BigUts

And I also I admire your optimism. I agree the first 11 should do OK, but get an injury, which will 100% happen, and we will be up the proverbial creek. Right-back in particular is a massive concern for me. Brown looked OK against Big Club but he is hugely unproven and if we start with JRC there we know how that ends...

Why does it have to be either/or? I want us to have signed 6 quality players 3 weeks ago. We are too easy to accept a shit-show and just shrug our shoulders.

It would be half believable if there were any senior people within the club with footballing knowledge.

Is that a euphemism?

Sounds like there could be some wiggling going on here. I bet a big-time agent has got his claws in, been in the lads ear and had a look at the contract situation. This obviously all some supposition on my behalf but this wouldn't be the first time this has happened in football.

No, he will be paid until the 30th June. The PFA will give him an extra month if he has no club by the end of July.

Dead on!!

Wharton

I agree with the parachute payments, but other clubs have competed at the top end of the league and gone up. Check Forest last season. Whether its a silver bullet or not, we should increase all revenue, all the time. It give us the best chance possible of success. The more money we have coming in the more we can spend, no matter how small that increase is. As it stands we will have gone backwards over the past 3/4 years on the methods of revenue mentioned in my prior post.

As others have said, we are stagnating on so many levels to try and increase revenue. Getting more bums on seats and becoming more savvy when it comes to sponsorship are two obvious avenues. If we had reduced ST prices and got more people in the ground then our overall income levels would increase significantly. Instead, we are incredibly short sighted and just try to rinse a core contingent as much as possible.

I think some of what Jim says is correct; if one club is offering significantly more than the other I can't imagine any footballer would even comprehend "the project". Where it would come in to play would be if the offers are similar or the same. I would imagine a centre forward for example would be far more interested in working for JDT then say Mowbray as you could garner more from the former than the latter.

Not good enough that. How DARE you have a social life outside of providing us with ST sales stats!

We need the right players in a more timely fashion. I don't think anybody would implore signing anybody for the sake of it, but signing players earlier gives us, and them, the best chance to succeed. Later signings are also more likely to be panicked and rushed and then need further time to get up to speed with the mechanics of any way we play, during a period when we need them to be performing not just getting ready for the new season. People seem to be forgetting that we will have played 7 league games by the time window shuts and the 1st game is now just 22 days away.

FFS 🤦‍♂️

That was my immediate thought too...

It isn't loaded on the club though, is it?

I consider myself to be quite a level-headed person when it comes to football (which is, paradoxically, unlike the rest of my life where I tend to be quite an anxious person) but the lack of activity in any guise since the end of last season is giving me that anxious feeling in my gut. We are 24 days away from kick-off and the squad is depleted, lacking depth and even the 'First XI (if we could call it that) is of a sub-standard. Transfer dealings really do need to kick off pronto. Before we know it we could be 10 games in and still without any signings of note and find ourselves right in the thick of a big pile plop.

Absolutely tragic. May you RIP.

Don't agree with this personally. It was a big step-up for him last season and I thought he did OK for the most part. I would expect to see some further improvement this season too as he will have further adjusted to the riggers of the Championship.

I've posted on this thread a few times about my feelings of the cost and my personal struggles with such. After deliberation with Mrs. BigUts it isn't happening. She was all for it but with the sheer increase in everything else I don't think I can justify it. If it would have been £100 cheaper I probably wouldn't have even blinked, but £400 to me feels like a mental barrier I'll struggle to breach. If next season the 'loyalty' discount remains and therefore the price to me would be further inflated I will probably never own a ST again.

From memory Utd paid about £50m for him so it stands to reason he will be on big money; although when some players in their squad are on £300k+ you would imagine Shaw will be on moderate wages in comparison

I am clearly an island in thinking that the logo isn't as bad as some others we've had. I'm not overly enamered with the brand itself but when we had the likes of Crown and Bet24 and even bet10 which took up half the shirt, I appreciate the minimalist approach.

Not shocked. Bradley certainly doesn't seem like a player who is built for such a game. Would need to trim down considerably and improve those fitness levels.

Didn't we play a high press during our excellent spell of form before Xmas last year?