qwertyell

Reims lost their relegation play off and dropped down to ligue 2. Perhaps Billy Stiils might have an eye on a couple of his former players who may now be available for our level. He'll certainly remember their keeper Yehvann Diouf (25), who set the record for the most saves in a ligue 1 game (14) when Reims won 2-0 at Lens recently.

Ungainly was certainly a word that sprang to mind. To be fair, Konate at Liverpool looks a bit like Bambi on ice at times, but seems to make it work for him. I've watched a bit more of Quarshie, and there's no way we'd be signing someone that raw for the first team squad if we were still a Premier League team fighting for our lives (or whatever you'd call the "fight" we put up this season). As a Championship side expected to dominate a lot of games, there's probably something there to try and polish up at an easier level - and for a minor outlay that we can probably make back selling him for parts if it comes down to it.

Greuther Furth vs Hamburg (who finished 2nd) league game from 10 days ago is up in full on the YouTubes if anyone wants a long look at Quarshie, who started for Greuther Furth, against reasonable opposition. I've done 10 minutes. He's made one block, a really clumsy foul that should've been a yellow card, and launched a pretty impressive throw in into the box. And he's just tried and failed to play an attacker offside but recovered to block another shot. I'm not watching any more. But I can confirm he A) exists and B) is tall.

Jordan Torunarigha? 27, formerly of Hertha Berlin, has just left Gent at the end of his contract. Left sided, quick, athletic, German (although he's switched to Nigeria). And free.

Don't be said because it's over, be sad because it happened.

Their longest run without defeat was 6 games. He's only won 17 games in total.

I knew a guy who got his testicles twisted like a set of iPod headphones and needed surgery to open up the bag and get them all untangled.

I'd forgotten he was a religious loon, among other things, and it was God's will that he was pant-soilingly useless with us.

My objection to O'Neil is that he's a shit philosophy manager - and we've had our fill of them, surely. I watched a Wolves game earlier in the season where they were a goal down at home with ten minutes to play, and they didn't attack. At all. They just continued methodically passing slowly, sideways and backwards in rigid formation, barely making it to the halfway line, then turning around and going backwards to start again. The crowd couldn't roar them on because they literally did nothing but pad their passing stats. In the end the fans became apathetic and simply shrugged their way to another passive defeat. Fuck that.

I see Rusty turned up on Match of the Day 2 last night. It's the perfect gig for him - he gets to preach his visionary football hypothesis to the waiting nation, whilst simultaneously lecturing why everyone else's approach is stupid and they're not brave enough. Or something about scar tissue. Takes some front to shamelessly sit there dissecting the shortcomings of - in this instance - Chelsea trying badly to play out from the back, and Tottenham being a defensively disorganised rabble. A bit like how Gary Neville has somehow become the all-knowing authority on everything, in spite of making an absolute fool out of himself when someone called his bluff and (briefly) gave him a manager's job.

Hope to be wrong, but I can only see Ryan Seager in Ballard: prolific scorer as a youth, but ultimately didn't have any weapons for top level senior football. Like Seager, Ballard isn't very big, physical, quick or creative. He can sniff out a chance, but that kind of "fox in the box" striker that contributes next to nothing in general play died out years ago with the dawning of the lone number nine role that 99% of teams have favoured over the last decade. I'm probably doing him a disservice - Seager wasn't the England age groups regular that Ballard has been coming up - and his ceiling is higher, but it's a comparison that still stands out to me when I see him play.

Chris Rigg (Sunderland): "“I laugh at it, you’ve got to enjoy it or football isn’t the game for you. There was this one time, we were playing Southampton and I was shoving one of their defenders. I was marking him and he just said: ‘You’re still getting breastfed, aren’t you?’ That was a good one, but it doesn’t knock me out of my stride. They are testing me mentally as well as physically.” Got to be Stephens, the dressing room bantsmeister general.

Made his senior debut for Lyon at the weekend, playing the last 20 minutes. Just turned 17. Not sure there was much we could do to hang on to him - he didn't want to sign a scholarship, so that was that. Good luck to him. He's a talented boy.

Just a note for those who are convinced most of our current squad options will be fine for a Championship promotion push. Luton got relegated from the PL last season on 26 points (15 more than we're going to get), scoring 52 goals (we've managed 25), and conceding 85 goals (we're on 82 with 3 games to play). They retained mostly the same squad. And they'll be in League One next season. Football's pretty merciless when you're a bunch of losers who have become comfortable with losing. Clear them out. Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

He's not walking. That's him at full pelt.