Yes, fair enough, was talking domestically really. At his peak I thought Buffon looked a bit like the great keepers of yesteryear. So good at narrowing his angles he looked bigger than he actually was and you wondered if there was any way you could actually squeeze the ball past him.

Really upset by this news, just as I was as a kid when he lost an eye in a car crash which prematurely ended his career.... hero to a generation. Rodney Marsh was on the radio today and said that when he was called up for England he was told he was sharing a room with Banks and he was terrified at the prospect of rooming with such a legend. Banks' first words to him: "Cup of tea?". Different gravy. As a side note I don't think there are any great keepers about these days. They're all expected to be Lionel Messi with the ball at their feet but they can barely stop a shot or catch the ball. To think Joe Hart wore the same shirt as Banks. The best of a bad bunch these days is De Gea but none of them are fit to lace the boots of Banks, Shilton, Jennings (or Sir Roger Jones). I'd say the last two great modern keepers were Schmeicel and Friedel. Rant over. RIP Gordon.

How did we exploit him? We rescued him off the managerial scrapheap, got him back on the managerial merry go round, and allowed him (extremely unusually) to insert a get out clause in his contract which he exercised. He didn't pull up any trees while he was here, didn't sort out the contracts of anyone who needed sorting out, signed a lot of rubbish on loan, and sold our most valuable player on the last day of the transfer window before walking out leaving us at the end of the season without a single senior striker on the books. You could possibly say he'd been unlucky and blame it on our owners if he'd been a raging success everywhere else he'd been since but if anything it's been more of the same or even worse.

I can't recall PL specifically saying he was disappointed with the summer budget but if you can find a link to the contrary fair enough. In fact I've got it in the back of my head that PL said somewhere that when he met with Pasha they never even got as far as discussing budgets etc. Edit: Also it appears PL was no fan of Rhodes at all and the money was made available for Coyle to make Graham permanent so there's nothing there to suggest he should walk out on our account.

There's no evidence whatsoever anyone lied to anyone else about the funding that might or might not have been available when Lambert was here is there? That was an assumption people seemed to make when he walked out. After he triggered his get out clause, (which we previously knew nothing about) he had nothing but good things to say about everyone at the Club.

Darren Bent was interviewed on Talksport last night (former Ipswich player) and was full square behind Lambert as well saying he needed to rebuild the side with players who had the same commitment as him. Lambert is either one of the biggest confidence tricksters the game has seen or the unluckiest man ever with his choice of Clubs. My money's on the former.

As others have said, fantastic picture of Fred and the old Riverside. I'd wager the original was snapped by Wally Talbot. What a fantastic strip that is as well. We could do a lot worse than that now as opposed to some of the monstrosities we've been subjected to including this season's version. Proper shade of blue that.

Wonder if Lambert will stick with them and attempt to see the job through when they go down or carefully stage manage his departure by placing strategically timed soundbites in the local press about "This Club has to decide where it wants to go" to curry favour with the fans before walking out?

Completely agree. Even at 75% fitness Dack is still arguably our best player and the one most likely to produce a moment of magic and change the course of a game. For that reason I would generally be loath to bring him off unless he has a limb hanging off. However whilst he is a thick set lad I've thought he's looked a little bit overweight and a little bit sub par since Preston away. I remember back to the start of last season in League 1 when we were struggling and Dack wasn't playing. Then he came in and even though results didn't pick up immediately he carried the team with his energy and enthusiasm. He was here there and everywhere, rattling into tackles and giving opposition players a dig. A right tenacious little bugger. He doesn't seem to quite have those levels of fitness and tenacity this season unless he's been told to modify his game for the higher division.

Yep, summer transfer window is massive. If we're unable to secure Reed and Rodwell permanently the squad will look a bit desperate and even if we are able arguably we'll still have to cram two windows worth of business into one.

Those were my thoughts as well jim. In the Henry Winter article TM went on about the demands of being a football manager and how he wished he could spend more time with his family but that he wanted to give his family a good standard of living and put his son through Uni etc. If he manages to lower expectations and convince everyone there is a slow burn long term plan etc then there is a better chance he will make it to the end of his contract or even beyond which would no doubt be mission accomplished as far as securing his family's future is concerned. If he starts setting ambitious targets and fails to meet them then there's a greater risk of his employment being terminated early.

