You beat me to it there Mercer. An essential part of player trading is moving players on who are no longer part of your plans. We'd have a damn sight better chance of staying within FFP if the manager hadn't wasted most of our budget two seasons running on expensive flops, not brought in other players who he then barely used once they arrived, not handed out new long term deals to players who were never that good or getting past it or both and not treated the football Club like a social Club where the players had the option whether they wanted to stay or leave regardless of whether they are in the manager's plans.

Sky still going big on the King story. Either they aren't aware of Bournemouth's response or are trying to con viewers into thinking there's actually something happening on deadline day.

There has to be a chance now that Dack will walk on a free six months after returning from injury. Wonder whose bright idea it was to only give him a deal until the end of next season?

Not much use if we've any genuine designs on the play offs.

Bournemouth have apparently tweeted that Man Ure have ended their pursuit of King. Hardly surprising given they were asking £50m. Even if we did get a fortuitous £10m windfall out of this at some point in the future, would you want Mowbray spending it?

Given the quality or lack thereof of Walton and Leutwiler Id say that's a strange move. Bit like loaning out Wharton and Magloire when we were already short on centre halves.

He's probably going to have to starve on the basis the actual price of the deal is £17.99.

Go on on then I'll provide the punchline........ It's never deterred you in the past! ?

Atsu is presumably a last minute panic idea having as usual drawn a blank elsewhere all month on our main targets.

You'd have thought they were a bit long in the tooth to be arguing about who sat at the back! If only they got as wound up on the pitch with each other when someone made a mistake which led to a goal!

I can see both sides of the argument on this. You're right with what you say above but at the same time he wasn't particularly good either. That said, I wouldn't have said he was particularly any worse than other dollopers we've had like Lowe and Evans. Maybe Evans isn't "Lowe Mark 2" maybe the latter 2 are "Andrews Marks 2 and 3" !

There's a surprise. Initial reaction from Toon fans on Twitter seems to be that they're disappointed they haven't been able to offload him.

To be fair you did claim last night that the deal that we appear to have been blown out of the water on was a virtual certainty to happen and that it was just a case of dotting the i's and crossing the t's etc. Other than that both of you should probsbly stop willy waving at each other or get a room. You're entitled to post info if you wish and he's equally entitled to believe it or not. For my own part I find it hard to give much credence to a rumour where no names or specifics are given but there you go, I'm sure most people appreciated the info.

Funny, your reading of that. Can't comment on this player as I know nothing about him, I take that to mean it's a " no go" because as usual we're not in the ball park on financial terms. Great this tyre kicking lark. We can spend all month sniffing round quality players trying to make it look like we're doing something and by 11 p.m.tonight won't have spent a bean! Lovely!

'''We're just looking to add some depth.......we're Not looking to replace anyone in our team". And that ladies and gentlemen is why imo Mowbray needs to be replaced yesterday and why we would never challenge if he was here for a hundred years. He has no interest whatsoever in trying to improve. Condemned out of his own mouth. How can any owner or Chief Executive read that and think he is the right man for the job? And as a side note for God's sake don't admit in public you're a poor negotiator, I think we've all sussed that out after three, soon to be four, fairly disastrous transfer windows anyway but by saying that you're just throwing out an open invitation for people to try and mess you about in future. Ironcally I don't think the problem is what Mowbray thinks it is. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a valuation and sticking to it, there's no skill in just going back time after time until you end up paying the original asking price, the skill is in assessing what you think the other side will accept and pitching your offer slightly lowerbut close enough to tempt them into doing a deal. Our problem seems to be we have no realistic idea of what players are worth in the current market, put completely unrealistic offers in at the start of each window then wonder why no-one is getting back to us. And then panic and either miss out or overpay for someone else altogether at the last minute.

I'm going up to this one, not because I thought there'd be anything riding on the game when I booked the trip but because I have a couple of friends from Middlesbrough I met on holiday a couple of years ago and I was originally more going up for the night out and take in the game as an incidental. Little bit more riding on it now after the two wins. Hope we deliver unlike the corresponding fixture last year when Boro had a man sent off mid way through the first half and we went 1-0 up from the resulting free kick but still only came away with a draw despite playing ten men for over an hour.

I literally have never heard of the player having the option to cut the loan deal short before, it's usually an agreement until either Jan 1st or the end of the season binding on all parties with the parent Club having power of recall if a problem arises that can't be sorted out between the Club's. Beyond amateurish otherwise as you can never know what your real budget for the season is if players can terminate loan deals of their own accord at the drop of a hat.

If it was my money I wouldn't give him another penny. I think the problem apart from the complete ineptitude of him Waggott and Venus in the transfer market lies as much in his reluctance to jettison players who need offloading. For example, Graham who unsurprisingly has come to the end must be one of our top earners. He should never have been given a new contract in the first place but certainly when it became obvious that we had a major issue with Brereton and Gallagher (BAG) we should have been making arrangements to offload Graham one way or another to free up room on the wage bill and bring in a replacement. Instead I expect he'll shuffle on until the end of the season contributing next to nothing and maybe even next as wel until his contract expires. I'd say similar about Evans pre injury and Bennett. Needed offloading but staples in Tone's world. Then chuck in players that he brings in then chooses to more or less ignore like Davenport Palmer and Chapman (Not forgetting Brereton) and Gladwin who he handed a contract to because he felt sorry for him and it's not hard to see how it's difficult to bring players in because the wage bill is bursting to the seams.

We did. The fee was £1.75m rising to £3m with add ons.

With all due respect, if the Club's can't agree the penalty clauses if said player doesn't play enough games and Mowbray isn't willing to budge then how can the deal be sorted? Also it's somewhat concerning that this is an issue at all. If it was a player who was coming in to go straight into the side then we could agree to any penalty clauses we wanted as it would never become relevant. Sounds like someone who quite possibly won't be playing therefore another potentially pointless signing like Chapman.

Unbelievable. So our view on Walton (and rightly so) is that he's not good enough to be our long term keeper but for some unknown reason we don't feel any need to send him back early this season. Are we deliberately trying to sabotage the rest of the campaign then?

Finlay has it about right.

Apparently we're interested in a 23 year old left back who plays for Gillingham Connor Ogilvie. Millwall, Middlesbrough and one other Club the source of info couldn't remember also interested.

Unless I've missed part of the conversation, why does that have to be us? Could be anyone of a number of Clubs!

We tend to go on wildly contrasting runs of form under Mowbray, four losses followed by four wins followed by five defeats etc so the 12 game stat probably just caught our last two wins and the four wins before the extended winless sequence. If you went back eighteen games it would probably look less impressive but then if you go back twelve or eighteen games it becomes more of a mini League table than a form table demonstrating current form. Totally agree with the point about consistency. You don't have to be world beaters in the Championship, you just have to grind it out slightly more consistently Saturday - Tuesday - Saturday than everyone else.