Me too. I fear though "The market has gone silly" is the latter day excuse equivalent to John Williams' hairy old chestnut of "We're keeping our powder dry". Otherwise translated as "We've no money to spend". If that does turn out to be the case though it's really odd that we'd practically be prepared to spend more for a League 1 campaign than one in the Championship. Mind you we have always said about the owners in the past they usually do the exact opposite to what you would expect.

Too right. It is getting really worrying now when TM is reduced to talking about maybe getting one Premier League loanee in to bolster our attacking options. I've just noticed also by chance this morning an online article from the LT dated 28th of June which claimed we were "edging closer" to further signings, (only Rothwell in at that point) that we had bids in but some Clubs were coming back for ridiculous prices for players, and where TM said we could "probably" do something similar to last summers business when we spent 1.3m in fees. Surely no-one, neither TM nor the bean counters, were naive enough to think last season's budget for League 1 would be anything like adequate for the Championship? That said the signs were there right from the start with the retention of Conway (taking the cheap option as opposed to getting someone decent in) and the further acquisition of two young lads for a combined 750k or so between them rather than proven Championship performers coming in. The article of 28/06 also referred to us being after bringing in six players. Long way short of that at present and I don't know how we thought it would be feasible to do that or at least get the right quality in for something approximating to last season's League 1 budget even allowing for a couple of loans.

For me SG started quite well but faded badly as the season went on. Overall he wasn't good enough. If he'd improved that much since he was here last I'd have thought Birmingham would have been moving heaven and earth to keep him on.

I wouldn't have thought so unless he is my long lost illegitimate younger half brother by another mother. ☺

I'd agree with that assessment of Nzonzi's time here. Always played well within himself and rarely if ever extended himself.

Excellent post. That's my reading of the situation also. I was told from a good source that TM knew who he wanted for tbis season and had presented his wish list to the Board almost before automatic promotion had been mathematically confirmed. The lack of incoming activity and TM's recent comments about being "hopeful" make me think that We're making League 1 size offers for Championship players and having no joy whatsoever. Obviously I can't prove this, just as those who claim we have adequate money to spend can't prove they're right either until said money is spent. Still two or three weeks to go and the proof of the pudding will be in the eating eventually.

I think the only people that should have got new deals on the back of promotion were Raya, Lenihan and Dack. No -one else is good enough to be particularly worried about for me, if they think the grass is automatically greener elsewhere then good luck to them.

He has, but to be fair he has been spoiling the thread in recent weeks by treating each contribution to the thread as a personal affront and feeling the need to quote and reply to every one. Guess if you're a regular on here you get used to chaddy and to know and love him whereas if you're only an occasional viewer dipping in and out it must all look very odd.

So you're not upset with whatever Modric said? Lol. If all he said was that England were guilty underestimating Croatia he was probably spot on. When we beat Sweden the general mood within the Country was that we were as good as in the final and it was "coming home". There was also a feeling we'd be a lot fresher than them after they'd played two lots of extra and in fact the exact opposite happened. We were the ones who looked knackered.

Left with a very sour taste in my mouth after watching the way things unfolded today. Sad end to overall a very enjoyable tournament. Not high on quality but exciting because the big guns kept failing to deliver and the fact we enjoyed a decent run.

Why, do you like players who turn their back on the ball and their team mates in play?

The problem with changing the rule is that an attacker who is running down a blind alley and going nowhere could win a penalty by deliberately wellying the ball at a defender's hand as hard as possible and the ref would have no option but to give it. The rule is fine as it is whereby it theoretically has to be deliberate. The problem was that the ref got it right, VAR got it wrong then the ref felt pressured into changing his decision. Likely to be brushed under the carpet as irrelevant now but it wasn't really as it completely changed the dynamics of the game.

You're easily upset. They thoroughly outplayed us and have thoroughly outplayed France. Good luck to them. I couldn't care less what Modric might have said about us.

The French player in front of the Croatian went to head it, but ended up missing it and ducking underneath the ball then it hit the Croatian a split second later. There's No way whatsoever he could have reacted or adjusted in time.

But the ref got it right first time round before he was instructed to look at it again. It's not even a debatable one for me. it will make a complete mockery of the whole competition if its decided on that.

Never a penalty in a month of Sunday's. The ref got it right the first time round watching it in real time at normal speed.. VAR at its worst. It will be a travesty if Croatia are robbed because of that.

I think if we were to sign re-sign Gallagher my reaction would be "meh". I would have hoped we would have been targeting a far higher calibre of player. Signs of desperation kicking in?

I'm astonished you're astonished! ☺ I would have thought most people would prefer one or the other but wouldn't expect there to be unanimous agreement by any means. Is it the "getting to the Premiership" bit you Don't like (and therefore facing a grim battle for survival every season)? What if the alternative were a 2nd Premier League title or fairly regular Champions League football etc?

I00% agree Matt. England doing well is a nice and unexpected bonus. If they lose it's "hey ho". Rovers is what really matters and what has you kicking the proverbial cat about the house when things are going badly.

Strip away all the hype about reaching the semi final, and analyse the performances and what we've done against whom and it's a fairly ordinary set of performances really. Nice to have a good run in the tournament for once but not sure we've made anything like the sort of progress people are talking about. You could just as easily put it down to luck of the draw and a bit of good fortune at the rightl times.

I always think something very similar whenever I see his name on the team sheet before a match. What a chump.

Spot on. That was my view at the start of the window as well. Haven't added any of them up to press.

I would hope that Raya and Nyambe would be starters when the proper action gets underway, otherwise I'd say that bench looks extremely thin indeed and highlights the need for quality reinforcements.

I think We're two proven strikers short as well. If anything happened to Dack, or he doesn't quite fire at this higher level we could be absolutely knackered. Ideally you'd want Graham providing competition and back up for the new arrivals but as it stands it looks as though we'll be lucky to get one in of the required standard. Right back is actually one of the few areas I'm not concerned about. I would expect Nyambe to be one of our better performers this season and we have plenty of cover in that position if he picks up an injury.

Such is his steely determination to praise everyrhing that does or doesn't happen at Ewood atm I think Chaddy would say it was a good move if we were linked with a triple swoop for Danny Murphy, Leon Best and Chris Brown and we turned down Messi on loan with Barca paying 95% of his wages on the basis he's too old at 31.