Slightly before my time on the pitch but met him in relatively recent years and he was a lovely bloke. RIP Fred.

Yes. 2-3 proven performers should have come in last summer and the same again this summer. Mowbray has to get far more ruthless. In descending order Conway Williams Graham and Bennett need the chop and Evans and Smallwood aren't good enough if we want to be threatning the play off positions.

Missed the game today but what a surprise. Unbelievable decision to drop Bell for Williams. Another example of just giving one of the old faithfuls a game to keep them happy. Wasted season, we need to completely rebuild the starting eleven in the summer if we're to be competitive in the top half next season imo.

He just wants to keep things ticking over.

Not really relevant, if we're going down that road we were top of the table on alphabetical order at half time on the opening day of the season as well! Point taken about it looking likely to be a secure finishing position in the League. For me though it's been two fairly disappointing transfer windows and we seem to have a fairly odd attitude towards incomings in that they're only here to help the existing players and fill out the squad or sit on the bench. If there's no change to that attitude then to me we start again in the summer in much the same position as when we were promoted and with no real progress having been made.

When was that? Apologies if I missed it I genuinely thought we hadn't been in it at any meaningful stage.

Be nice to see Kasey Palmer get 90 mins.

Tommy Briggs, Dunn, Speedie, Jansen. If managers are eligible as well, King Kenny.

Only a bit of fun as they were all fantastic players but I'd have put Parkes and Duff in before Friedel. Obviously them Hendry and Tugay should be amongst the next ones in along with Sir Roger Jones and Noel Brotherston. Cole for scoring the winner in a League Cup final? Howard Kendall? Plenty of players from the sixties worthy of inclusion as well. Nice idea.

We're not really knocking on the door of the promotion slots though are we? We've never been in the top 6 at any point and whilst that's not altogether surprising for this season I'm not sure I see us ever really challenging under TM iat any point n the future. You say there's evidence of a plan, I don't see it, the only concern seems to be trying not to upset the players already on the books, there doesn't seem to be any real desire to improve the team whatsoever.

Not sure why you have to brand anyone who has a different opinion to yourself as "ignorant" nor do you have a crystal ball as to what might happen in the future so both of us are second guessing how things will pan out. If TM doesn't change his ways then one of us may well be proven correct with hindsight. What have Wigan got to do with anything? Completely irrelevant. I'm talking about the effect promotion had on US. I haven't checked the points to games ratio since Preston away but I wouldn't imagine it makes particularly encouraging reading for next season.

You have an astonishingly rose tinted perspective on things. imo Graham is all but finished and even if he wasn't it isn't exactly desirable for your game plan to consist of lumping a long ball up to a (near) 34 year old. Bennett has never been any good for us during his time at the Club in any position other than a briefly very effective spell in League 1 in central midfield. Funnily enough the central midfield position seems to be the only position TM won't play him in and as a result we have to watch him labouring woefully in every other area of the pitch. But still he's great, because he gives the crowd a massive fist bump after the match if we win so let's forget his deficiencies on the pitch eh? Evans had a great game against Hull but you can count the number of good games he's had on one hand since his bad injury when Bowyer was here. Terrible player. Lowe Mark 2 Conway, completely past it, as Tom said last night one good game in the last two and a half seasons. Should never have been handed a new deal. My overall view is that the momentum derived from winning promotion last season which rolled overvinto a solid start this campaign will see us safe but if the manager doesn't cut out the old pals act and get a lot more ruthless then there's only one way we're going over the next one - two seaons and it certainly isn't up

So, if you are right, when do we start trying to add those 4-5 players? Surely it's unrealistic to think we can do it all in one window in one fell swoop? Should be an ongoing process which seemingly hasn't yet started, furthermore the manager doesn't appear to view embarking on the task as a matter of any particular urgency

Cracking post. Not sure we're a bigger Club than Norwich but we have richer owners. Other than that you've mirrored many of my thoughts exactly. (Theme from The Italian Job comes on) "We are the self preservation society."