S-Clarke

We didn't sell Onuanchu, ABK etc because clubs didn't pay us what we wanted. We'll only be offered less this year, so they'll probably be off out on loan again. Caleta-Carr is a mandatory purchase for Lyon, £3m is already done.

That's Leeds in the final then! Angus Gunn showing why we bought him.

This is the problem with Bazunu, none of the goals he concedes are particularly howlers - but you are always left feeling afterwards ''should he have saved that?''. If he'd prevented maybe 1 or 2 of those goals at Ipswich it would be a ''what a save!!!'' moment, but my argument is that he doesn't seem capable of stunning saves at crucial times. I'd expect any goalkeeper at any level to pull off match winning saves across a season. The topic is a bit of a mute point now though, as it's hard to say how he'd have dealt with the shots at WBA. We have to plan the next 12 months without him anyway, if I'm totally blunt I really hope the club use it as an opportunity to replace him. No stop gaps please.

Play tomorrow as the final, there's no guaranteed game after tomorrow. If he's anywhere near available then he plays, this isn't a game where you 'protect players' for a final that we might not even be in. Tomorrow is the 'here and now' final, could be our last game so we need to be as strong as we can for it.

I'd argue that both Dibling and SAA have looked better than Mara in their cameos this year. SAA got quite a bit of game time during August and I was quite excited by him, but he's dropped straight back into the U21's and I don't remember him doing anything particularly bad that warranted that. Yet Mara continues to stroll around like a pub player and is ahead of them. I don't see what Mara or Sulemana have given us that SAA couldn't have in the same cameos. I can understand why some fans are saying Martin doesn't' trust them, they won't improve if they don't play - and SAA looked cracking at the start of the year.

I thought Norwich looked pretty naff of what I saw on Sunday, they pretty much wasted their chance in my eyes (as Leeds looked equally as crap). I think quality will see this one through, not sure Norwich have enough to repel Summerville, Gnonto, Rutter at Elland rd - Leeds will be right up for this.

Is this another of those ''Downes is close, but he's still out for 4 years'' type of comments?

Let's hope he never goes to St Mary's and hears what all those nasty big burly men say in the stands!

Never thought I'd see Trousers call someone a numpty

I reckon we'd get around £20m for KWP, he's only got a year left. Downes would cost between 10-15m, he's still got plenty of time on his contract at WHU and they bought him for £10-15m, he's not bombed enough for them to take such a huge hit. THB has an agreed 'promotion' fee in his contract of £22m, if we did re-negotiate that we'd be looking at 15m maybe - I don't see any scenario where we spend £15m on two individual players as a Championship club, it would be somewhat daft. We still need to buy a replacement for Adams, Stu Armstrong, Baznuu/McCarthy, Tella - and that's before spending £30m on those two. We'll need to be active, but we'll need to be pretty prudent on the sums we spend on individuals to make it go around.

It has been said that fighter pilots can see 120+fps, but still a bit hard to prove! But i think we can at least be certain we all see more than 10fps!

No it's not, most humans can see a frame rate of 60fps. Impossible to measure accurately as it's not really what human vision is based on, but if our frame rate of the human eye was 10fps then I'm not sure many would function.

I think this would be a great moment if it happens. The way it's executed in this country is quite simply horrific, they keep trying to tweak it and then make it worse. Scrap it for now, don't ditch the idea totally for the future, but it needs to be totally rethought from the ground up if it is to return - probably best for it not handled by washed up English ref's in the future. I reckon it will stay though - the FA have chucked so much money into VAR, they even have their own purpose built HQ for it all - money will win out and they'll somehow get enough backing to keep it, probably with the promise of 'changes'. (which will just make it worse).

But he openly admitted he was in charge of recruitment in the January of 2023, arguably the most important transfer window we've had for many, many years - and he lumbered us with Orsic (wtf?), Onuachu, Sullemana - wonderful scouting there. Charly the only success, but he's not even here anymore either. He failed us in that January more than Joe Shields or Wilcox did, that's why fans have such an issue with him.

