honeybradger

He's on 4,000 to 5,000 a week apparently, which is standard for league one. It would need to be their record signing though, which is currently £400,000. Shows the level of mismanagement at this club that we might be competing in the same league with the transfer fees and wages we have spent.

Alves does have the work ethic defensively but struggles with the positioning side of it.

Minutes at Liverpool are more important for a player's development than minutes with us. If a young player struggles to get minutes with us then that's his career trajectory scuffed, if he struggles to get minutes at a Europe level Prem club they can still get a good loan to the championship or move to a European club.

Ricardo's last home game on the bench? Hopefully despite the situation he gets a good send off.

Our academy produces leaders, our recruitment team signs pansies. Who came to apologise to fans the other day? Lascelles, Choudhury and Page, 2 out of 3 academy players. Look at the way Braybrooke has turned his career around after a nightmare loan and injury. Evans went to a relegation battling league one side at 17. Jayden Joseph, Wilson Brown both establishing themselves in league 2 at a young ages. These are players with the required mentality, not some 30 year old league one journeyman whose going to "lay down the law". The thing is we looked decent in pre season, lots of energy and players trying to prove themselves. Those standards were set by the young lads like Joseph, Wilson Brown, Aluko, Page looking to prove themselves and it got ruined by the senior lads coming in and taking back their place without having to fight for it. Experienced players reduce footballing standards because they retain their position in the team through dressing room hierarchy rather than footballing ability and desire. The way we fix the mentality at this club is through playing a young group of players who are competitive and hungry to prove themselves and by bringing in a manager who backs them and doesn't default to relying on experience.

Hopefully not, would much rather some up and coming league 2 players i.e. braybrooke, Joseph, Wilson brown than sign yet more "experience".

Jordan Ayew is but agree Daka's terrible.

With 19 players on the pitch we will still end up with Winks and Vestergaard passing it back and forwards between each other.

How else is Rudkin going to fund one more year of Ayew?

The worst thing is that if Page was putting in similar performances on a fraction of the wage, we would be hearing endlessly about how we: wouldn't be in this mess if Winks was starting; missing out on proven championship quality etc.

It's preemptive for the season after next.

Anyone who bins off the likes of Winks and Faes gets a thumbs up from me. We need to prioritise getting these cockroaches out of the club, it's more important than results on the pitch even. Although as we've seen the results inevitably go tits up if you keep them around.

Yes, Kasper managed it, Simpson managed it but Winks clearly can't manage his current working situation. Van Nistelrooy had every right to try and improve Winks's performances. Just because he didn't know for certain that the distance was why Winks is playing awfully doesn't mean that he shouldnt at least try and remove one of the potential limiting factors.

I'm sure we would all be a lot more valuable if we had Jon Rudkin determining our value.

Can we get drawn against our own U21s in the vertu cup next season?

Winks will probably got to Wrexham, get binned off early on like Coady, play some testimonial matches for the likes of Son and Kane then go into management and become the next Russel Martin and/or Maresca's assistant. Don't think he will have much of a playing career left after this year.

Will he be on a contract like players and managers or is he treated like a permanent employee? If he's a permanent employee we can just let him go without paying him out like you would need to do with a contract. The reason you have contracts is so that the person isn't snatched up by other clubs but there's no risk of that with Rudkin.

The thing about rot is that it starts long before it becomes visible. Most of these examples are when it became visible. There were two levels of rot that started: 1. When Rudkin was appointed football director and when Pearson was sacked later that season. Rudkin was always an incompetent, purely administrative director of football that initially performed ok because he didn't get in the way of the competent people around him. Pearson was the one who originally put that competency in place and without him there was no one to maintain it. 2. When Rodgers was apponted and dismantled the remaining competency within the club. Rodgers brought in Congerton which led to rubbish signings and got rid of David Rennie which led to a pile up of injuries. Most of the club's best scouts left during the Rodgers era as well. As other's mentioned he also set the "we shouldn't even be here mentality". When that surrounding competency was dismantled from around Rudkin and the remainders of the Premier League winning squad moved on there was no one left to set standards anymore and it all fell apart.

As bad as this season has been, for me I have never felt lower about the club than the days we signed Ayew and Skipp. For Cooper's involvement in that alone I will always consider him to be worse than RVN, Cifuentes etc.

Evans on the bench. Bit strange considering he scored last game and that was over a week ago so he will be rested.

That always happens. Even this season you have fans saying the youngsters failed to deliver this season so why should we build around them in league one. As if any of them had been played regularly enough to fail. Only Ben Nelson has had enough minutes to be judged on and we're no better defensively with Vestergaard and Lascelles.

Grimsby fans were raving about Braybrooke the other day. At this rate we might need to be concerned that a championship or SPL club will send us an offer we can't turn down in the summer and snap him up.

"Why is everyone so mad? League one is number one league, no?" - Top

It's actually depressing to consider the reality that there's a good chance he won't be here next season. One of the few players we have that have value, and it's a lot less than it should be because we dumped him back in the U21s for no reason.

Southampton are run poorly but we are in a completely different league in that regard. They have been slowly dropping down the football pyramid and will likely to continue to do so, whilst we are lurching downwards, making them look relatively well off in comparison. In reality they are going the same way as the likes of West Brom and Norwich, so not great but from where we are it looks like daisies and sunshine.