It's arguable he isn't a huge upgrade on nyambe, but we don't have nyambe anymore so to be honest I'll settle for not an obvious downgrade and grumble into my beer. At least this guy will be under contract for a few years. Too many gaps to plug, need to get on to the next one.

Gallagher wasn't really playing on the wing though to be honest, it was a very narrow system but also almost asymmetrical - BBD spent a fair bit of time out wide and even tracking back a bit to help out the beleaguered Pickering, but Gallagher was more central for more of the game and stayed forward with Travis providing the extra cover for Carter from the midfield. Difficult to put it on paper as a formation, but seemed tactically quite flexible. Relied on Travis covering a lot of ground though and I think he's the only player we've got who can really play that role, so that's a new concern.

I doubt JDT had heard of him before taking over, probably looked at the stats for where he has been played previously and is running with it. With a bit of luck he'll work out that Joe isn't a full back after a couple of games.

This is presumably not far off the highest standard of opposition that Carter and Vale have faced in their careers right? And Carter out of position too, they've done fine. Don't particularly want Carter to be first choice right back for the entire season, but I'll take him in the squad no probs.

Kaminski Carter Ayala Wharton Pickering Travis Buckley Dolan Gallagher Vale Diaz That about right? not much width in that formation, pretty attacking though and a good start!

Maybe we measured him as a kid and noone has bothered to update it?

I guess the hope is that GB is compiling a shortlist for all positions, sounding out fees and wages behind the scenes, whilst JDT is taking a good look at literally every player contracted to the club and working out who he thinks is up to the job. Once he's worked it out he goes to GB and says 'right, we need one of these, two of these, one of these, a big one of these who can head a ball really well...' etc. At which point GB pulls out the shortlist(s) and we sign a bunch of new players in quite a short space of time. I don't think it's likely to happen, but that would be a scenario where the difference in Head Coach/DOF approach would make sense?

I'd believe he was on £600 a week when he first signed, but he signed a new contract pretty quickly after breaking into the first team didn't he? Must be on more, probably still not a lot, but surely.

Gallaghers goal return (ie. 7-8 goals a season) has been pretty consistent for the last few seasons considering he's mostly played out of position. I'd love to see a breakdown of his goals/game at centre forward vs his goals/game out on the right, but I didn't have the presence of mind to track that. As a first choice striker not particularly good, but if we end up playing with one up front and either keep BBD (unlikely) or bring in a new striker as first choice then use SG as the back up striker I'll bet that coming off the bench or as rotation he'll get a similar number of minutes at #9. If he bags 7-8 goals as a back up striker that's an ok return. For comparison most of the top half of the championship had their second best goalscorers got 10 or fewer this season just gone, the exception I think being Forest who had players with 18 and 12. So not amazing, doubly so not as one of our highest earners, but not awful. If we can't get decent money for him he'll do a job. We need players in before we start getting rid of what we have.

I like Dolan, he's clearly got talent and he's very young with plenty of time to improve the areas he's a bit lacking. He's shown good development under a coaching setup I don't have much faith in, and offers something that I'm not sure anyone else in the team does. The only reason a premier League team would want him is for their u23 setup with a view to training him up for the future. Also £3m doesn't go far these days, and we're thin enough on numbers without wishing away players with league starts (and goals!) - unless we can sell for sufficient money to buy two or three I don't see much point.

I didn't mean they'd pay the clubs to have alternative sponsors. Under current FFP regs clubs are allowed to make losses of £13m a year (effectively, I know it's averaged over three) - so I was suggesting that they give a slight break to clubs that don't want gambling etc. - those clubs would be allowed to make a slightly larger loss per year to offset the lower sponsorship. It wouldn't cost the EFL/FA a penny. Of course it advantages those clubs with owners who want to put money in, if you aren't being restricted by ffp it doesn't help you much. I don't know how much shirt sponsorship deals are worth these days so I'll invent some wildly inaccurate figures, but if you gave clubs the option of eg. £100k to have a betting company on your shirt OR £50k for a local sponsor and write off £100k of your ffp loss that year OR a charity (free) shirt sponsor and write off £150k of your ffp loss that year I think it would incentivise a lot of clubs to move away from the online casinos. Scale as appropriate. Probably wouldn't work, I'm just throwing ideas out.

