bluebruce

I'm fine with it. Far better than last year's.

Not suggesting we shouldn't have a third kit, it's a must. Just suggesting (tongue in cheek partly, but we do seem to end up actually wearing the third kit more than necessary) that we put blue on the second kit to maximise the profile of the third.

So that we can spend a bunch of our away games playing in the third kit, making it easier for them to flog that too.

Ah yeh Holtby. They're the only true Academy graduates, but they're not the only ones that are from or were signed for the u23s. Dolan is a welcome surprise, not an attempt to buy a first teamer.

True, although 5 out of those 11 are youth players who broke through, so they're not part of what he intentionally moulded through signings. The imbalance is real and stark though. And unforgivable.

You think everybody is frustrated just because a poster told us to brace ourselves? Is this your first transfer window on here? Whinging (and coming up with quite a few viable potential targets, actually) is par the course here, especially when we approach the season's start with an inadequate defence. Which is frequently.

It did take guts for him to come back so soon. That has nothing to do with whether I speculate that a swift recurrence of broken bones may (emphasis on may) mean there is an underlying issue there. It's hardly outside of the realms of possibility. As somebody who has had recurring injuries myself since my early 20s that have stopped me playing consistently, and numerous other minor health conditions, I also wonder if I have an underlying condition. It doesnt make myself nor Evans lesser men or something, it's just a possibility. I'll leave it there because, as my semantics did clearly state, I was only mentioning a possibility and without an actual assessment from a professional there is no way of knowing. I'm not sure why you've seemingly ascribed it any more relevance than that. If he breaks a bone again any time soon though I'd be surprised if the medical experts didn't take a look for a deeper root cause than bad luck. Out of curiosity when you had your collision, did you also fracture/break/shatter about 4 or 5 different bones? From memory I think it was nose, cheek, eyesocket and jaw. Personally I don't ever remember hearing about so many different facial injuries from one foot. Feel like Raya's looked worse because of momentum and he didn't break as many things. Both were pretty horrendous of course.

Jesus...good time to loan some of our youngsters to them to get League One experience? Wouldn't be any money or savings in it for us of course. I suppose there's still too much uncertainty anyway over who will run them, and whether tha person will buy players, to know if they'd get game time.

With the greatest respect, you didn't read my original post correctly if you think I said he actually has osteoporosis. Obviously I'm not actually giving a diagnosis either, not being a doctor and saying it's just a theory. Not was it 'informed' in order to be ill-informed. At the very least it's a big coincidence that he broke a totally different bone not long after returning. I was talking in the context of resistance to injuries when using rugged, not being a hard bloke or something. Rugged in that sense, he surely ain't.

There probably is but that's not my point. He broke like 5 different things. It was a nasty impact but I don't think most people would have had quite that many breaks from it. Then not long later he also breaks a bone in his toe? Not saying it's definitely the case, just a theory. He has quite the list of injuries, although most aren't bones of course. But he clearly isn't the most rugged.

I'm starting to suspect it isn't just bad luck and his bones are weak. Onset of some sort of osteoporosis type condition maybe? Hope not for his sake though.

There are the mystery foreign keepers too, who for some reason couldn't be named after we missed out on them. They get referenced a lot though.

Nobody is 'rewriting' history here. The general consensus at the time was he was pretty good and a serious improvement on Bell. Rewriting history would be if the consensus was he was meh. This, however, is just people having a different view of a player to you.

Chanka Zimba? Didn't seem to make sense that we let him go. We have since spent (presumably) to bring in McBride for that youth striker spot, so I hope we rate him higher than Zimba.

Nat Phillips has been linked, so yeh I think you've imagined Matt Phillips. Edit - the rumour I mean, not his existence.

If Dack won't take less than a contract like that, you can rest assured he will be sold, probably in January when we will still have 18 months on his deal (after activating the extension). We can't afford a 40k pw player anymore in this league, especially since it raises the wage demands of other players hugely.

Fresh on the back of the Kipre debacle, it would make sense for the timing for doing such a thing to be now.

I agree it's very important to tie your talent up. But all of that comes with improved wages, signing on fees, agent fees. Which makes it harder to get those 5 or 6 players and may result in not getting them all, or getting worse ones. It's all a balancing act on a limited budget.

There is a difference between the manager wanting 5 or 6 additions and thinking he needs 5 or 6 additions. We don't know which is the case.

Fairly sure this isn't the signing JB was on about. Nixon was saying yesterday it had already been done, so there'd have been no need for secrecy. It was also implied it's a midfielder.

That sounds like a clue...

Why would he be getting nothing at all if he's under contract? You mean when his deal expires?

Unless it's a crap signing or won't improve one of our over stocked areas. In which case, tell the entire press.

At this rate we will probably hit that within the hour...

And (following from my previous post) if that's the case then it would really have been a 12 million quid deal, but we will only get a cut from the 10 million. Which is us getting shafted.