I wouldn't be surprised if Fury retires after the Usyk fight (and the rematch). I know he retires and returns for fun, but I feel like he's genuinely nearly done. If he loses I think he'll genuinely bow out. If he wins, it's possible he'll have a fight with Joshua then retire for good. There's really not anyone left for him to beat, and nothing left for him to prove or win, after he's fought those two. And if he loses, his ego won't take it well and he'll think it's time to call it quits.

Bacuna for one is a class player, no way he's playing League 1 next season. But class players are out of our financial reach. You're right, plenty of them will want to leave, but davul is right - we will get the dregs.

Wharton could have scored 10 goals by January and probably not attracted a bid of £40+ million. There's a ceiling to the price of Championship players. But I take your point there should be a premium on key players in January - instead we rolled out the discount.

Several of them didn't have wiggle room within FFP to pull it off. Which is why it was daft timing - in the summer those clubs would have been on a fresh year of the FFP cycle.

10 games.

Madness? This. Is. CHADDY!

Effective? It was enough to get the job done, but purely because of the surplus points we had built up already. Under Eustace it was relegation form, and more of the same without a better squad will see us relegated.

Fair point, though I'm sure we'd play as the UK if Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland didn't want their own FAs. Anyway I was more pointing it out as an addition to having a tiny, tiny population, which we don't have. It makes a bit of sense if you're very tiny but entirely independent, but I don't see the point when you're tiny and an overseas territory to boot. It would make more sense for the Isle of Man to have a national team, and frankly I'd consider that a bit silly too.

🤣What are Montserrat doing with a national team? It's a British Overseas Territory with a population of 1,200...I'm confident if I'd been born in Montserrat, I'd have been able to play for Montserrat, and I never even got picked up by an academy over here. (I know your point wasn't that playing for Montserrat is impressive btw, I'm just amused FIFA has bothered to acknowledge them..it's not like they're even a sovereign state)

'Market open' - but, it isn't? Don't get me wrong, we should get it sorted sooner rather than later as planning needs to begin, but the window doesn't open until 14th June.

Aye, the last thing we need is that charlatan anywhere near transfer dealings beyond what I assume is his obligation to sign them off. Between the tale of how he stole a young Andy Cole's signing on fee when he was an agent, and all the other sleazy bullshit that oozes out of his snake-like pores every time an utterance emerges from his duplicitous mush to befoul our ears, I'm practically certain this results in illicit payments being siphoned into his back pocket.

We won't put up any kind of fight until we have a better keeper. We can do what we want elsewhere on the pitch but it's meaningless with these two flappers.

The price was too low. Don't think anybody reasonably expected more than 30 at the absolute most, but I feel we would have been looking at 25 mill or so in the summer when the big clubs went onto a new FFP cycle.

I'm sorry but that can't be right. You're saying if he sold for (not remotely realistic I know) 300 million, we would still only get another 4 million? I've never heard of such a sell on clause, and even Waggott can't be incompetent enough to have concocted or agreed to such a thing.

So, if almost any other Championship club is interested, them.

Is that something that comes up a lot in football matches?

Then make him a junior scout, not the Director of Football. It's a pretty well-paid gig, we shouldn't be putting anyone there unless we're confident they're up to it. Not just 'oh they used to play football'. Again we could any ex-footballer in the role by that logic, and 99% of them would be dogshit at it.

No, not except here. Here is precisely where I was talking about. Didn't say we can never improve, just there's no such thing as 'can't be worse'. Which is very different to asking who we can replace them with. Also I was very much one of the ones who had wanted Mowbray gone for a long time.

Well, it was written by someone called Nick Mashiter. Sounds like someone who steals toilets.

Must be the thousandth time I've seen someone here say 'couldn't be any worse than X'. Most of the time, they do turn out to be worse.

No, not really. Plenty of footballers are as thick as mince. Quite a few who don't demonstrate much understanding of the game even. Even if they understand the game, that's entirely different to understanding the backroom side of the game, negotiating deals, contracts, highlighting targets and getting your point across etc. Broughton had at least worked in the backroom part of the game and had some dealings with recruitment and development of players. Hell let's just put Scott Wharton in the role eh? Footballer, loves the club...that's all some people are interested in when it comes to high level appointments.

Don't be so sure. Some of the shit that vast swathes of the fanbase have been willing to swallow has been truly astounding. We already have a seasoned supporter saying he'd be 'more than happy' with it for some baffling reason.

Why in the ungodly fuck would you be 'more than happy' with us appointing a DoF who not only doesn't have experience in that role, but as far as I can see doesn't have any experience in any role beyond 'footballer'? Just because he used to be a good player for us? Come on! That's just a ridiculous position to have. I'm almost as qualified as he is!

It's not really a trick. It's absolutely fair enough, because regardless of their abilities, both of them were undermined at every turn.

He's certainly very clever when it comes to self preservation. It's a shame that precisely none of his intelligence is geared towards the competent operation of a football club. In fact it just might all be in the self preservation arena. Makes me think of a roleplaying video game, where someone might put all their points into one attribute. His overloaded attribute being: snakelike self-preservation chicanery.