We've spent around £2.5m so far. £1.75m on Armstrong up front and small fees for Rothwell and Davenport. I wasn't sure we were going to bring in Armstrong granted but at the start of the summer I'd have said we probably needed to lay out about £6m primarily in the forward and wide positions to make us competitive. Maybe we will by 5p.m. tomorrow.

Just on the midfield, if we were thinking of maybe playing a 3-5-2 then arguably we'd have Smallwood, Evans, Whittingham, Rothwell, Davenport, Palmer, Bennett, Conway, Bell, Travis, Tomlinson, Gladwin Hart and any new signings competing for a midfield slot! Way overstocked in that area already. Whether the quality is there is another matter entirely and we'll only find that out as the season unfolds.

Ooo you bitch...... Perhaps we should revisit this conversation when we've spent another £5m or so!

Don't really understand the sudden love in for Gallagher tbh. He's not good enough imo, you know what You're going to get off him, plenty of honest endeavour but no real presence, either in the air or as a target man, plenty of missed chances and a modest return of around 5 -10 League goals. I d hope we had someone better in our sights.

You're easily pleased. My ideal window would be bringing in Maguire, De Bruyne, Salah and Lukaku on top of what we've already got. Still, there's always the January window......

Why do we need a keeper?

We also relied heavily on loan signings the last time we were in the Championship and that resulted in relegation irrespective of who the manager was.

Yes, absolutely gutted. Obviously. £4.5 - £5.5m to go!

WhiIst I think we desperately need a striker. I'd be over the moon if Chapman came in permanently. For me we have to strike and get him on the cheap whilst there are still one or two question marks about him. A good season or two and he'd be completely out of our range.

Abso-bleedin-lutely! Cue however a load of people saying that if we have 4m to spend on Freeman that must mean we have 18m available to spend on a striker. Lol.

From a personal point of view, and I might be being completely old fashioned and out of touch here, but I want to see our "own" players turning out for us, I Don't really want to see a revolving door policy of half the side being made up of a different set of toan players from other Clubs notionally wearing the blue and white halves every twelve months. Then from an objective point of view I think there are a number of drawbacks of over-reliance on loan players: 1)When things aren't going well, will they be as committed as permanent signings? 2) As a rule of thumb Clubs Don't let their best players out on Loan. You're generally looking at players Clubs Don't want or young lads from Prem. Clubs with no first team experience who may not even make it at senior level. 3) When you sign players on loan, are you signing the players you really want in the positions you actually want or merely padding out the squad because said player is available and It's a cheaper alternative to paying fees etc 4) Loans Don't add value to the squad etc etc

That went well didn't it......

Not sure what the problem is with the window finishing early, everyone knew when the window closed so there's absoluteiy no excuse to be scurrying about at the last minute. If it closed on 31st of August as normal Clubs would still be panicking at the last minute having tried and failed to play silly buggers with each other. I'd go a bit further and close the window before the season starts so that anyone signed is eligible to play in the opening game. It doesn't matter if the window in Europe closes later, just Don't sell anyone after a certain point. As for us, we'll have to wait and see if anything happens tomorrow but for me it's a pretty disappointing window if we Don't get at least one wide man and one striker in as we will have overloaded with players in what I regarded as non priority positions and not really addressed the priority areas wide and up front.

I think if you provide the outline of a deal in principle you can submit the formal paperwork after the deadline. Not sure at all why we need another midfielder, if this guy came in we'd have ten players Trapp, Palmer, Rothwell Davenport, Smallwood, Evans, Bennett, Travis Conway and Tomlinson vyying for the midfield slots. Too much quantity not enough quality. Meanwhile at least one genuine wide man and another striker still urgently required.

They could do a lot worse imo and I very much hope they do.

Ta. I stopped reading it when it said we "could" be set to rival Celtic etc etc.

Were we ever actually interested in him or as with Madison was it a case of someone on here saying "I like him" and the rumour snowballing And gaining momentum from there?

I'd hope It's set at £15m plus to tbh.

We don't know if Dack's new contract contains a release clause and if it does what level it is set at. If there is one and a top Premier League side came in for him and met it matters would be largely out of our hands. If there isn't one then apart from the fact we would probably go down if we sold Dack it would be very short sighted to sell him now as if he shines and also has another 20 + goals season he is suddenly elevated into £15m plus territory.

Like you say bob, we Don't know and until any further info leaks out It's all pure speculation. It still seems strange to me that despite all the crap which has obviously been going on in the background GB was prepared to lead the Club into the first game of the season yet just 48 hours later he obviously felt he had to leave the Club

It's only your opinion and not a matter of fact that the window so far has been "decent". I'd say that very much depends on the impact that Armstrong makes at Championship level. If he fails to make the step up and no-one else comes in I'd hazard a guess we'll probably be looking back at it as a poor window. Conversely if he scores 20 goals I Don't suppose anyone will care if Rothwell Davenport and Palmer don't do anything much. Still three days to go as well so things might look considerably different by tea time Thursday.

Very strange timing. If GB was that disenchanted/worn out by it all that he felt he had to leave you'd expect him to do it at least a month before the season started rather than overseeing the first game then leaving.

Well, from TM's own comments last week it appears we've possibly missed out on our main targets and had to resort to one of our back up targets. Not sure how that qualifies as "organised" or "ambitious". In isolation though I'm quite pleased with the Armstrong signing, I think TM's comments about him were somewhat unfair. I'd have preferred it if he was coming in as the second striker signing as it were but I Don't necessarily see him as an inferior option at this level.

Seems a lot more likely we had to completely reassess having drawn a blank imo. Otherwise the players we need, particularly Armstrong would have been here in time for the start of the season and we wouldn't have been scurrying about looking to do panic business in the last few days of the transfer window.

Good signing but not enough in isolation. Still need another striker and one or preferably two wide men as a matter of urgency imo. Plus ideally a back up centre half given we made the pointless decision to loan out Wharton which means we now have to spend money bringing someone else in.