honeybradger

That is his best position in my mind, plenty of strikers start out on the wings and end up playing centrally. For my money Evans is currently the better and more promising player as well, much rather have him up front than Martin.

If we loan Chido Obi Martin in instead of playing Jake Evans i genuinely think my blood would boil.

The fact that we could offload all of these to Wrexham and I wouldnt expect Wrexham to make a promotion push makes me think we're going to struggle this season and that our fans actually still overrate these players by giving them 'clean sheets' and expecting them to come good.

Pretty sure we have that Portuguese lad from Benfica lined up. Too much coincidence that rumours started coming out about him and him following us around the time El Khannouss to Crystal Palace started picking up steam.

Well yh the FA cup win goes without saying but it's not a good example for what im trying to say when we were breaching PSR at the time and have ended up where we are.

In recent years we've had West Ham, Newcastle, Crystal Palace winning trophies. Aston Villa, Newcastle in the champions league. Brighton, Bournemouth Brentford in the Prem. The period with the biggest gap between the top and the bottom was 2004-2015 where there were 11 years where only the sky 6 finished in the top 4. Now it feels fairly even matched. To be honest I kind of like the likes of Chelsea and Man United throwing round money, when we were benefiting from it at least. It means you can attract players that clubs like ours otherwise couldnt because they see a pathway to the top.

With the ridiculous wages and transfer fees we have been handing out to underperforming players we 100% need to be on the barrel end of PSR. Rather this than Rudkin being given free reign renewing the contracts of the likes of Ward, Coady, Choudhury, Ayew Winks when it comes round to it.

He looked pretty rough in pre season. He is talented but probably had his confidence knocked by his loan not going the way everyone wanted it to and his injury. A good loan in league one or two would do him well, if he stayed and played i fear that we have a number of fans waiting in the wings to pounce on him when he has his first bad game for us, similar to what happened to Nelson. After a successful loan Nelson is better positioned to ride the criticism whereas with Baybrooke you would run the risk of completely destroying his confidence.

Good move for him. Is it typical for the loan to only go until next January?

I dont like this narrative at all. They dont need to be the class of 92, they just need to be as good or better than Vestergaard, Faes, Justin, Ayew, Daka, Soumare etc. It's not an impossible hurdle to jump, it feels like a large portion of our fanbase have developed Stockholm syndrome regarding these players despite all the times they have proven that theyre not very good. Our academy has produced Premier League players before, our players are championship quality now. It would make sense that the best talents our academy have produced in decades in Monga, Evans, Page, Nelson can reach those same levels as Premier League players and displace our Championship quality ones. Also Winks was one of our worst players last season, he hasnt proven outright that he is better than those around him. Have we ever had a player who has been consistently bad for us a for a year yet still get lauded by the fans like Winks does?

Aluko injured apparently, hopefully nothing serious as we will need him this season. Especially if Justin leaves.

He wasnt particularly good for us last time around and ended up being benched by Justin at the tail end of the season. Has he had a good season at Norwich or is he still the same player? If he hasnt improved then I dont think we should be in for him.

4-1 golding

Is there seriously nowhere to watch?

He's no one but claims that he was first on other stories that im not knowledgeable on.

It's hard to argue otherwise, based on the first two games we are one of the worst sides in the Championship and the only reason we dont have two losses is that we played Wednesday in one of those games. The only ray of light is that we have players like Monga, Page, Nelson, Aluko, Alves, Evans to come in a hopefully turn us around.

Looks class, sadly probably already too good for us. Could have done with the club looking at players like this last season rather than Skipp.

I think we have to agree to disagree. I think the momentum of the game changing against Wednesday was inevitable even if we didn't make any changes. They were completely dead on their legs in the second half. I wouldnt call Winks coming on at 1-0 up against Huddersfield changing the momentum of the game when we ended up drawing. Apart from his goal he was poor that game. El Khannouss on the other hand actually has a number of good games for us at PL level. Inconsistent or not, Winks was consistently terrible last season whereas at least El Khannouss showed he can help us win games for us at that level. He is our best midfielder and it's not actually close at all between him and Winks.

El Khannouss. Only midfielder we have who played to a decent level in the PL last season. When put into the context of Skipp, Soumare and Choudhury I would categorise him under 'least bad' rather than 'best' and in my opinion he belongs amongst those names rather than being a standout above them.

When I watched the game I honestly didn't think Winks was any better than Soumare but it's hard to keep track of players whilst watching. I just find it interesting to see the abuse Soumare receives in comparison to the 'Winks is still our best midfielder despite him actively disrespecting the club' mentality. I struggle to put my finger on what Winks actually does that makes him have better PR despite not tracking runners properly, strolling around, not making tackles etc. similar to what Soumare gets dogs abuse for. If I had to get rid of one of the two it would be Winks all day long (ideally both).

Is there somewhere to watch the match back in full? I remember Winks being anonymous but if he did actually do something worthwhile then I stand corrected. I think the fact that we were quite comfortably overran in midfield speaks for itself though and that wasnt just the fault of Soumare and El Khannouss.

All of this talk of 'best midfielder'. Rubbish. He was awful against Preston who finished 20th in the championship last season. He only played well coming on in the second half against a Sheffield Wednesday side that had zero match fitness after no pre season. Their first team were dropping like flies and cramping up and their bench had no quality. It was less Winks being good and more Wednesday putting in one of the worst second half performances we will face in the coming years. In the last year for us I can only remember two good games for us, when he came on as a substitute against Southampton and when he came on against Wednesday. He's genuinely not very good.

Fatawu surely has nothing to prove for us. Just came back from an ACL and clearly cares about the club. The only thing you can criticise him for is trying too hard and losing his head sometimes. Still he's one of the few that can keep his head held high.

How do we know this? Surely no youth player turns down first team minutes if offered them irrespective of the position. If he saw a pathway to the first team at centreback im sure he would have taken it. I think it was likely that he was unsettled by being moved to centreback in the u23s by Thomas but wouldnt have minded had it lead to him playing in the cups and ending up as 3rd choice centre back for us.

He left because he wasn't getting game time. If we had played him at centre back in the cups he would have likely accepted, it would be silly for him not to. At the time we were playing Fuchs and Morgan at centrebacks in the cups instead of him who were on their last legs here. He was also around when Luke Thomas broke into the first XI at left back, at the time I rated Bassey higher but was pleasantly surprised with how Thomas performed. So he wasnt competing with Chilwell, he was competing with Thomas at left back at the end of the season. Not to forget that disastrous Ryan Bennett loan where we could have used Bassey instead. So there were plenty of opportunities to give Bassey gametime, we just never did it.