You certainly do worry if he will wonder whether all this is worth being away from his family for in the long run whilst those around him blunder around from one missed target to the next.

It will depend I suppose on how much extra he can personally trouser by waiting until the summer. If I were any of those Clubs though and GB was ringing me up trying to desperately offload BBD like a pimp offering out his girl for half price quickies on Bank Top then I'd be thinking "Hold on he's desperate here" and wouldn't be offering anything like what we want - as is the case currently seemingly. Genuine question - at what price does it become NOT worth selling him? Given his value to the team and the lack of other options and our inability to get anyone else of any description in, that price is (ignoring add ons) £15m this window and £10m next imo. I'm not sure your strategy would be applauded by the owners either who we keep being told are fairly steadfast on their valuation on him. I think there is a lot of merit in them refusing to be pushed around in the transfer market, at the end of the day it allowed us to get a reasonable fee for AA in the circumstances. The fault at the end of the day lies not with them but with Waggott and Mowbray who failed to get all the Club's key assets tied down. The owners hire people and pay them handsomely to sort stuff like this out for them.

That sort of thing does indeed need to be implemented, either that or or be rather more flexible with the wage structure.

What bit don't you understand? We CAN'T sell him if he doesn't want to leave!!!! The situation you describe above is what SHOULD have happened 12-18 months ago but that ship has well and truly sailed.

We hadn't lost three permanent first teamers of the calibre of DL, RN and JR at this point last year though. (Edit: Plus JPVH and to a lesser extent Khedra)

What if teams are offering less than half that?

Not sure if that is strictly speaking the case in terms of arrivals through the door, but it is the transfer window where more needed to be done than ever before due to the negligence of Waggott and Mowbray and you have to say that so far the Club have singularly failed to address it. Edit: It's not like it's a surprise either. We've known for 18 months or more that the 3 amigos might not sign new deals and might need to be replaced and it must have been obvious since the early part of last season we'd need to up the ante considerably for BBD.

Possibly, but he will have to decide whether the potential financial upside against that is a risk worth taking as regards his own career. The point is, if he does decide to go down that route there's nothing we can do about it. The most we can do is freeze him out (which would be cutting off our nose to spite our face when the alternative is Sam Gallagher) and again that's a possibility BBD would have to take into consideration.

Sorry, this is going to turn into another long running saga which is going to have everyone turning off in droves. I wouldn't be HAPPY if he walked out for nothing but I'd be far unhappier if we sold him and went down. More to the point what you or I or Waggott or Pasha think is completely irrelevant for the purposes of discussing this particular point. If BBD decides he'd rather stay until summer to maximise his future earning potential then he's perfectly entitled to do so and there's nothing the Club can do about it.

His choice is, probably, see out his contract then he can command a higher wage/signing on fee when he moves in the summer. It's our fault for letting it reach this stage: ditto Nyambe, Lenihan and Rothwell

If he doesn't want to go before the summer - that's the end of it. We can't make him. If we don't get anyone else decent in first then for me he must NOT be sold anyway. And if he is we need 2 strikers - (edited) which seeing as we currently can't seem to get anyone whatsoever in in any position seems an extremely big ask.

Pickering and Edun are imo two poor signings made by the previous administration and in an ideal world both would be replaced by one decent player. Then again in an ideal world Gallagher would also be replaced by a half decent option and he won't be either. It's going to be hard to move forward with such a glaring lack of quality in certain positions.

That has to be absolute nonsense surely. What's the point from the Club's point of view of allowing him to sign a deal that lets him move out on loan at more or less any given point?

I dont know exactly what's gone on with JPVH but we wanted him permanently and put a bid in for him. As he is seemingly only going to Sunderland on loan it may be that Brighton have changed their original stance about wanting to sell him. Either way it's another hard luck story and another long standing target we have seemingly failed to convert.

Was just thinking that.....nine days left after today..... we're going to need more than one a day before long. We're like a struggling cricket team playing an ODI where the required run rate is already more than one a ball and getting worse with every unsuccessful over.

Quite shameless isn't he! And he gets paid for nicking stuff off here as well. Nice work if you can get it. Think he's wrong about us having no interest in Styles BTW.

It 's been make or break for the last 4 or 5 weeks and nothing has happened, I'm not sure why it's more likely anyone will arrive this week than previously. In fact it seems pretty obvious we're floundering in terms of getting the players we want in so the later in the window it gets, the less likely it will be that we land the players we were originally targeting and more likely we have to look at alternatives.

Just checked back and Rothwell didn't even appear to be on the bench for Bournemouth. Left out altogether or injured?

Stating the bleedin' obvious but there's only ten days of the transfer window to go even if he went tomorrow. If he were to be sold at the last minute and a crappy last minute replacement is brought in, possibly on loan, I think we go down. We couldn't find an adequate Armstrong replacement with an entire month left of the window this time last year, why would it be any easier this time round?

Phew, what a relief, that's him staying then! In all seriousness though, what makes you think that?

I agree, this notion that you have to wait until the end of every window to get the right sort of quality in is absolute tosh imo. I would say in general that the most sought after players go first, at whatever level you're at. The closer you get to the end of the window (also in general) you tend to be left with players the selling Clubs want rid of for whatever reason. Or, if it's someone they don't really want to sell, they have you over a barrel by that point and you have to pay through the nose for the privilege

Difficult to see how things have gone so far South in the space of just 6 days. Prior to that we looked fairly disciplined if not particularly inspired. The last two games show how important Wharton is imo, our best defender by a country mile for me. JDT has been let down massively by Waggott and Broughton, he's inherited a squad that displayed relegation form in the second half of last season minus four of the better performers from the first eleven and numerous squad members and he's had next to no help. The season started on July 30th not August 31st. It also looks like we've had our pants well and truly pulled down by Peterborough on Szmodics to me.

Everton can't afford him I wouldn't have thought.

Well Delap has now pitched up at Stoke on loan so presumably despite the fact many people scoffed at tha possibility at the time, that option would have been there for Mowbray in January had he wanted it.

Final word on this - I've no idea why you are so het up about it. If you'd followed the forum over a period of time you'd realise I'm not particularly in the habit of posting transfer rumours and only post anything very sporadically if I have any info I feel is pertinent and worth sharing. The bottom line is, it would appear the info is either correct or at least has legs. Does it therefore matter that I didn't spell it out in words of one syllable and left people to work it out for themselves? If there was anything in it the news was bound to break sooner rather than later anyway. As a neutral onlooker I'd be more critical if someone was constantly posting stuff which never came to fruition than an occasional titbit which did. For the record - if he does move to Sunderland - something dramatic must have happened to change his mind, I'd heard he was very keen to come here and we've made what I would consider to be a fair bid considering he has 12 months left on his contract. Edit: I always thought the most likely scenario would be him staying at Brighton given the disparity between what we'd offered and the extremely large fee they wanted for him. I didn't think he would end up moving to another Championship side.