Yes we've signed a couple of players who allegedly fit the narrative thats been put about - and one who most certainly doesnt. There's little point discussing signings with you chadster, we could sign literally anyone and you'd be happy with it. If we don't sign anyone that's also always the right decision as well. And you always dismiss any player who signs for another Club as crap. The most recent case in point is Batth/ Weimann / Forshaw. Because we-ve actually gone and re-signed 33 year old Forshaw you're happy with that but you're seemingly not in favour of re-signing 33 year old Weimann or 34 year old Batth on account of their age. However in the unlikely event we did persuade either to re-sign I'm sure you'd be delighted again and declare them excellent signings.

Whatever date his contract expires. He'll want that £600k p.a. for as long as possible. Who do I send my quid to? Lol.

I dont know but I'd wager he's on a very low wage at the moment relatively speaking. I'd assume he was after something like parity with other senior members of the squad and we're trying to lowball him.

Personally I feel we're scraping the bottom of an extremely deep barrel with these signings but you're right, have to give them a chance etc etc. On the other hand just because certain players who might not have looked very promising when they were signed last year might have exceeded expectations, doesn't mean that this year's seemingly uninspiring batch will do the same.

It might possibly be true for new signings but it still seems a bit far fetched to me. It's a potential nightmare for team spirit and bonding. You'd have the newbies on sub 10 k, the ones who've had their contracts extended who'll be on something half decent and then the odd one like Cantwell who's allegedly on £25k - £30k p.w. Half of them would be looking at the others thinking, "Why's he on so much more than me?"

Can't see how the 10k wage cap can be a thing otherwise we wouldn't be able to trigger the extensions on players like Hyam.

Thanks. I've never seen the Sunderland Documentaries. Sounds like now might be the time to do it.

Was he involved in those fly on the wall documentaries?

Lol. "All good. Nothing to see here."

Sounds promising. This bloke, low grade foreign punts, Forshaw, we've given up any pretence of wanting to do well now haven't we? Accelerating hard towards the precipice.

Never forgive that loathsome individual for trying to sell off half of Brockhall. Despite the fact he really wanted another year He's probably thinking he got out at more or less the right time. Having made sure he topped up his bank balance first of course.

Forshaw, Tavares in/ Travis, Tronstad out?

Well I'm going to be negative, people are obviously free to disagree and argue the other side of the coin. The penny really dropped for me today with the Forshaw signing as to just how screwed we really are. Despite all the valiant attempts in certain quarters to depict this as the sensible addition of a bit of experience to the squad, in reality all we're probably seeing is the well worn scenario for us of having drawn a blank with our A, B, and C lists and ending up with something approaching the Z list. We didn't even want him a few weeks back, if we'd wanted him that badly we could have secured his services then. Then when the young Belgian lad with a sketchy record in a poor League was signed, it was justified on the basis he had plenty of pace and this supposedly suited the blueprint that VI allegedly wants to follow of high pressing, high intensity football. Next one through the door .....Adam Forshaw. You'd laugh if you didn't want to cry. The only common denominator these two have apart from probably not being good enough for the Championship is that they're also probably extremely cheap in the general scheme of things. At this point I'm sure there'll be the usual chorus of "Let's see who we've signed by the end of the window!" but tbh I don't expect anything to improve significantly. Most Clubs tend to target their key players and get them in first and pad out their squad a bit later. We tend to get one or two squad fillers in on the general understanding that ""Don't worry, they haven't eaten up too much of the budget" and a sort of "jam tomorrow" promise that the key players in the positions we really need will arrive later in the window. Tomorrow rarely arrives and neither do the key players. Instead we usually see a bit more squad filling and window dressing round the edges bolstered by the last minute addition of Premier League loans which again tend to generally centre around who is still available at the last minute rather than whether they can adequately fill the positions where we are in the most need. I've expected the worst the last two or three seasons and imo we've only been kept afloat by happening on 2 exceptionally talented young Head Coaches who we've then managed to drive away. I've also repeatedly said that imo we're only one bad manager away from oblivion. Has to happen at some point without a complete change of approach.

Strikes me as either a smokescreen to dissipate some of the anger over the Forshaw signing or if there is anything in it, a possible Travis replacement.

We do if the recruitment team are signing a load of shite. Especially shite we know to be shite beecause we've already seen them at first hand and as a result have previously (correctly) said we didn't want them only a few weeks back.

Fair comment, not saying Rovers effed up on that, the point is the squad player could do with being more of the quality of Baker than Forshaw.

Well......it was a far better squad when we had Baker before he arrived!

Different type of argument altogether. I don't think even proponents of Forshaw's limited abilities would be advocating he start. For me, if he isn't starting he is just blocking the pathway of a younger player coming through. The experience should come from the starting x1 not the fringe players. So either it's a sign he's likely to be replacing Travis or Tronstad directly or he's going to be filling out the squad in which case it's a completely pointless and ultimately counterproductive signing.

Wow......well, that's one way of spinning it. Chaddy would be proud of you for that one. Simon Garner had better fetch his boots down out of the attic. VI might fancy sprucing up the attack as well.

Chaddy must be locked in his war bunker discussing furiously with his Press Secretary how to spin this signing. I'm Predicting: "Pleased with this signing. A good dollop of experience to help the younger players". 🙂

Exactly.

People used to accuse Eustace of this and I felt that if he had specifically been told "We know what happened with JDT but don't worry it won't happen again" then he was entitled to take that at face value until proven otherwise. However, now that it's happened TWICE I have a very hard time believing that VI could be naive to all this or that he isn't fully complicit and agreeable to anything that happens as long as he draws his salary.

100 % agreed. Money is tight and we're spaffing it away on Forshaw. Surely the money could be far better spent. What next? Cauley Woodrow?

I mean I've always thought that in the past but it's been so blatant for quite a while now it's coming over as malicious.

Yup.