Nordic Saint

It will be increased because it doesn't take into account the van Dijk money either. But, a lot of money we get from selling our best players does seem to get frittered away on players like Bednarek, Hoedt and Carrrillo. Whilst the priority of the board and owners is clearly to make money, the performance of the team continues to decline and in the long term that will turn those profits into losses as we'll be relegated and left with a lot of expensive players on high wages who aren't really good enough for the Premier League and who nobody else wants.

The main reason the team has been toothless is that we have't had a goal scorer up front. When Austin replaces Carrillo, we'll have one.

FT Blackburn 1 Saints 0

At €8.8 million he wasn't much of a punt for a club as rich as Monaco. Like Chelsea, they can afford to buy loads of young players in the hope that one will come good. The season they bought him, they also bought Fares Bahlouli, Thomas Lemar, Corentin Jean, Gil Dias, Allan Saint-Maximin, Gabriel Boschilia, Jemerson, Rony Lopes, Ivan Cavaleiro and Adama Traore, most of whom are now worth less than they paid for them.

Whilst I agree that the performances of our U23 team over the last couple of seasons have been appallling, it's too soon to write them all off. Will Smallbone, Alfie Jones and a couple of others show the potential to one day be first team players. We'll see.

We certainly do not want a repeat of Strachan's two games against Arsenal at the end of the 2002/03 season, when he played a weakened team in the first one, so we got thrashed, and were then demoralised for the second one. We should field our strongest team for both games..

Should we wait at least 100 games before saying anything about him? Pretend he's not there? It got a bit like that with Clasie. We needed a goal scorer last summer and we were crying out for one at the beginning of January. If Carrillo was the best that Ross Wilson and Les Reed could come up with, after all the research they supposedly put in, then they are incompetent and that is a big concern with an important summer transfer window coming up.

There is a much more significant difference than that. Cuco scored a goal for us.

#blackbox was at Tottenham when Liverpool signed Salah, and they already had Harry Kane. He's at RB Leipzig now so it will be interesting to see what players and managers they sign in future.

The first manager to have three goalkeepers as first team coaches: Kelvin Davis, Dave Watson and Eddie Niedzwiedki.

I wonder if Les and Mark gave them a half-time talk?

He's not going to let him out of his sight, is he? He's literally not giving him an inch of space. He was with him at training too. At least it gets Old Les out and about.

Hughes has just scored Leicester's 2nd goal!

Only about 100 left now and it's still Thursday. It will certainly be sold out by Sunday. Unfortunately, with plastic sheets covering the front 6 rows, you won't see us on TV. There will probably be just one glimpse when they zoom into about a dozen of our fans just before kick-off.

This reminds me of the early part of the Carrillo thread. Les Reed is making a series of poor decisions and we shouldn't be trying to justify them. We should be trying to get him out.

We should beat Wigan but after that I'd expect Hughes to start to have an influence so we'll get shambolic defence and heavy defeats. This season Hughes' Stoke team lost 3-0 at home to West Ham, 4-0 at home and 5-0 away to Chelsea and 7-2 away to Man City so we can expect similar defeats in our remaining games.

There was a thread on a West Ham messageboard earlier in the season saying that a certain DOF had let them know he was available but obviously they didn't want him. Who would? So, we are still stuck with him.

So.. a team which was below us in the table sack their manager because he was going to get them relegated and we appoint him as our manager to save us from relegation???? Is there really nobody left at the club who can see how stupid this is??? #LesReedmustbesuffferingfromseniledementia

Our aspirations are to be the new Stoke, although if Hughes does become our manager, it will have to be a Championship version of Stoke.

I sincerely hope Les Reed isn't going to impose Kelvin Davis and Dave Watson as first team coaches on the new manager.

Paul Cook as a short-term fix to keep us up or Javier Calleja to make us a top 6 team again. It's a tough choice as the sort of motivator you need to keep us up with the limitations of our current squad and so few games remaining isn't necessarily the same as the type of manager you need to build and coach our squad in the long-term.

Actually, I agree with you. She was good at getting cash fast but the lack of long-term investment in a business will eventually lead to its demise. When Cortese expected her to invest some of the money she got from her father through no effort of her own, for the long-term growth of the business, she was outraged and sacked him. I seem to recall that her father had left financial provison in his will to take care of the club long-term. I wonder what happened to that money? Yet, nobody was outraged at Kat when she got 210 million paid into her bank account by Gao and even charged the club (supposedly her business) interest on a loan, which had to be paid into her personal account in full before she got the money from Gao. She should be very grateful to Cortese for helping build a business from one which cost her father 12 million to one which she sold an 80% share in for 210 million. Meanwhile, Brighton's owner, Tony Bloom, who is no wealthier than Kat, has spent 150 million out of his own pocket on a new stadium and new players and taken nothing back. Bournemouth's owners have also invested their own money in their club.

Too true. She has probably made more money for herself out of this football club than just about any other owner in football history. The priority of the club has been to make money as quickly as possible at every opportunity, and that includes every trnsfer window. The Academy is there to produce players for sale, although it hasn't produced many of any great value recently, and players are bought primarily as investments to be sold for profit. The performance of the football team is just a secondary issue.

Many of us do but we are realistic enough to realize he wouldn't want to work for Les Reed.

It's incredible how you Reedites are still desperately trying to heap praise on your hero. Fortunately, you are in a tiny minority now.