He seems quite reminiscent of Nyambe from what I've seen so far.

Some spots being reserved for them in the overall squad I don't necessarily have a problem with. As long as they're mostly at a point we can be confident they'll contribute reasonably if called on. But that's different to setting a target of a number of minutes. If you have a strong 15-18 core like you say, they're unlikely to rack up 3,000 minutes between them on merit, using the system we both agreed on.

Saka is apparently 5 ft 10, which is average. And ACD is apparently 5 ft 7. Not sure I believe those numbers though, ACD definitely looks even shorter than 5 ft 7. Everything I've seen of Saka says 5 ft 10, but a few do have ACD at 5 ft 6. Either way, the mini part seems accurate, less so the Saka part. Though I can see the comparisons. ACD does have ability, and I think Championship could be his future level personally. He didn't look ready for it this season though other than in glimpses. Especially second half of the season he was very poor when given a chance, I think his confidence was gone.

Oh did he? My memory is playing tricks on me then, sorry. I nearly googled it to double check but then I was like nahh I'm sure he did 😂 I suppose my sense of time didn't get its head around just how young he was when he had his debut. I've just checked these scholarships too and they actually run to summer 2027 not 2026. Hopefully we get him signed up once he turns 17 and don't have another saga to look forward to in 2027.

I wouldn't get too excited, it's only a scholarship. Finneran had one of those too. Until we can and hopefully do sign him to full pro terms when he turns 17 (and hopefully without a release clause like Phillips insisted on), we haven't achieved full protection on him. It's as good as we can do for now though, but it only really kicks the can down the road til next summer and gains us a bit more compensation if he leaves then.

So you believe we should play youth players regardless of whether they're ready, to meet that target? If you don't, the target is meaningless, as it's just something we're hoping for. If you do, then we risk losing points to meet the target by playing young players ahead of better players. The strong core you mention only means lots of strong players ahead of them. If there's no injury crisis there may be no reason to play them beyond the arbitrary target. 3000 minutes btw is the equivalent of 33.33 full matches. So it's more or less like having one of the starting 11 be a youth player for 33 games of the season, and them not coming off. I know it wouldn't work like that, but the point is it's not the kind of minutes total that is likely to be reached with sub appearances even from a few young players. I'm in favour of bringing through players from our excellent academy btw, when they're ready. But unless we find we have a generational talent again like Wharton, the path looks like this to me: The best youth players are put into a development pool of sorts. They get substitute appearances when there is a need, or when the game is in the bag. They get starts and substantial minutes in cup games, especially against lower league opposition and especially at home. If in any of these appearances they display ability or form on par with the senior players, they get more substantial chances to play as they prove themselves. Results always come first. Reaching a minutes quota for the sake of it doesn't come into consideration. How the youngsters (and senior players) perform in training in the eyes of the manager does though. That's how I feel it should go.

Why would Chelsea not want him for sod all though, if in France he becomes good enough to attract a big money bid from City? Even if they're not sure if he is ready yet, I'm sure they will be at the front of the queue, and not having to pay much to, essentially, themselves, to take him if he gets good enough. And if they already think he's good enough, why wouldn't they do what KE is describing, just because they're willing to spend when necessary? It's still no reason to throw money away, and it helps skirt financial rules.

That just isn't true. Probably gonna piss you both off here... I actually agree with your point that RF99 is too quick to say youth players aren't ready. I think he has an inherent bias towards older, more experienced players and if a youth player comes in and doesn't outperform all the senior 11 he seems to want them dropped. And I understand the reason for his caution in that area, I just think he takes it a bit far. It's a bit of a fear of the unknown I guess. But Vale wasn't ready at all. He was shit for us. That's why he has struggled to make any impact here or elsewhere. He displayed entirely the wrong attitude on plenty of occasions and frankly seems lazy. I can't say that about Garrett, who I do think is good enough to be a squad player from what I've seen (though I must admit I had to miss, due to work, a few of the games around the time he got the most criticism). Wharton was actually more ready than JDT was giving him credit for, I said that at the time, and time has borne it out. Barnes, we'll never know as injuries fucked him over, and he barely played. Leonard has had probably roughly the amount of game time he deserved relative to the striking options we had, but by God we should have had better striking options. Phillips was ready for what he got, I'd argue should have had a little more but not tons. Vale though...no, not at all. After early cameos which showed promise, he was shit. You seem to think (and from many posts, not just this one) the manager doing something automatically means it's the right decision. It doesn't.

