S-Clarke

The disease is back. Sounds like this is a forever problem, nothing can be done. "Simply put, the GLS disease, which will never leave now we have it, came back again with the weather as a contributor. "We've just raked out the dead, non-recoverable plants and overseeded - we've learnt a lot from previous years, but have to deal with it again. "We've raked the worst of the dead grass and removed it. We overseeded pre-friendlies and post-match and hope to see signs of new seedlings. "We have had experiences where they can die off too. Anyone at the games will notice it still plays very well, just looks terrible." Silvestri continued: "Our understanding is that as a fungal spore-spreading disease, it's always there, but if the conditions are favourable for it, it can strike. "The humid and occasionally wet weather has contributed, but unlike Athlete's Foot, there's no cure yet. It's extremely disheartening after all our hard work! "Over the years we've adjusted our practices to try to cope, but we have been backed by the club and Russell and the coaches have been very patient."

He has missed an entire pre-season, he will not play for us to any standard this season - pointless kidding ourselves otherwise. A loan would be good for him, as if we're honest - no one knows if he can play anymore.

Agreed, I have no idea where all this ''We aren't spending money'' waffle is coming from. We've spent more than most this summer, and that's without any substantial sales.

Still hoping to get '1 or 2' in the door this week is what I heard. ''Sometimes they seem closer, then it goes away again, then it comes back to life again''

Dull as dishwater really, I thought Getafe were the most anti-football Spanish side I've seen in a while. That was our 11 for next weekend - still some glaring holes we all know about, but they will get filled as we get to the end of the window.

I think the club are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the fans this summer. There is a general illusion that we haven't spent enough or improved the team, but we had to spend a £40m outlay on two players to ensure we kept them. So there's £40m there to just stand still, but it was necessary and I can imagine there would be serious uproar had we not got either through the door. Add the signings of Yuki, Edwards, Wood, BBD and you're looking at a current spend of upwards of £50m. For a club of our size, curtailed by FFP/PSR bollocks due to our splurge two years ago, that's a pretty heathy amount to have spent without any sales. We clearly now need to get money in before we can spend anything else, which is probably the case for most clubs. Unfortunately we're in a league where Bournemouth, Fulham etc have upwards of £50m to spend just from player-sales. Loans in the final week are where we will get our value. Convinced of it.

Personally I'd needed to have seen something from Sulemana, Mara, Bazunu by now. They even came down a league with us and still couldn't impact or develop any further. Edozie is on the borderline for me, he's technical and quick, but his end product and decision making is woeful and really should be improving by now at his age - jury is out on him. Sometimes players develop late, as with Morgan and Lallana, but sometimes you just have to look at what's in front of you to realise you're just hoping rather than expecting them to get better. There are certain 'young' players in our group that we should just accept defeat on and move them on, I include the 3 i mentioned above on that list. When I look at SAA or Dibling I see totally different players with genuine potential, and they're 4 or 5 years younger than the ones we bought to 'develop'. Charly is an interesting one, he wasn't signed as a young player to develop, more of a here and now kind of signing. The problem with Charly is that he doesn't suit Martin's style, I think there is a genuine clash there. That's not to say he's a bad player at all, but he's very loose with the ball and that isn't going to get you game time in Martin's teams. I would imagine the club would sell him for the right fee.

Absolutely, any money for ABK at this stage is a bonus. Need him out of the club ASAP, horrible influence who is being kept away from the first team setup. One of our worst ever signings - added to the long list of worst ever signings in just 3 transfer windows.

What have Ipswich managed? They seem to have created this illusion that they're having this mega, block-buster window. They signed Hutchinson for £20m, signed him from loan like we did with THB and Flynn for similar fee's. Jacob Greaves, talented CB from the Champ. We signed Wood, and Edwards from the EFL. Liam Delap - £20m unproven at the top level. Connor Townsend - Champ full back. Ben Johnson - full back on a free from WHU. We signed Suguwara and LB Charlie Taylor. Not seeing anything ground-breaking there that we're being left behind on, if I'm totally honest.

Probably one of the more fortunate 1-1's we could have had, Lazio were better than us for periods. McCarthy farting around with the ball is like asking a cat to swim in a swimming pool - it's lunacy and will only end bad. The club must know this and will get a 1st choice in, if they don't then anyone at any decision making level needs sacking! Parts of the 1st half were good though, BBD with that goal gave me Ings vibes - been a while since we've had a CF who is happy to take a pot shot from outside.

Well said, people do miss this point quite a lot. A few good transfer windows and you're set for a few years (in terms of sales/profit etc), a few bad ones....and you're screwed for many, many years. We're still reeling from those mental Hoedt, Lemina, Carillo, Boufal utter wastes of money. Signing Ross Stewart last summer for £8m didn't help either. I do think our big signings this year are THB and Downes, they will be supplemented by really good loans towards the end of the window - that's how I see it going and why we've not used any of our loan spaces yet.

Good post, well summarised. The jury for me is still out on our perm signings, although I think Downes and THB will clear that issue. Not sure in what universe Ross would have ever been worth double what we paid though, he'd only ever paid 13 games above L1 level. We overpaid at £8m by some distance.

Martin confirmed Sulemana is out for the start of the season, couple of weeks out at least (not much loss mind, might put off any suiters though annoyingly). Mara should be back for the mid week game. Stewart may be involved in the game next Saturday, i.e. our last one - emphasis on 'might' and they'll have to 'wait and see' - what a see on what, who knows. He hasn't been able to take part in a pre-season for 2 years.