They are certainly more flush with cash, but I still can't get over how much we wasted in our last PL season. Upwards of £140m. That should have build a competitive PL team, it couldn't have gone much worse. Shows the mega importance of scouting, getting it wrong at the scale we did equals curtains pretty quickly. Villa bought well with Watkins, Diaby, Bailey, Pau Torres etc. But they added those particular players down the spine of the team for mega money, like 30-40m each - we focused on adding loads of players in the 15-20m region, but funnily enough still added up to similar as Villa. We needed to move away from that 10-15m player bracket and spend big on 2 or 3 proven players down the spine, but we didn't. Quality over quantity was certainly what we should have focused on.

There seems to be a bit of media chatter about our loanies staying, even if we fail. I can't see it......maybe they want to, but I'm not sure we could financially push to what their selling clubs want if we remain in the Championship. Another loan, maybe, but THB would have caught the eyes of PL clubs (and promoted to the PL clubs), so if he is to go on loan it would be to the prem next time round - ditto Downes. We need to go up to keep either of them.

Sometimes you just need to take a breather before posting, you throw your toys out of the pram way too quickly.

Probably was an option when we were looking to swap Charly, but we opted for Rothwell. Can't say that Azaz has ripped up any tree's what so ever at Boro, so I won't be crying over that one. Saved some $$.

Not sure what the point of threads like this are tbh.

If i'm honest today was a good result as we played 10 men for most of it. He is so bad it's not even a joke anymore, club should be able to sack him as he cannot do his job. I can't be arsed with him anymore. I'd play Stephens up front in front of this fella.

It was somewhat what I expected, very cagy, neither team really pushing too hard. Second leg will be totally different. WBA lost a lot of players through injury during that game, doubt they'll recover for Friday - so they will probably be depleted. It's very similar to the Norwich v Leeds game - both Norwich and WBA will be kicking themselves, In my opinion both sides missed their chance here - and it's now on ourselves and Leeds to take the control in the 2nd leg, which we should do in my opinion. I don't expect anything less as WBA are pretty shit and very limited. Defensively we were ok today, Bednarek the pick of the bunch. Downes decent as usual. McCarthy made saves, I can't remember the last time I saw our GK make saves - so that was a refreshing change. The week is going to drag like crap though, but I think we're in a strong position and I think WBA blew their chance today.

I would argue that both Lavia and Tino were investments that the club envisaged huge return on in the near future, and that they'd play pretty much from day 1 - and they both did. They were both head and shoulders above everyone else which was pretty much expected by the club I'd have thought. I agree that he wasn't bought as the only DM, sadly we brought in AMN who we thought could do that role - but he's not even a footballer, so that was a poor sight by the club. Lavia and Tino were brought as first team players though, with a view to sell on for mega money within 12 months - which happened pretty much.

I don't really see that as Chelsea though, they've been given their opportunity by club x or y as Chelsea weren't interested or patient enough to develop them, so they palm them off elsewhere for someone to do the hard yards. Then they just want the $$$ that they can bring in for them with no real interest in their development. But they're also dumb enough to do the above, sell Lukaku for e.g for big money (and Matic), then re-sign them for double that a few years later as they think they're the ready made player now. It's such a lazy way of developing players and I'm glad it fell flat on it's arse with Lukaku.

I think that's a 'little' harsh, they've taken over clubs on a downturn from the outset and were on the back foot from day 1 at Gotzepe and Valenciennes - so their relegations were somewhat expected, that's probably part of the reason why they acquired them - a troubled club, not as expensive as an established top flight club, but with potential to reshape them over time. We were slightly different though, a middling PL club flirting with the trap door, they thought throwing millions at young kids would move us back up the table - but it killed us dead, they misread the situation with us wildly.

What's the argument? Chelsea have been the graveyard for young talent for many years, maybe it's changing now a bit? but their history is not about youth. They don't give players time, they want the ready made options. Lukaku, De Bruyne were two young players Chelsea poached, Matic was one from their academy - didn't allow them to develop or play games, so they moved to become the players they are today. I can think of others like Van Ginkel, Marko Marin, Iaan Mattsen, Chalobah, Ugochukwu, Casadei, Chukuwembka, Malang Sarr, Broja - those are all young players that have either come through, or they've signed in recent years that cannot get a look in. Sure, they become pro players at other clubs because they're good players - but it's hard not to say that they've wasted years of their careers rotting at Chelsea to get to that point. Now those are young players they've spent big money on in the main, even as academy players - so if they struggle to get a look in I struggle to see any football for JMM or this Rodriquez guy in many years, he'll be out on loan more before he gets a look in.