If correct another loan/freebie.

I would have thought the entry fee for Blues was originally designed to keep demand under control when there were more competing Pubs nearby rather than be a Revenue raiser per se. The decision to raise the entry fee to £2.60 seems a bit ridiculous to me, the increase in Revenue is neither her nor there at the end of the day and £3 and getting some shrapnel back in your pocket is vastly different to £1. On the other hand I can't for the life of me understand why people moan about the 1875 membership. Even at £10 I still think It's exceptional value, you get £5 cash back in the Club shop immediately and £2 or £3 off every time you purchase a match day ticket. The extra match day charge I have no real view on one way or the other. If you know in advance It's going to be more if you leave it until the last minute I'm not sure how you can complain and if you really want to go but can't commit until the last minute because You're not sure what else you've got on I can't see that paying a bit more would necessarily put you off.

On the other hand the ref blew for a foul towards the end of normal time with a Russian player clean through on goal after a Spanish defender fell over his own feet. Unfortunately that's something VAR can't do anything about.

Shame we're getting knocked out Tuesday night instead of having a stroll in the sunshine against Japan.

Bit OTT. For me he was dreadful on the right wing, excellent in central midfield, and solid but unspectacular when filling in for Nyambe at TH. On the evidence of last season his best position is definitely CM but whether he could make an impression there in the Championship must be debatable. I'd like to see an experienced Championship midfielder come in to play alongside Smallwood but once again that would take money I'm beginning to doubt we have very much of.

Not really a victory for football as Russia had zero ambition other than to contain Spain but you can't blame them, it was Spain's job to break them down and they failed miserably in that respect. De Gea had a nightmare in the penalty shoot out. Got to one and pushed it into the net, let another straight through him and sat down in a heap before the penalty taker took a third.

What, even if we'd been facing Japan? Uruguay were tipped weeks ago to do well by one of the South American correspondents on Talk Sport and I've been meaning to back them for ages and not done it but managed to get a tenner on them at 16/1 in play when they were 1 up which I thought was very good value considering.

I'll take anything if it stops us playing 3-5-2 Which usually ends up with 7 defensive minded players on the pitch.

The Rhodes deal was completed relatively quickly at a relatively late stage (after Leon Best broke down) because we met Huddersfield's asking price.which many considered extortionate at the time. If we have various bids on the table for players It's because at this stage the bids are ideemed nadequate by either the player or selling Club. It seems a risky way to operate to me to hope that one or two of our targets may not get a better offer and decide to join us at the last minute. I'm not saying we won't sign anyone, just expressing an opinion that it looks like there's relatively little money available and that most of our business will be free out of contract players and/or last minute loans. Which I'm not sure will be good enough. I May be wrong and if we sign a number of players for substantial fees over the next 2-3 weeks I'll be delighted and please feel free to come on here and remind me I got all Private Fraser.

I take it You're on the wind up with that comment and have heard of agents. A bit of initial spadework will uncover whether or not the player is likely to be open to the idea of a move and whether or not his personal terms are likely to be roughly within budget.

I'm stating the bleeding obvious here but if there's a target you particularly want , and presumably you have already done your homework on what both Club and player want, you get it over the line. How can you plan anything when you've no idea whether some any or all of your targets will end up joining?

So they might end up here but they might not and we might be scrubbing around for replacements ar the last minute? I would have hoped our approach would have been a lot more organised and a lot less hit and miss than that.

Very reasonable response. The difference with resting players before a Cup Final though is that the opposition is fixed and doesn't become more difficult as a result of resting players for the other game. I'm surprised more posters Don't consider there to be a huge gulf in quality between Colombia and Japan.

if 3m p.a. for leading us through the formality of qualifying for a tournament every couple of years, earning plaudits for finishing second in a group containing Tunisia and Panama, then losing as soon as we come up against anyone half decent is "the impossible job" I'll have some of that!

Not really. You're the one clutching at straws saying bids might not have been rejected. All we know for certaint is that the players allegedly the subject of various bids have not signed on the dotted line for us. It might simply be because there is still time left in the window but in my view all the signs so far indicate that we Don't have much money to spend and are struggling a bit to bring the right calibre of player in.

Might have been. If we were to bid £1m for Messi then technically a bid would be "in" but I wouldn't have thought Barcelona would bother wasting their time formally rejecting it.

It must be just me then. For me you need to be to a few loaves short of a full basket to favour a game against a side ranked 16 in the world rather than one ranked 61. Plus you've killed off all the momentum by chopping and changing. We were absolutely flying but probably won't even reach the so called easier part of the draw now.

If that's true then they obviously haven't been accepted.

Wonder if that's partly because in the cases of players like Barrow and Chapman we tend to use players we loan from Clubs higher up than ourselves to fill spaces on the bench rather than giving them much game time?

Exactly that. Loans shouldn't be the core part of your business, they should be the cherry on top of the icing on the cake to put the finishing touches to a squad after your main business has been done. Unfortunately, certainly when Lambert and Coyle were here, short term ism and loan deals comprised the main part of our business and we saw how that ultimately ended.

It's funny how quick managers are to wheel out the "the players are low on confidence" excuse whenever things are going badly yet when the argument suits it appears that that isn't even a consideration!

It is a little bit similar but leaving the Checkatrade trophy aside the name of the game for Premier League Clubs in the early rounds of the FA Cup and League Cup is to balance the desire to make changes with the over-riding need to win the game and hopefully see a half decent performance from players who should be knocking on the door to break into the starting eleven. Southgate managed neither and in my view thereby made it far more likely that we'll go out earlier than if he hadn't made so many changes and/or attempted to get cute about who we may or may not play further down the line.

I accept Southgate won't be sacked regardless of results but shenanigans about trying to manipulate the draw aside, what actually qualifies Southgate to carry on IF we get knocked out by Colombia? We'll have played 2 games under tournament conditions against half decent oppositionand will have lost them both. Other than that his record at senior level consists of relegating Boro.

It's not the fact our reserves lost to the Belgian reserves per se, Southgate was probably entitled to make some changes but a modest 3 or 4 changes at most and giving Kane an hour to keep him revved up and hopefully scoring would have probably sufficed to enable us to get the minimum point we needed, top the group, keep the momentum going, and land Japan in the last 16. You seem to be completely incapable of grasping why I'm so hopping mad about this, for me we had every chance of reaching the quarter finals, now because of all the shenanigans and landing ourselves a far more difficult game in the last 16. I think It's far more likely than not we'll go out at that stage instead. I accept that if we do beat Colombia convincingly then navigate the quarter final then Southgate suddenly looks like a genius and I'd have to come on here and say it worked, but by the same token, will you come on and admit he made a catastrophic miscalculation if we get knocked out? Ironically one of the changes I would have made he didn't. I would definitely have given the back up keeper 90 minutes or even both of them 45 mins each. We Don't want another 1970 Banks/Bonetti type situation if anything happens to Pickford.

The fact we've signed Rothwell in itself is a sign that funds are very limited I'd say. If they weren't we'd be setting our sights considerably higher than an injury prone out of contract player who didn't really even set League 1 alight. It's certainly not a sign to the contrary that funds aren't an issue although I take your point that the Club kept the signing of Rothwell well under wraps so maybe there are one or two other deals imminently in the pipeline we Don't know about. I have to agree with another poster ( tom phil?) though who speculated that we are probably concentrating on cheaper options who are out of contract and many of them will only become free agents on July 1st which may partially explain the lack of obvious activity to date.