Sheaf Saint

Some bloke who's got a house in Winchester as far as I know.

Username doesn't check out 🤔

Yeah, the match thread on Grand Old Team forum was quite entertaining from an outsider's perspective 🤣

SR already own one French club, if that's what you're thinking.

Branthwaite won't still be there when the window shuts. They had their first pre-season friendly on Friday against Sligo Rovers with a different 11 in each half and he wasn't in the squad despite being fit. My nephew, who has always played in midfield until now, started the game at CB, so it looks likely they are already planning for the season without Branthwaite. They drew 3-3 against a second string side (because the first team played in the FAI Cup on Sunday) after being 2-0 down. Our old friend Mason Holgate got them back to 2-1 with a header, then a minute later he gifted Sligo a 3rd goal with a horrific back pass under no pressure.

I think the question being raised was: could Palace decide to keep him if he has a great season and we want to exercise our option to buy? I don't think they can, but I believe the player himself could refuse the permanent move.

Maybe we can resurrect the "back from the dead" chant for Ross, if and when we ever see him play for us.

This is true, but where is such a candidate going to come from? They have long since purged everyone with any kind of moral conscience from the party.

She did? News to me. She's been blatantly partisan for as long as I can remember. Remember that time she deliberately engineered the on-air resignation of a Labour MP to damage the party leadership, then subsequently deleted the tweet in which she gloated about it? She's an absolute disgrace.

It's likely that it's still taking the Labour gov some time to fully understand the scale of the shitshow they have inherited. I'm expecting a lot more tales of absurdity to be drip fed to the press in the coming weeks / months.

But it was Suella's dream, remember? I'm sure all those civil servants were more than happy to dedicate their lives to helping her fulfil it.

Yes of course there would be. And I'm not advocating that we should actually do it. But there would have to be clear evidence of actual rules being violated for us to be punished, and it would be interesting to see what sort of case they could present that we couldn't successfully appeal against. But you're probably right that we shouldn't attempt it, just in case.

It's probably moot anyway, cos I don't envisage this actually happening. But I don't see what power any of those bodies would have to actually punish us if it did. They can't just arbitrarily dish out punishment for something because they don't like it - they would have to present a clear case that specific rules/laws had been broken.

Yeah but Turkey are not signed up to the sanctions against Russia. There is literally nothing to stop a Turkish club from signing a player from a Russian club and then loaning that player out again. So what rules would we actually be breaking? It's no different to corporations setting up a shell company in Luxembourg to avoid paying UK tax. Everyone knows it's wrong and immoral, but it's also perfectly legal so there's no way to stop it.

Only where it is clear cut that rules have been broken. There is no legal reason we couldn't loan a player from a Turkish club. How they obtained that player in the first place would surely be irrelevant.

Frowned upon by whom? The PL have shown that they don't give a shiny shit about clubs bending rules and exploiting loopholes.

The fact that we have gone back with a permanent offer after being refused a loan would seem to suggest this has legs. There will have been talks between agents/clubs in the background, and we wouldn't be wasting our time with multiple approaches if we hadn't received some kind of indication that the player is interested in the move and the terms being offered, and that Palace would be willing to sell for the right price.

Danny Ings had missed the best part of two seasons when we signed him. He didn't do too badly. I'm not saying Stewart is going to or likely to emulate his achievements, but I think it's a little premature to say he will never make it back.

Not outside the realms of possibility I guess. We kept KWP after signing Tino, after all.

Agreed. He reminds me very much of Jack Cork, who was a real asset for us on our return to the PL last time. I'm confident he can make the step up.

They look virtually identical except for the colour of the Puma logo

Looking at the pics on the OS, have we basically got the same shorts for both home and away?

Not like Mccarthy to miss a shot.

Well it will be nice to resurrect the "Yellows" chant at away games this season. I've missed that.