Point being, why have we just left that offer for so long and not offered him improved terms before, ones that might be enough to keep him.

Why are we making our final contract offer "shortly." His contract has 2 months left, its just a token gesture.

Im not sure how 6 players can deserve to be in the top 3, but there you go. Hyam has had a good season. I know hes not the most popular player we have but hes played a key role in our strong defence and perhaps hasnt got the plaudits he deserves.

Again, "wants to test the market" is just parroting what has been put in the media. I suspect that if he had been offered a proper deal proactively then he would be here beyond the end of the season. If there is even a deal on the table its clearly nowhere near at market value. Similarly, all of our other key players are about to go into their final year and we havent even bothered trying yet to tie them down. The next contract news we will hear will be in the summer when we give another year or two to crap like Hedges and Forshaw who no one else will want.

Forshaw as well as Hedges? Jesus christ. Shows the ambition of the club.

The issue is, even if we attack from the start its not really our strength. If we are to win it perhaps is more likely to be from a tight game that we grind out built on a clean sheet.

Sadly I cant see them going even if we go up. Not to burst your bubble as I know otherwise the idea of promotion is not one that you like ie playing in the Premier League.

Me and Eddie may have interpreted it in slightly different ways, and neither of us are certain as to exactly what he meant. So I will reword, IF Gestede is having any say in player selections, then it is totally wrong. Also on the academy graduate target, I am pretty sure I read recently that the target is either 2,000 or 3,000 minutes per season by graduates. I have said before that I believe that it causes a huge conflict of interest by setting such a target, certainly if its seen as an important objective to meet. Its not my "issue" but my opinion that some of the things that our club does, things that are seemingly becoming widespread across football in this country are illogical. You have real difficulty in showing any critical faculty, you assume everything done by a football club must be right and refuse to even allow the thought to cross your mind that there may be something that you either dont agree with or think is wrong. You dont give actual reasons why they are for the betterment of football and specifically our club, you usually justify them with parroted management guff. As far as I am concerned, and I dont really care if other teams do these things, but the below points sum up my opinions contrary to how we actually do things: - styles of play should not be determined by anyone but the manager/head coach - selection shouldnt be in any way interfered with by anyone but the manager/head coach - arbitary targets for things like minutes for academy graduates shouldnt be seen as important objectives because they cause a conflict of interest - a player should only ever be signed with the full approval of the manager/head coach - the only factor in picking a manager/head coach should be who will accumulate the most points

You really are on full propaganda mode lately regarding the club.

In general. Although if our wage bill is the same as 5 or 6 years ago, its less because of inflation. I never mentioned money re Dolan. I just think he could get a better move considering hes only going to cost a small compensation fee due to our clubs incompetence again.

He definitely isnt better.

Not particularly relevant to Dolan but that tendency of our players moving on and their move not working out to their advantage has massively shrunk. Obviously you will find that our players in general are very rarely of a standard to establish themselves regularly in the Premier League but a few (Kaminski, Rothwell, Armstrong, Brereton, Szmodics etc) have at least experienced a season up there before then falling back to playing at genuine promotion contenders.

Dont you think Markanday is better?

He certainly is, but I was thinking whether its in this league or abroad, for at most nominal compensation, he could surely do better than Derby. They have such a poor squad.

As a free agent aside from some nominal compensation, many assume he will just go to Derby and that may be the case but you would think a better side would fancy him even if its not to play every game? He has certainly improved more this season than IMO any other in his development and I think has benefitted from the simplicity of playing from the right.

I mean more that the topics in general discussed and the subsequent reporting has such a big gap. It is not usually so long.

When was the meeting held? If the minutes are still "a little while" from being published, there will be a huge gap between.

Just to clarify, you dont think there has been an attempt to cut costs in recent years?

He said in the podcast that its a team effort to decide on certain selection issues and gave an example of Brittain coming off after an hour at Sunderland. That shouldnt come down to anyone but the manager/head coach. The information should be given to him, ie the sports scientists etc could say he only has an hour in him or you risk injury. But it should be solely down to Ismael to decide from there. You swallow all of the facets of "modern football" and never question any of it. You dont have the capability to question it, or choose not to. "Do I have a problem" with using academy graduates? Obviously not, thats such a warped question where you clearly have missed my point. There shouldnt be targets of minutes that graduates need to play. It should again be totally down to Ismael who he chooses. If the players are deemed to be ready to play, its in his best interests to play them. This rigid target means that he could feel obliged to play them regardless to hit that target at the cost of results IF they arent ready/arent good enough and sometimes, the academy will hit dry spells. Problem is, we arent a normal club, and beyond that in football in general, there are many ways that football is supposedly involving in a way that is illogical/nonsensical. Not every change is good. You mention the Tomasson situation. As time went on, there was never any thought to change the style even when results massively dipped as the budget was cut. That is actually a great example of having such a setup can be counterproductive. Higher ups shouldnt be telling the head coach "how they want to play." You have never told me how having people above the head coach telling him how to play is a symptom of modern day football that is a positive, that is to the betterment of teams. You just say thats how it is or reference other teams that do it. I think its a bad change to football. You see so many teams in the football league trying to play a form of this deluded idea of "how football should be played" to appease higher ups when they clearly arent capable of doing it.

So Gestede and others get involved in team selection? Chuck in him telling us what style we should be playing and how many minutes graduates should be playing. Please can anyone tell me how this is a logical thing to do? What a mess and a ridiculous 'football club' we support these days.

We also have a number of other key players who have said that they havent been offered a new deal so it sums it up. Players willing to sit down who are critical to the team yet absolutely nothing forthcoming.

"Twists and turns" are back.

From what I have seen, Preston fans will be happy to get rid of Riis and Woodman.

So you did believe Suhail?

They made a lot of changes yesterday (with a strong squad they still won) but I wonder if they will go stronger to try and build momentum.