bluebruce

He's not a Sunderland reject though. They want to keep him.

Nah, I reckon he has lost his love of the game and will just chase the best pay packet before his stock falls too much. Which may have the same result of not dropping down.

Hope we don't go for him. His days are done.

Away games aren't what they used to be. We were the only home side in the Championship to win today. Six away sides won.

I actually thought Gally made a bit of a nuisance of himself today. But he was also very clumsy.

Ridiculous, we are the only home side who won today, played very well against a top half team, and still no mention! Fuck em.

That second half we were excellent and deserved more goals. Well done lads! Did anybody else catch that the ifollow stats said we won 100% of our tackles?! I've never heard of such a thing!

Yeh he was just stood there really, shite decision.

Hope that Bambi fall doesn't knock his confidence. Shame as he has done reasonably well.

Walton's errors in the first half of the season were as numerous as Raya's or moreso, but without the brilliant saves to compensate. How spectacular the blunders are is irrelevant because they still shipped goals. He has improved a lot but still doesn't reach the shots Raya can stop at times. Would ditch him to have Raya back in a shot.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/18524359.sunderland-make-last-ditch-attempt-keep-rovers-target/

This is the worst time in years to sell one of our key assets, in terms of the market. (Apart from when we were in league one) We would get far below the usual prices.

Ah that'll be because he hasn't really demonstrated any of that yet (well I'll give him the good balance). Average dribbling without the pace for it to matter, decent technically but far from fantastic (so far, at this level) and lightweight. As has been said, he's played out of position, still early etc, but I simply haven't seen anything yet to prove the level of hype he had in the u23s or, from some quarters, since. Bar odd brief glimpses. Hopefully he develops and shows what he is really about. I'd love little more than for him or any of our kids to shine.

Given the rationale given there for Boro letting him go, I wouldn't have thought so.

How do you feel he has looked in a straight comparison with Buckley? Personally I think he looks a better player and more likely to fit into the cut and thrust of Championship football once he finds his footing. Physically better, more stuck in, and technically hasn't looked any worse for me. Aside from Sheff W there was another game where I thought he looked decent but not outstanding. I can't remember which. He's been a bit anonymous in a few others, but so have players like Rothwell at times. Even Dack is known to look like he's barely there for a stretch (though obviously he does tend to still deliver the goods at the goal end). I'm intrigued to see how he does next season, and probably consider him the most likely to be the next breakthrough to regular football in our first team, if he gets enough of a run at it. These things can change so quickly though, especially when we've barely seen the players in question and they're youngsters breaking through. I remember seeing Jay McEveley mark Beckham almost out of a game and think he was gonna go on to be a star, whereas other youngsters have underwhelmed for a while before breaking through.

I'm sure you meant they should be shown the door. Sadly, I won't be surprised if one or two of them are shown the deal...

When young players do it, they usually end up being unable to nail down a regular berth because they're just fill-in utility players in a crisis.

We all know Le Tissier didn't leave Southampton because he was loyal. The point is, you don't know why Maddison hasn't moved yet, but you're assuming it's because he isn't good enough. Even though he has had his suitors over the years. The stats you posted agree with the comment I made about them. I don't think we have any chance of landing Murphy. We need to stop relying on loans as much too. No upsell in them and our budget is going to get increasingly stretched. Don't know anything about Leko. Dammit you suckered me back into talking about it ?

No, he wanted a lot in wages and Peterborough were reluctant to take appropriate money for him, which is their prerogative. Hull have every chance of going down so it doesn't surprise me if they didn't want to commit to that. Admittedly it may put him out of our range too, but I'd definitely be making enquiries on a free, offer him a bigger signing on fee instead of structure-breaking wages, etc. Do you find it odd that Matt Le Tissier had good stats for about 10 years and never left Southampton? Guess he was shit then. Maddison has had numerous suitors over the years, the fact a deal never materialised will primarily be finances. I fail to see why this point keeps coming up. His stats have been good for 5-6 years btw. Still only 26, coming into his prime. One season anything like the seasons he had in League One and his value will shoot up. Not had much game time in the Championship yet, but managed a goal against Swansea in his 338 minutes. Well worth the risk if we can be satisfied on the finances. Every deal is a risk Chaddy, but the calculations on this risk add up nicely to me (certainly compared to the risk of, as the other poster said, persevering with Gally on the wing!). Anyway I'll leave it at that for now, I'm sure we'll end up spending weeks discussing him again to no avail, so with my piece said, I'll try to keep out of it

I'm a bit concerned about what the drubbing, regardless of the unquestioned quality of the opposition, will do to our confidence in the lead up to returning. As you say, it underlines the current gulf in standards, so is hardly going to encourage the lads that they're good enough to step up and play those kinds of teams regularly. At the same time, I don't personally buy this notion I keep seeing that the club shouldn't go up yet because the current crop aren't good enough to play there. Whilst I can see that it undermines the current players' confidence about stepping up, that's basically irrelevant if we did manage to get promoted. With a Premiership place comes Premiership riches, and considerable scope to recruit better players, such as we can only dream of until we get there. The break and a buildup friendly was a great chance to restore some confidence for a team that was out of form before it. For me, we've completely spunked that away by deciding to play arguably the best team in the world in this fixture, and now might as well not have had the break (other than giving Holtby time to recover). Another Championship side would have presented the best balance between challenge and potential restoration of confidence. I don't know if we still plan to play one though.

Just as Maddison is 'shyte' in your opinion.

Got to be our least priority position unless we lose Travis. We have Travis, Evans, Johnson, Davenport and Smallwood (probably on his way out tbf) for whom that is basically their only position (ok Travis could play elsewhere but never does and is our best player there). We then have Buckley, Bennett, Downing, Holtby and even Rothwell who are all options there. Not saying it's an area that's impossible to improve on, at all, but when about half the team needs improvement and depth as a more pressing issue, and with resources likely limited, I'll probably consider it highly frustrating if we recruit in this area. Obviously if the kid turns out to be exceptional and didn't cost much it'll probably be alright, but not if we're still getting roasted down our left flank, shipping dodgy goals with a dodgy keeper, etc. We need 2 goalkeepers, a left back or two, two centre halves, proper right-back cover, a winger or two, and genuine competition for Armstrong up front, all before we need another defensive midfielder. Actually, scrap my earlier comment about half the team, that's basically the entire rest of the team that's a bigger issue than this position.

That's stupid. That's basically chopping 6 games out of players' careers if they dare to move clubs now. Anything come out about whether clubs can make players stay on to finish the season? Because if they can't force it, you're gonna also end up with clubs losing players but unable to replace them, which is also stupid.

If he signs as soon as June is done, that's 6 games he could potentially play in (I assume, if some weird loophole in the rules doesn't stop that). At the least, he'd be around in training to get a closer look at. I wonder if the thinking is to see how he does in order to assess whether we need another number 1 challenger, or just a backup. Actually giving him game time to that end could be risky during (hopefully) a promotion push though. Though I expect if we miss out on that dream early, he would be played.

Go to about 6 minutes. It wasn't an actual goal I was remembering, you're right there, it was a couple of contributions including a fine pass, for a goalscoring opportunity.