I wasn't sure if it had stopped, I just hadn't heard about it for a long time so I thought it had. I see now they loaned 4 players from Udinese last season and 'bought' 2, for, of course, undisclosed amounts, even though almost every other transfer that shows on transfermarkt has a fee shown. They also sold Vakoun Boyo to Udinese for a mystery fee...then loaned him back immediately. And he's a 27 year old so it's hardly a development thing. A player Watford had paid 5.8 million Euros for the season before. Obviously trying to bump Watford's FFP figures. Given the scale they're still doing it at, it seems clear a punishment wasn't given and the rules didn't change, or if they did they were so inconsequential as to be easily skirted.

They had the same owners as Udinese I believe it was. They got quite a few players from there, mostly or entirely on loan. I assume at very reasonable rates if any cost at all. I don't remember hearing anything about them getting in trouble for it, though I feel like it eventually stopped for some reason (rule change?). Maybe they're still doing it, I dunno. It was seen, probably rightly, as being a way to skirt FFP rules by getting good players for bugger all, and it helped them get promoted. I don't know if it ever went as far as Udinese actually buying a player just so they could loan them to Watford without it ruining Watford's books. They did have an excellent youth system at the time though, and may have sent the odd bought player who wasn't cutting the mustard in Serie A.

For who? You don't mean us do you? I don't think an injury-hit season in League Two is going to get him in the squad here, at least when Pickering and Ribeiro are fit. Think it would be more beneficial for him to have another loan, at least til January.

IMO, multi club ownership should just be banned. There is zero reason the sport needs it, and it raises too many dubious scenarios.

I know it isn't, I was just giving it as an example in the absence of full figures. I read it properly, don't worry 😉 But since only 400 of the 1500 clubs who got anything would be eligible for upwards of 100k, I can't imagine we would be on for much more than that. So it seemed a reasonable example to use. Agreed a full breakdown would have been more indicative, though that's a lot of figures to trawl through.

I think that's harsh about the DoF. I don't think he's fit for the role, but you can't say he knows so little about football you could put it on the back of a postage stamp. He was a professional footballer and played in the Premiership. He will know a lot more about football than a lot of us on here do. He just has no credentials to be a DoF at a club of this level, nor has shown any competence other than in sucking up to his superiors and towing the company line for his own advancement.

It's a nice idea but they should at least double it. 100k sort of figures won't make much material difference to most clubs receiving funds (and none to us, as you say...even though being 250k down on season ticket sales is apparently a massive deal to us, 18 million quid sales don't affect budgets). We are one of the better producing second tier sort of teams around, and we will only benefit from Raya and in future Wharton. 100k isn't much at this level, if we're even eligible for that much. Most teams contributing multiple of CL players will be from Europe's top tiers. 100k to a Prem club doesn't even register for them.

Having any kind of minutes target for playing academy players is an outright admission of wanting to play young players for the sake of it rather than when they're ready.

And that was 18 million of very cheap. 300k (which according to Sufi is major money to us) isn't even worth mentioning. Besides, we've already been told transfers out make zero impact on the budget, so it will be interesting if the charlatans still try to make out that selling players benefits us. They probably will.

I can only assume you're talking about Chaddy and rf99, not me. That would also have no correlation to talking about Yates as if he was a replacement for Boggan though.

'Blackburn could soon have a pressing need to bring Yates to Ewood Park if young striker Joe Boggan is sold by the Rovers, after Football Insider revealed that five clubs across Europe want the 17-year-old.' That's an incredibly strange thing to say. Why would losing a youth striker, with zero first team appearances (including on the bench I think) with more U18 appearances last season than U21, necessitate us, in any way, getting a 28 year old first team striker? I'll file this under 'they don't know what they're talking about'.

Pull the other one Chaddy. You repeat yourself on here all the time. If you genuinely can't see that, it's not for me to go dredging up posts, it's for you to have a good think about it. You and RF99 have had so many circular discussions I can't even count. And it's not necessarily a criticism, we all repeat our points on here. I'm just saying don't throw stones in glass houses.

Why is it ok for you to make the same comments repeatedly but not for others?

Agreed. But I'd take him for about half that. Maybe a smidge more.

You know why. Starts with inc, ends with tence.

I don't have any confusion, I read it fine the first time. You're getting overly literal with it. And Ipswich invested enough that they would have failed FFP without promotion, as another poster stated. Venkys simply won't do that. Automatic promotion isn't a conversation we should even bother having here, we have neither the funding nor the competence. Sneaking into the playoffs is the best we can hope for under this outfit.

Then they immediately said a bit of luck would do it and quoted two clubs who did it that way without parachute payments. It clearly wasn't a literal statement but an emphasis on the difficulty.