If he does make it to the Premier League one day he'll be able to wave at us yo-yoing between the Championship and League 1 with Evans and Smallwood in midfield.

At the moment it feels like Palmer might be sent back or recalled in January and anyone else who comes in would have to watch from the bench as the team of Raya Nyambe Mulgrew Lenihan Williams Reed (out of position) Smallwood Evans Bennett (or Conway) Dack and Graham plod on until the end of the season irrespective of form or results. Thank god for the momentum created by winning promotion last season. It carried us along early on and we should have enough points in the Bank to survive. Things are starting to remind me of the relegation season though. TM came in and steadied the ship and we fleetingly got our head above water. Then we went much too negative and were trying to nick a result here and there and went on a seven game winless run when victories were required. With two games to go we had no option but to be more adventurous and won them both but by then it was too late and we went down on goal difference. I get the impression TM would stick with his "favourites" too long as well. Luckily we should be ok this season.

Only one person to blame if that is indeed the case. The manager for agreeing to pay a huge fee for him, thereby presumably leading him to believe he would be a key player for us this year, then fteezing him out by refusing to hand him a League start, then when he does get an occssional few minutes, playing him out of position.

Thanks. Normally I'd say two of our main failings are we don't press but sit off and when we have the ball we indulge in too much sideways and backwards passing but it seems from what everyone says the overall performance wasnt that bad.

Thanks. The stats also say we only had 39% possession but I'll believe you!

Ended up missing today's game but the bbc live stats say they had 2 goals ruled out and we only had one shot on target so we can't have had them under that much pressure? Our home form has been terrible. Re: Palmer met him after the disabled supporters do (nice lad) and he said his best position was as a number ten behind the striker. So bearing in mind we already had Dack it strikes me as either poor scouting or he was signed as insurance in case Dack was sold. Strap yourselves in. Could be a bumpy second half to the season.

That was my thought when I first heard the stuff about aiming for gradual improvement and being on a slow burn long term plan etc. Improving slowly sounds all right in theory but only works if hardly anyone else is improving at all. I'm not sure how you can plan to improve gradually, if everyone is improving faster than you are then the reality is you're moving backwards. You can't control what happens elsewhere but imo you have to try and improve as much as you possibly can at any given point and hope that that takes you forward overall. Nor can you overlook windows of opportunity just because you're doing a bit better than you thought and they don't fit in with your original strategy - they may never come round again , or at least not for a very long time. On the other hand, if you're promoting the idea of a long term plan, you can get away with all manner of mediocre performance in the meantime if you can convince everyone it's all part of some grander long term design and everything's on track etc. Then 5 years on you realise you're no better off after all except in our case we'd have added another 100m to the overall debt.

Did TM not go on record as saying he was having to calm the owners' expectations down?

If we're giving him a contract he can prove his fitness with us. Anything else is completely pointless.

Tend to agree Stuart, and probably shows why TM isn't the man to take us forward in the long term. What's all this rubbish about trying to "finish near the top end of the table"? That is so vague it could cover anything from doing well down to aspiring to finish somewhere near 12th. A manager with real ambition would be knocking the owners door down right now demanding the signings that would give us a chance of sneaking into the play offs given whilst we still have a mathematical chance of same and try and ensure against plummeting down the table in the second half of the season which we could well do if we continue our recent run of form of five points from the last five games. There's no guarantees in anything of course. But you have to try. This might be the closest we get to the playoffs for quite a long time. That said TM hasn't helped his cause by agreeing to spend £7m on a player he won't start.

Signing Chapman then immediately loaning him out again would be absolute madness and completely pointless. Signing him and then immediately putting him in the team, now that would be a major step forward, bearing in mind we are desperately short of pace and width. Gallagher - meh. Ordinary at best.

I would be far more reassured if he was the manager's choice but he deliberately hasn't been handing him a start because we have to pay a hefty premium every time he starts prior to signing permanently. .......But the plan is to unleash him all guns blazing in January. Somehow I cant see that being the case though. I'm not at all easy with the suggestion that players are being brought to the Club not exactly completelyagainst the manager's wishes but who wouldn't be his own preferred choice.

Ah, so now we're straying into "not the manager's choice" territory for which I've been branded a conspiracy theorist whenever I've put it forward as a possible reason why he wasn't getting a chance. I have to agree with blueboy and blue bruce on this though, if he does flop we'll get very little back and his value isn't going to increase by sitting on the bench alone.

So even by your own estimate, for the overall cost of Brereton, we could hypothetically have spent about £4m on an established player who was on around 25k p.w. I have no objection in principle to either sort of deal but if we'd gone down the established player sort of route and he hadn't started a game either, he'd have been a complete waste of money as well. I really don't know what the argument is here. People are trying to defend the indefensible and I'm not having a pop at the player, he hasn't had a chance and we don't know if he's any good or not. I'm talking about making a major outlay by our standards and then not using the player.

Thank you Stuart.

Oh ok. Not certain if I get it even after that's been explained but I'll go with it. Don't rely too much on rubbish posted on random websites or you could find yourself in a sticky situation.

Who?

Imo Neither Bennett nor Evans are good enough if we were to entertain serious hopes of promotion imo.

Why would we want to anyway? He'll never be out of the treatment room. Would be a massive risk for Lambert to gamble Ipswich's Championship life on Rudy's glass knees.

Yes. I have been told that the Club got him out of the trouble he was in (which was pretty serious) and this led me to hope that he was one the Club had high hopes for as I think he looks a very handy player. However since then I believe he may have strayed off the straight and narrow again and whilst I don't think he's currently in the same sort of difficulty he was originally it would appear he's fallen out of favour.

Im not suggesting bringing in players at the end of their careers with no resale value but you'd still have a potential for profit by bringing in a player of age 23 say. But don't pay £7m for a player then don't play him. I'm not even opposed in principle to the BB deal. I just don't understand why the manager won't give him a chance and he's never going to improve getting 15 mins now and then out of position.

As I've said before, it will all depend on whether there is a release clause in his latest contract. If there is and there is sufficient interest then it's out of our hands to a large extent. Conversely if there isn't, then with him just having signed a new deal the ball's in our Court and we can either refuse to contemplate a sale or demand something completely ridiculous for him. Personally I would say selling him voluntarily in January would be fairly suicidal. Maybe a sale in the summer would give us slightly more chance to try and make alternative plans. In my opinion you never prosper selling your best players though. You have to keep hold of them and build round them.

That's some fairly creative excuse making to justify 7m being spent on a guy to whom we won't hand a start. Yes the fee for BB will probably not be payable up front and will be spread over the life of the contract but so would be the fee for any other player! This assumption that he will be on relatively small wages is purely that, an assumption, and could be completely incorrect. In any case even if he was only on 10k p.w. as opposed to our top earners on 25k p.w. it would take nine or ten years to recoup the fee back in wage savings. I don't think either you can ever say that money spent on players who would go straight into the team and improve it would be dead or "sunk" money. If you take that view there's no point ever starting to try to improve whereas in reality it should be a continual process even if you've just won the League.

Why would Burnley offload him?

Not sure we could have afforded to pay big bonuses back then and if you're going to put yourself out of a job by being replaced with someone better..... Also from the Club's point of view there was no such thing as TV place/ money back then so the only incentive for going up was increased revenue from attendance and sponsorship balanced against having to replace practically an entire team to have a chance at survival.