S-Clarke

Just seen that Ivan Tony looks like he's off, not included in the Brentford team today due to 'transfer interest'. Brentford already replaced him with Thaigo, but he's injured for 7 months - could be a killer if he leaves.

I'd agree to a point that we're a bit bloated - Charles, Charly at a push, Sulemana, Onuachu, Mara, ABK are 6 players that are expendable in my eyes. Get rid of those and use that to reinforce the two areas we are lacking, after yesterday it looks even more obvious if it didn't already. We need a 'star' attacking player, all the teams in the league have someone. We also need a GK who has the ability to keep us in games when we're having tough moments. Get those two positions sorted and I think we're a mid-table side. Might be a bit premature, but had we had those two elements yesterday we'd have won that game 2 or 3.

He frustrates me to be honest. He's got the ability to beat a man, but his end product is so often lacking. We will need him to hit some numbers this year, it's his 2nd season of regular pro football so time is still on his side, but I'd have hoped by now we'd start seeing some end product from him - but he's still exactly the same as he was 2 years ago in my eyes. Jurys out, may never quite make the grade at the top level because of that.

Fernandes is your pretty typical number 8 style player. If you think last season we had Stu Armstrong and Rothwell who could play that role. This season we have lost both of those and gained Charly, so there is a gap for another 8 in my opinion. I wouldn't prioritise it over GK though, but maybe the club aren't - best to judge that one at the end of the window. In isolation it's a position we've lost numbers in. The only way O'Riley still comes in is if Charly goes as we need a big sale for that to happen, so we'll see how that pans out in the coming weeks. Striker wise we're probably waiting to see what happens with Sekou and Onuanchu - if we lose both of those, we almost certainly need an alternative up there as it wouldn't leave us with any natural number 9's as such (I discount Stewart, he's irrelevant as far as I'm concerned)

I like him, a really technical player, got a lot of grit to him as well. A very, very good pickup by us for the price. The cheap gems are still out there...!

I don't know why he's all of a sudden become good enough. He really isn't. I'm sure he'll be sold for £7mish in the next week or two.

I thought we played better with 11 v 11 to be honest, it was quite a bit of huff and puff by us after that point. I did see a lot of the predictions on here prior to the match, 4-0, 5-0, 3-0 etc but it was never going to be like that. First games of the season rarely play out easily and Newcastle will know for sure they've been in a game. Lots of positives in respects of how we controlled passages of the game, but ultimately a game is decided in the two boxes and that's where we came up short. I find the Alex McCarthy situation totally perplexing, this was a guy that the club deemed not good enough to be 2nd choice in the Champ - yet now they believe he is good enough to be first choice in the prem. I know it won't stay like that though, it simply can't otherwise promotion is a waste of everyone's time. As well as giving the ball away, I thought his attempt to save from Jolienton was horrific - a normal PL level keeper gets a hand on that. One thing I'll take away is our shit-housery, I quite like reading fans moaning about our foul play/games/antics - for so many years in the PL we were an absolute meek as shit soft touch, rolling over and getting our bellies tickled - if we're now going to be a bit shithouse then I'm all for it. The dark arts are important and it makes up for your limitations in other areas. Lots to build on, but the ultimate issue boiled down to exactly what every single fan has said all pre-season - the GK is not good enough. It's just blowing my mind why he's here.

He was at PNE when he was 20, not Boro. Boro was his second loan the following January.

Bednarek and Smallbone as well, but like you say with the big caveat that it's at the level below we were using them in before.

We're down Fraser as well. Could certainly see another wide player.

He's nowhere near that, only about 5'8,5'9. He's your nippy run in behind forward.

Supposedly this deal for the Chelsea guy will allow us to loan out Shea for the season to aid his development. Celtic are big fans of Shea and have enquired about him. We want O'Riley, 2+2=5 probably, but there's something to be done there - maybe.

I honestly don't think you can count Stewart as an option in any scenario. It's best that he is just discounted and we plan around him in my opinion. He hasn't had a pre-season in 2 years, still no nearer getting any game time, specialists from outside are in to try and help - it's all very damming for his future.

I hope I live through us making a signing of that level, one day. Can't imagine how exciting that would have been.

All that happened quite quickly, when I left yesterday there was an unknown move for a CM, but now Mara is off, the Chelsea guy is the CM and we're buying Archer. The Chelsea guy was very highly rated when they signed him, £23-30m they paid. One of those 'top prospect' French DM's at the time. Never got a game at Chelsea but that's to be expected. If he can get back to the level he was at France we'll be laughing, he's huge. No idea what to make of Archer.

Forgot about the LeG links to him, that's probably the one then.

Endo at Liverpool is a name that immediately springs to mind. Experienced, another Japanese international to add to our cohort. Available for loan.

#ITKWatch @SuperSAINT

The one which intrigues me is their loan move for Kalvin Phillips. He looked absolutley finished last season for WHU, didn't seem to be able to play football anymore.

He gave us a bit of a hope in what was a pretty miserable PL season, the only player to have really done that. He has immediately achieved more than Sulemana, Ounachu, ABK, Edozie, Stewart etc. He doesn't quite fit with what we're trying to do now, but the fact we'll potentially make a profit on him is a sign that he has been one of our better acquisitions in a long list of duds.

It is genuinely scary the lack of sense there was in our scouting, we are absolutley lucky that we aren't facing financial oblivion on the back of all that. I guess a bit of the money was offset by the large sales of VVD etc, but a club like Southampton selling a player for £85m should set us up for a really nice sustainable PL future - but that was the sale which sent us packing and on a slow and torturous decline. What a waste of a sale which should have created a bit of a legacy. Ross Wilson is a disgrace.

I'd argue that Leicester did actually fall foul to the same problems we face - poor scouting and recruitment over a few transfer windows. They won the PL without building towards it, let's be fair. That was a crazy footballing moment. After that they managed to sustain it for a little while, but then they started signing dudds like Soumare, Vestergaard, Faes, Praat, Castange, Daka etc - those couple of windows stunted their progress and relegated them, pretty much the same as us. We got Top 6 without building towards it, we just got fortunate with a lot of good scouting. We sustained it the second season because of similar scouting, but then we screwed up window after window and it led to our relegation inevitably, and even now we are constrained by the amounts we've spent on dudds - same as Leicester, which is why they're under investigation for all sorts. Brighton will likely fall foul to the same, so will Brentford. It's hard to sustain for clubs like us because the big teams don't just come after your players, they also dismantle the entire setup which scouted them in the first place.

That's a blow for ABK, hopefully not too serious for his long-term health - but in relation to us wanting to sell him, that's that - any suitors are now drifting into the sunset. We'll have to rip up his contract to get him off the books at this stage. So we're potentially going to have to lose money to get rid of him, just like we did with Carillo and Boufal. Our bad scouting has really harmed us for too long now. There's no way back for him here as he's been excluded from the first team setup for many reasons.

I think they did lead somewhere, two incredible seasons for a club like us and two seasons in Europe. It won't ever get better than what we did under Koeman in those years.

Martin is going to have a few clashes with MOTD interviewers too, can see it a mile off.