Could the league/fa/whomever just give an ffp break of whatever the average shirt sponsor deal is to clubs that have non gambling/booze/tobacco sponsorship? Maybe a bit more for a charity?

I always get the impression that the Venky's would chuck money unexpectedly and sporadically at things that caught their imagination. Stadium maintenance isn't interesting, but Jordan Rhodes came straight out of the proverbial back pocket. So maybe? But probably not in the ways we need it to be invested. Edit - as I was typing that several people essentially said the same thing quicker than I managed, didn't mean to be repetitive!

So does this mean that in December we can pack the DOF off on a plane to India to beg for new signings in the January window whilst letting the manager get on with, you know, football matches? Because if so that's got to be an improvement surely, knowing nothing otherwise about the bloke in question.

Ah, right. So the concern is less incompetence and more... the other thing. Gotcha.

100% agree, a bizarre appointment. All I'm saying is that anyone vaguely competent (anyone know if he was any good at managing a biscuit factory?) should have, in six years, gained the skill set required to do the job.

What does Pasha know about English football? I know nothing in particular about the bloke but he has been directly involved in the club since when - 2015? 16? If you dropped me into an industry that I knew nothing about whatsoever I'd like to think that in six years I'd have a fair idea of what's going on, assuming I gave a damn about doing a good job in the first place. Of course this works both ways - Pasha should have learned the ropes by now so to speak, so we should be expecting him to do a competent job. edit for clarification - Expecting as in 'After six years you should be doing a good job' not 'I expect he will do a good job' - two different things - I have no idea how much work he's put in or whether he takes the job seriously or anything about him to be honest. I don't think any of us do, we just assume he's useless because he's Venky's.

Ainsworth is probably top (or near top anyway) of my 'Would be fine and we have a decent chance of getting' list too.

I think most of us can boil the options down to three lists - the managers we really want but are largely not expecting to get, the managers that would be fine and we have a chance to get, and the managers we really do not want. The good news is that there are actually quite a few names on the first two being thrown about with a degree of possibility. The bad news is that when they inevitably appoint one of the third it will seem all the worse for the number of decent options out there.

Lenihan on the bench, does that indicate he may be signing a new deal or am I clutching at straws?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/61337095 Love how the arguement is essentially 'look they might have done something wrong so kindly structure the punishment in precisely the way that benefits us the most' Still, outside shot big Ben might make it to Qatar after all

Great post, well presented, I'd glass half full a couple of things though. Markandy was extremely well rated at Spurs, to the point that some of their fans were saying that he should have been in and around the first team rather than being sold. Obviously he didn't actually play this season so from the point of view of the squad going into next season he is effectively a 'new signing' who on reputation should be a key player at this level - he'd more or less like for like Khadra in Joey's list, so possibly that is one fewer replacement needed. He may turn out to be rubbish, but that's a risk with all new signings. If we can keep even one of Lenihan or Nyambe it would be massive and if two or three of the u23s step up to fill the outgoing 'squad players' then I guess based on the original post we'd need to sign four key players and a couple of squad players? Still a pretty tall order, but not quite as bad as eleven all told. If relying on the u23s to fill the squad player positions then it becomes pretty important that the incoming key players are of a high standard. I mean it already is, but more so. I'm assuming a lot and of course that's also assuming no-one else gets sold in the mean time (which would be pretty devastating in such a thin squad unless for serious serious money)

Coyle relegated us, I honestly don't hold that one against Mowbray (though I respect those on here who do), he got us to a point where we'd have stayed up any of the previous 10 seasons or something ridiculous. First full season got promotion, brought in some players I've enjoyed watching and has over the following seasons kept us up, cemented us as mid table and then this season we've been in play off contention. On paper it looks very good. However. Having built a team that (almost) is a promotion contender built around a core of home-grown talent he's blowing it. It really is self sabotage at this point. We're going to look back on this season in the same way as the Rhodes/Guestede/King season of 'that was our chance, how did we not take it'. 7/10. 6/10 if and when we finish 7th or lower, 8/10 if we make the playoffs and have a good showing. Still would not renew contract.

Fingers crossed we put a clause in per international appearance, but somehow I doubt it.

All the probabilities and x% chance of making the top six if we get 12 points etc. is all well and good, but in the last relegation season after TM took over we reached all the points targets that would have seen us safe any other year and it wasn't enough. We don't have the best luck when it comes to stuff like this. Keep winning and pray we haven't blown it already.