Amen to that.

Calm down dear. Either way it's not in our overall interests to sell imo with such a penal sell on clause.

No guarantee whatsoever we'd finish as "high" as 15th without him though. Far more likely we'd be in a relegation battle.

Thanks.

Has Mowbray been spotted yet then this pre-season? Is he up in Scotland with the squad?

Not my money but absolutely. If we accepted a bid of £10m what would that be clear to us? 60% of any profit over £1.75m according to the LT so 60% of £8.25m I.e. £6.3m. Not worth it. The only way I would contemplate a sale is if we were getting at least £10m clear which would require a bid of c £20m AND we had targeted someone within our budget to replace him on a PERMANENT basis. The notion that AA should be replaced by someone coming in on loan for a year is absolutely ludicrous and is something else Waggott and Mowbray shouldn't be allowed to get away with if they're here that long. (like Brockhall)

No way whatsoever the owners will let AA go for £10m imo. If Clubs don't get a bit more realistic with their valuations he might not be going anywhere.

We haven't had definite confirmation the registration embargo has been lifted and that we can sign players yet have we? Unless I've missed it.

Might think Mowbray's not going to be here......

Or replaced Allardyce with someone better.

Well we might be able to if Mowbray didn't have the final say and Venus wasn't the one responsible for trying to get the actual deals over the line.

No, that's what Tom was alluding to. He'll be creaming his pants at the prospect of Mowbray wasting any available money on his deadbeat clients once again. He may yet turn out to be disappointed.............

Don't worry, Joe will be along to tell us how crap he is any minute now!

What a great post Ben. All we had to do a year or two ago was prioritise our key players and look after the futures of the players you would at that point have regarded as our "crown jewels" Raya, Nyambe, Lenihan, Travis, Dack and Armstrong. Raya was ostracised and was allowed to leave for peanuts, the same will probably happen to Nyambe, Dack had a new contract chucked at him when it wasn't clear whether or not he would return the same player from the first injury, and Armstrong has been allowed to get to the position where he will either leave for a relative pittance (of which 40% goes to Newcastle anyway) or for nothing when his contract expires. Meanwhile there appears to be plenty of money to pay Mulgrew to play for another Club, Ayala to sit in the treatment room, to pay the lad who got injured to use our facilities, to pay Sam Hart for another few months not to play and to pay Stewie for another season to do nothing. It's so negligent it could make you weep.

I'd want money back for Brereton minimum. I've always said I can see a hint of a player trying to emerge with him and I think he would thrive under a different manager. Gallagher's a different story. I'd snap anyone's hand off if they offered around half of the £5m we paid for him.

Absolutely spot on. As for who is having their pants pulled down well it's always the owners by the succession of chancers they've given contracts to to run the Club on their behalf over the last ten years. It isn't these people's own money they're pissing up the wall, they always get paid and/or do very nicely out of it no matter what. Before Gav starts, ultimate responsibility lies with the owners of course because it's their name over the door. Wouldn't it be nice though for us, and for them, if just for once someone was not trying to feather their own nest at the Club's expense?

It means the manager doesn't fancy them. It doesn't necessarily mean they couldn't do a job. The manager (unsurprisingly) seemingly didn't fancy Wharton either until he had absolutely no choice but to press him into action due to injury.

That would be fantastic news. Lenihan and Wharton looked by far our best Pairing last season imo.

You could have used that argument against Jack 0 Connell who never got a minute for us and ended up a Championship stalwart for Sheff Utd. Ditto Wharton who was about to be offloaded before being drafted in through necessity due to injury and excelled.

Hughes

I agree, but as has always been the case under Mowbray, we need more quality in the first eleven, two or three signings who'll go straight in and make a difference. We don't want to be replacing the dross that's left with a different set of dross and more squad fillers. Edit: And that's assuming we don't lose Armstrong or Nyambe. Wish someone would give us our money back for Gallagher.

I'd say a new manager was more important in that respect. To play devil's advocate none of the players who have departed so far will be a massive loss, however if we lose the likes of Nyambe (especially) and Rothwell who the Club have failed to tie down on long term deals you'd imagine that would start to be more of a problem and if we cave in and let Armstrong go on the cheap at the last minute then start scrapping round for a replacement then we really will be be struggling.

Sides in the past that have been successful have always managed to do this and it's even more important now that the EU situation has put foreign players out of reach for all but the bigger Clubs of which we are not currently one. There was talk a while ago of slashing the amount of players PL Clubs could have out on loan as well. When's that coming into effect?

Edit: sorry double post Internet connection playing up.

50% great is a bit of a push. Kaminsky very good, Pears a shocker, the Greek lad, is he still alive? Ayala the new Mulgrew, scandalous, Branthwaite really poor, Taylor Bellis good. Douglas woeful, Trybull ditto and we didn't need another player of his type anyway. Elliott very good overall. I make that three out of nine unless I've missed anyone else out. Not a good strike rate at all and the net result from 10th to 15th.