Yes, a quality keeper is our top priority, I'd be reasonably happy if there were no major sales and we only brought in a keeper who was actually half decent.

Wasn't the owners fault Mowbray fell out with and scapegoated Raya, sold him for peanuts, wasted the proceeds on an abysmal forward, then found securing a permanent replacement was going to be a lot more difficult than he had anticipated!

You don't have to confirm or deny but I'd me more inclined to think that if such an offer has been received it would be more likely to be someone trying to nick Dack on the cheap due to his injury.

Hypothetically I'd say £10m was a very reasonable offer for Armstrong, he's a fairly in and out player who tends not to influence games on an off day. A fully fit Dack would be a different matter, I'd value him at at least £20m. That doesn't alter the fact that as things stand we'd be absolutely goosed if either were sold and in footballing terms they shouldn't be sold. You wouldn't trust the manager to reinvest the proceeds wisely and you'd suspect that in Armstrong's case he'd go on to do even better under another manager.

One of my favourite players in my early days of watching the Club. Wonderfully gifted player even if he often had to swivel round 180 degrees to get the ball onto his favoured foot. I used to have a picture on my bedroom wall of him dribbling with the ball and an opposition player on his knees in the background looking in wonderment at how Meccy had managed to take it round him. Also remember seeing us playing Chelsea in the Championship c1976 against an 18 year old Ray "Butch" Wilkins and thinking how I'd much rather have Metcalfe. Of course in recent years you'd be more likely to see him out and about locally enjoying a few beers and laughs with the likes of David Bradford who used to run Brownhill Post Office. You would never get that today with today's multimillionaire players who aren't actually fit to place his boots. RIP Stuart.

No potential transfer news then?

31 I think, quite a bit younger. Have to admit we have far more pressing priorities though.

We "improved" by three points yes. One result, either way, hardly evidence of massive improvement. Don't know what you want me to say to that really, even if a similar marginal rate of improvement in the points tally could be guaranteed each season it would take another four or five seasons before we even broke into the play offs.

Must be nothing going on transfer wise if we're reduced to bickering about the merits or otherwise of the owners for the gazillionth time. Apologies if this has already been discussed but would Chris Martin who has been released by Derby be any good for us? Or is he out of our League wages wise/ the striking equivalent of Bradley Johnson here for one last pay day/not someone we need with Dack/Armstrong/ Brereton/ Gallagher already on the books?

I'm not completely against you on the ownership issue but on the pitch we aren't "steadily improving" though. A negligible increase in the points tally is being used to mask the glaring deficiencies appearing in the squad. We finished nowhere the first season back after promotion from League 1 and we finished nowhere last season. Surely after first season consolidation you'd expect a significant improvement as a matter of course? We didn't see that, we just saw the same disappointing level of performance as the season before which is deeply dispiriting.

Do stop talking rubbish. If you're going to start quoting random examples which suit your argument, how about Ollie Watkins £1.8m 25 goals? Personally I think Gallagher is absolutely useless but whether I'm right or wrong he only scored 4 goals this season which is completely unacceptable by any yardstick and whether or not he was in his preferred position centrally or utilised more from a wider position.

That's the feeling I'm getting in my water as well, albeit with absolutely nothing definitive to back it up. Hope I'm completely wrong.

I posted last night what I would have done, it seems extremely obvious to me - get people signed up on direct debit at a lower rate commensurate with watching the early part of the season on I follow (say half the rate of a normal season ticket) and adjust the payments back to a normal rate once fans are allowed back in the ground. We're probably one of a relatively small number of Clubs who shouldn't have to worry too much in the sense that more or less everyone who wants a ST should still be able to get one even with restricted capacity so I really can't see why we haven't rolled out some sort of scheme. It would have provided an element of cashflow and I think there is a real danger the longer people go without hearing anything , they'll lose interest and not bother renewing. Even if you signed people up for a pound a month initially while nothing is happening, they're committed for later on when things get back to near normality and have to take positive action to cancel if they're not happy with the price or what's on offer. Even that would be better than doing nothing and leaving things up in the air indefinitely wondering whether anyone will eventually come back.

Yes, we're so much better off with no-one.

You must have read that differently to me then 1864, I read it as refunds were not an option and the only way you would be able to get any satisfaction would be in the way of some form of credit note against next season. If we ever decide what we're doing for next season that is. It would be interesting if someone pressed it and said they want a refund now for last season and are not interested at this point in a credit note against next season, they will make their purchase decision for next season from scratch then. And see what the Club say.

Hope your optimism is well placed chaddy.

Extremely worrying. Looks like we can't afford refunds for people that want them and are just robbing people off with various excuses. So to summarise: - According to the manager, no news or at least no clarity on a budget for next season - Season ticket holders who want them can't have relatively small refunds for the latter part of last season - We can't be bothered signing anyone up for some sort of season ticket package for next season - As of the end of July the owners stopped topping up the wages of furloughed employees Hmm..... it's not looking too good imo.

Errrr..... what signings are these exactly?

I'd rather see our own player, Wharton, given a chance here rather than be used as a make weight in a deal without ever seeing the light of day here Jack O Connell style.

Seems odd to me that we would wish to pay for this guy without presumably giving his partner Wharton a shot for free.

Disagree strongly, ability not age is the key. Walton was 24 and should have been plenty old enough but turned out to be the worst keeper I've ever seen. Joe Hart is 33 and has bags of "experience" but would just be an older and way more expensive version of Walton. Jason Steele also had plenty of "experience" by the time he arrived here but on the whole he was similarly useless. We don't want another crap keeper purely on the basis they're "experienced".

A couple of weeks ago I thought it was possibly fair enough for the Club to sit back and see which way the wind was blowing but the problem as I see it is that with the Government now bottling it on a daily basis and reversing the easing of lockdown restrictions at the drop of a hat on a fairly random and arbitrary basis, it might not become clear what the situation is until a few days before the season starts. By that point, it will be far too late to start selling packages from scratch imo. What we should have done is made a proactive decision and offered cheaper renewals priced on the basis either the entire season would be BCD and available on I player again or on the basis that a percentage would be BCD. So for example if the price of a "normal" season ticket is £45 p.m. then the price of an I follow ST could be £22.50 p.m. and renewals could be taken at the lower rate initially and amended upwards once ST holders are allowed back in grounds. At least this way the Club would have had some cashflow, and the majority of the people who wanted to renew would have been signed up in good time and we wouldn't have been scrabbling about potentially having to sign up 8500 people in a few days. It would surely be the easiest thing in the world to amend people's direct debits whenever fans were going to be allowed in and to increase the monthly payments accordingly. It's at times like this that you see what people are made of and not surprisingly I think with Waggott we're being left feeling extremely underwhelmed. Anyone could do nothing and not make a decision, and not need to be paid £300k p.a. not to do it!

Been said before but they picked Mowbray who apparently you're happy with so that rather defeats your argument.

It should be blatantly obvious to anyone that we'll never get promoted from the Championship under Mowbray and probably won't even seriously challenge for the play offs so with that in mind I'd rather give Damien Johnson a chance to see what he can do rather than do nothing and stick with Mowbray who we know won't get us anywhere. If Johnson fails, so be it, we'd have to get a more experienced man, in but at least we tried something as opposed to doing nothing and resigning ourself to failure season after season.

I think Steele is a bit better than Walton but with either of them more or less every time the opposition attempt a shot on target it results in a goal.