't gonna feature in more than a smattering of games. I'm curious if the rumour earlier in the season about him refusing to play in the u21s is true. If so he only has himself to blame really.

Whilst the cost cutting here is a joke, shifting out our highest paid contracted player when he hasn't played pretty much all season and is still out, and is far from our most effective player when he is fit, makes perfect sense for most clubs. Especially when there's a spot needs freeing up.

There's every chance if he's never fit.

That lad can't catch a break. Love how your post implies the two things are connected though 😂

God I would hate that!

/\ I just came here to post that. If you go off highlights alone, which may be massively club-biased, it looks like we should have won that game comfortably.

It still must have taken Bilbao writing off the remaining year of his deal. I wonder how much of that we had to pay. If both he and Kargbo have a 1 year extension option in the club's favour, it makes more sense, but nothing has been stated. And rumours before the Kargbo deal were announced were that his team only wanted a 2.5 year deal and we wanted 3.5. I'd say there's almost no chance they settled for what's basically a 3.5 year but in the club's favour, so I doubt we have an option.

The Ribeiro half a season contract on a permanent, and the 2.5 year deal for Kargbo who we paid nearly a million for, is a very worrying pattern when we already have a huge portion of the squad out of contract this year and then next, and haven't renewed a meaningful contract in over a year, nor for the most part does it sound like we're trying to. Something isn't right, even moreso than usual. Especially given the amount we have raked in through sales and having declared a profit last season.

Sorry but this thinking is flawed and dangerous. If we go up, which has to be considered far less likely than staying in the Championship at this point, we bring in something in the region of £200 million. The contracts of a bunch of players on mostly 5-10k a week, 15k tops, will be like pissing in the sea. I believe it's 8 players out of contract in the summer? One is Hedges, with a 1 year extension option. For some reason we are talking a new deal with him but I wouldn't, he's shit. Another is Siggy, who surely we will let leave. So that leaves 6 players, even if you gave them all 15k per week (which we won't remotely and I wouldn't advise) on 3 year deals, that would be a total commitment of 14 million over contract length. More realistically (and probably still higher than reality, if they were all 10k p/w deals it's a commitment of 9.3 million. Versus 200 million. Ignoring of course that some of them could probably be sold back to the Championship as promotion winners, or at least given payoffs bringing the cost down. Or you keep them/loan them out, we (probably) go back down and have some Championship ready players. Realistically you probably don't end up losing more than 5 million, worst case scenario. A pittance in the grand picture of Prem riches, basically. If we don't go up, which is most likely, we need to not have to wholesale replace the squad on what will be a pittance of a budget. TLDR: We should attempt to renew contracts of any players we actually want to keep, as the money will be irrelevant if we go up, and we don't have the resources to reliably replace such a large chunk of the squad. Players like Siggy and Hedges can swivel though.

What that tells me is I'm really, really glad we didn't sign Bamford. The worst xG conversion rate in the world, wow!

Incidentally, 3 of the 4 groups were topped by foreign sides. The exception was Brighton who won Group D with 4 straight wins against what I'd expect to be decent sides (Sporting, Sociedad, Anderlecht and Leipzig). That was also the only group that didn't have an English side finish bottom. Group C was perhaps the strangest outcome, Manure and Liverpool were the bottom 2, and the group was won by FC Nordsjælland, who apparently also have a better U-21s than PSV and Hertha Berlin if the table is to be believed. 3 wins, 1 draw (which was against Fulham who came 2nd).