You think we'd have only got £2m for him last January?

Yeah 4 years ago, not in the last 2.5 years.

The "nobody rated him", "fans would have driven him to a bidder for free" stuff is complete drivel too given how long ago that was. Yes, he looked like Bambi on ice in his first season, but it was 4 and half years ago, and he was 19 years old with an £8m price tag. He's looked good for us for 2.5 years now: 20/21 7 goals and 5 assists 21/22 22 goals and 3 assists 22/23 9 goals and 4 assists That's a long time to be having contract negotiations. I agree you can't force somebody to sign, but if that was the case 2 years ago then we should have been actively looking for a buyer. I've seen the example of Pogba or Sterling in here regarding running down their contracts. The difference is, those two weren't their clubs star player, they weren't 23 years old, weren't their only international, and weren't their golden goose for FFP. Do you think Ten Haag or Guardiola are bothered they lost Pogba or Sterling? Of course not, they're over the hill now on their last pay day whilst younger and better players will replace them whilst they get a big earner of the books. Completely different scenarios. It'd be more like Foden or Elliott/Trent or Saka running down their contract and leaving for free which just would not happen at a well run football club

It's pretty simple. If you decide to spend £8m on an unproven, young, project striker, when you've barely got a pot to piss in, you'd be complete morons to let them leave for free at the end of that 1st contract. Add in the fact he's now an international and has scored 30+ across the last 1.5 years even more so. (I'm not blaming Broughton with this, but a certain David Brent type has been around throughout it all)

Just the position we needed to fill as a priority with our first signing. Personally I'm really excited to see what he can offer in the League Cup next year.

Probably more thought has gone in to that than anything at Rovers for 10 years. ”Make sure he’s January in case we sell him in the window”

No sell-on fee could be something that haunts us here, as well as the actual fee we're missing out on for selling him. We think he's a £10m-£15m player now.... 1 good season in La Liga and you can double that to £30m.

It's a ridiculous rule/law when you actually think about it. Like you say we're essentially paying and maintaining an asset that will be somewhere else in 6 months. I guess it's a bit like working a notice period for us regular plebs, but when that happens you're usually recruiting and training up your replacement and getting them up to speed, or more likely if you're staying in the same industry with a competitor, you're put on gardening leave. And lets be honest, when people are working their notice period, they're really on the beach with their feet up putting in <50%.

That squad finished 8th last year and has been comfortable ever since promotion, especially considering a lot on this board were pretty relentless in telling us Rothwell, Lenihan and Nyambe weren't good enough anyway (comments on Rothwell not playing a single Bournemouth game, comments every time Boro lost at the start of season about Lenihan and people laughing that all Nyambe got was a 1 year contract at Wigan). In fact, a lot of this board said we have a better squad with Brittain, Hyam, Szmodics replacing them. Granted all of that may not apply to yourself.

There’s going to be a minimum of 7 non-Prem teams in the last 16 looking at the draw, more if we get a few upsets in the next round Have to go all out full strength against Birmingham

Losing Diaz on the 6 month foreign club rule is probably the worst possible situation that could have come from that sorry tale Would add Villarreal would be a bit of a surprise as they have two highly rated young lads in their ‘wide forward’ positions already. Though it’s a free transfer so I guess they may as well and get a profit on some of them. A very well run, small town, overachieving club. Something we once were

Proper doom and gloom stuff over on the PNE board. Talk of asset stripping, bad relationship between fans and Ridsdale, even someone saying a League 1 club had a bid accepted for Riis which I find hard to believe. Obviously some fear in the post-Hemmings world over there. No harm in us looking there for a good deal though similar to Hyam at Coventry.

He would be out of our price range with 1.5 years left on his contract wouldn't he? I'd imagine PNE would want £3m+ Mowbray missed the boat on this one unfortunately. I'd just add - I had a look on the PNE board and I thought this place was a circus at times......if I'm reading it correct, some ITK leaked news about Whiteman/Watford and he's claiming Ridsdale has now suspended his Spurs ticket and taking legal action because of it. Haha imagine Waggott cancelling one of our tickets and taking legal action because we leaked a transfer rumour

Morton has started nearly every game (think he has the most starts this season outside of Kaminski and maybe BBD), yet has yielded just 1 paltry assist and 0 goals, that's nearly 2000 minutes of football. We simply must do better, I could see him as a luxury in a top team that dominates possession and has 6 creative players ahead of him. But we are not that. He slows down play, has no physical attributes (speed, strength, power) and has very little attacking creativity. I'm yet to see him carve a killer pass (see Adam Wharton vs Hull). It's always just the simple sideways 5 yarder, or a long over the top chaser. 1 assist/goal all season from the most played central midfielder in a team has to be the lowest in the whole league.

Same point, I wasn’t going to list every potential formation though. Essentially I was trying to portray we need 2 x CM, 1 x ST and 1 x LB to even have an 11 with potential for promotion. That’s the case whether we play 4231, 433, 352

If people were saying that it says more about them than anything else. Assume it was on the back of whatever Broughton said in that podcast. Most of us have said it’s our most needed area to improve for weeks (at least JDT noticed Travis isn’t up to it), although on the back of that 90 minutes a number 9 is perhaps even more crucial!

It feels very “Cocu at Derby” Started well, a vision of ‘total football’ based on possession. That ended with a 10th place finish then bottom of the league a year later.

Kaminski Brittain - Hyam - Ayala - ??? ??? - ??? Hedges - Dack - Brereton ??? Fill in the gaps is the absolute minimum we need, and they need to be starting players.

We’ve lost 5 of the last 7 in the league, it’s more like “one win and it’s back to talk of us being good” from yourself and a select few others. He / They have taken us backwards, we rank in the bottom 5 clubs in every single plausible stat. We have a -4 GD vs +13 last year, we’ve lost 4-0, 4-1, 3-0, 3-0, 3-0 this season already. Only two teams have lost more than us. We are a worse team in every aspect since he turned up, we just lost 4-0 to Rotherham, IMO more embarrassing than 7-0 to Fulham and that’s saying something I’ll honestly be amazed if we finish in the top half this season.

Dortmund will pay €20m for that apparently

Says it all. Spineless, who in their right mind thinks tapping it about sideways when 2-0 or 3-0 down is the way to go

-3 goal difference sat in 3rd tells us the real picture. Bottom half by Easter. We’ve gone so far backwards since last season.

We have to start a match without him sometime soon surely. Slows everything down painfully. No wonder we rank so low in the league in chances created (shots, xG etc)

Still no shot in this half, approaching 20 minutes.

Reactive rather than proactive. Waiting until 2-0 to make the changes every man and his dog could see were needed