It's a bit of a stretch saying we've lost Rothwell to be honest. He was nondescript for us. As a number, yeah I'll give you that, but as someone who contributed we haven't lost anything. I still expect us to sign a wide player, a number 10, a proper number 9 and hopefully a goalkeeper if the blind spots are removed from those at the club. If those signings take until the final few days to get right, then let it take that long - these signings are being talked about as critical for us, which they are, so let us make sure we get the right ones and not jump early and miss a potential opportunity that only comes up on the final few days.

We're certainly not weaker, not sure where this is coming from as I've seen a few mention this. We're on par with the side that started the playoff final. If you think Brooks - we've got Charly back. Fraser, we've brought in BBD. I cannot get behind the notion that we are weaker, on par yes, but not weaker. What happens in pre-season friendly's is largely irrelevant, but I still wouldn't expect us to have all our signings done by Newcastle. Come the start of September I'd expect us to have a squad that can compete in the PL. Count me disappointed if we don't after then, but I'm not going to get all panicky before. Let's not also discount the guys we've already bought in, i.e Downes/THB - they have a chance to prove themselves as PL players.

And that approach was a raving success. They were still embroiled in a relegation battle, a massive squad of players who have never really clicked, hit by points deductions because of their spending and further sanctions on what they can do this year because of their daft approach. So, yep - please don't do that Southampton.

I don't know why people are so panicky at the moment. It's been absolutley evident that our squad isn't going to be finished before the end of August, it will go right up to the deadline. We were never going to have all of our requirements filled by the Newcastle game, there is not a scenario in the world whereby that was a possibility. We may need to roll with the punches a little bit over the first couple of games, but the messages I'm seeing about the club being slow, sluggish, losing their way, asleep on the market, penny pinching, only focused on Gozepte etc are just nonsense. (that's not a dig at you personally by the way, it's all the things I see over social media from so called fans) As has been said so many times, we will wait for opportunities in the loan market - top level players too - they will only become options and available as we reach the end of the window, the same can also be said for guys like Matt O'Riley - as we get closer, he may push himself, which will force Celtics hand (to Atalanta or us). I think we've had a really structured and sensible window up to this point, we got the early deals in we could get in, but we have to be patient to get the quality enhancement signings we are clearly still after.

I'd argue that it's probably easier, in financial sense anyway, to push Goztepe up to this level in a relatively poor Turkish league. Just needs clever scouting, not millions spent. It's much harder for us in the PL, where you're looking at a hundred million + to build a squad to compete for Top 4 nowadays - which we couldn't do even if we wanted to because of PSR. Just don't want to see this turn into an agenda where people believe SR are putting all their ambition and resources into Gozepte. They're not. They'll be putting the majority of their resources into us just for us to try and stay above 18th.

Sadly in this day and age the only thing that counts is the $$$$ spent on your first team squad and the quality of said player. Nothing else makes any odds, Sunderland/Sheffield Wednesday/Leeds are relevant examples of that in relation to club size. As it stands we have a proven Championship team, but unproven in the PL. THB/Downes/BBD/Smallbone/Armstrong etc may well step up, but that's what we're relying on outside of any PL level additions.

That's a shock, remember him as a big part of Leicester's title win. Always a highly regarded coach. RIP.

Easy peasy. Not sure why the club can't just do this tomorrow.

I don't think that's fair, Trousers is a very reasoned poster on here - one of the few. He just has the same concerns as the majority of the fan base I'd say. It's not a dig at the manager per-say, it's just what we all see in front of us with our eyes. We watched it last season and witnessed our weaknesses, which up to this second, have not been addressed. Put those weaknesses in a stronger league and those 66 goals conceded will easily hit 100+. You don't think McCarthy as a starting GK is a good idea do you?

Expectations are very low, as it often is for playoff winning sides, so like has been said we can go into games underdogs - anything is a bonus. I'd expect us to compete against our fellow promoted sides for sure, but based on squad depth currently, everyone else will be too strong for us. I don't want to become a 'yo-yo' team, but I have a feeling we may end up being one this year. But either way, if we go back down we start again from a strong base and strong finances from this season to go again. Maybe at that point we will no longer have a blind spot over our GK and ST signings, so we could start a PL season with a proper GK.

However we feel about it, that is simply never, ever, ever changing under this manager and the philosophy he follows. His is quoted as saying that if we make mistakes doing what he wants, he's happy. He's not changing that. We will need a new manager if we want to see another approach, which obviously won't happen. Personally we can do it - we just need a GK capable of receiving the ball under pressure, Bazunu was great at that to give him credit, but it's never been McCarthy's game and at 36 he's not going to learn that or improve at that - dead loss on that one. We will concede bucket loads of goals next season though, I think we should all prepare for that - need to ensure we score lots at the other end. In some ways it's commendable that we are sticking to our plan, but there does seem to be quite a lot of head in the sand/fingers in ears from the coaches when it comes to genuine questions of it. That will be Martin's downfall as a manger IMO.

I keep seeing this, but I don't see it. We're on par with last season's 11, maybe a tiny notch up with the BBD signing. Play off final - McCarthy, KWP, Bednarek, THB, Stephens, Aribo, Downes, Smallbone, Armstrong, no Fraser so we can field BBD in his position, no Brooks but Charly is back. So we can easily field as strong a team as we had in the playoff final for sure, no issues with that at all. But obviously we now need to see some better quality in the ST position, GK and Aribos/Smallbones positions.