Lillehamring

but making no signings increases the chances of getting stuck in L1, hardly conducive to a buy out. i think the actual squad is a minor concern to a buyer with long-term plans. besides, we have a decent squad for this level, full of pure profit commodities.

5 year deal. I assume some of you will be dismayed....

Pretty sure that's the fabric the shirt is made from - allegedly some leicester connection to the pattern.

Looked offside, but none of the replays gave us the angle required.

You say that, but i was surprised just how many times we actually managed to play through the press. I don't think the problem was playing from the back, i think it was decision making and execution in the final third that cost us.

I don't think it should be overlooked how (barring a couple of newer players) we matched a PL team for fitness tonight. Not to mention were generally the better team. First goal looked offside, and two goals just getting enough of the woodwork - hopefully soon, we'll start getting a bit of that luck.

we had 60% possession...

That counter towards the end, where he lays it off, he covered some ground then, really shifted, unfortunately Howells didn't look up.

I've heard of half of them.... I just hope we have enough going forward to compensate for the few we'll likely concede - it feels like we'll have a lot of space to play the ball over the top into. can't see this being a classic RM possession game.

Possibly explains why it was too late to bring in Gray?

Do we know what sort of quality ipswich have opted for - i mean, if they've rested 11 players and gone with duds and academy lads we could have a 6-6 draw on our hands...

Kind of sounds like the sort of offer we'd make - 500K and you get it in 3 years time.

To be fair, considering the usual standard of complaint on this board, i was expecting absolute meltdown on here and it actually seems like a fair few people are genuinely OK with this squad (with some displeasure at the Thomas part)

I like the idea of giving Aluko some game time at centre back - with a view to going most of the season with a back four of: Joseph/Aluko/Ilari/Mcfarlane. As for thomas - maybe it's meant to be, a lot of his problems are when he's isolated...

To be fair, we've only seen cullen play a couple of games, in a squad still learning to gel - he might actually turn out to be a decent player.

Do you mean Marc Guéhi? who had just turned 16 at the start of 16/17 season? Besides, the point being made was that having won the league we had a chance to make a huge step up in quality, but we were always going to be hamstringed by what we were allowed to spend - sure, we might have got a gem like maguire on the cheap - but we were never going to be able to spend 40, 50 60 million on a single player; and we were still having to sell players just to be able to spend 20 or 30 million.

The irony is, we were still trying to abide by PSR rules at the time, same reason we weren't able to make lookman's loan permanent.

Exactly - PL champions and we were shopping in this price bracket - 13M for Mendy, 16 for Musa, even the 25-odd for Slimani - this was our budget at the time - there were 15 players that season who cost more than slimani, even palace spent more on Benteke.

He sounds like he's better on the ball than Okoli and wants to be here unlike all the other CBs, even if he is young and needs developing - by default that has to be an improvement.

You mean the one where we were still bound by championship spending restrictions? It was a great opportunity, yes, unfortunately the nature of the financial rules meant we hadn't the budget to take advantage. Newly/recently promoted teams back then didn't spend like forest and ipswich and sunderland have done in recent years. For their sins, our owners did actually stick to spending limits at that time.

Are you saying that mccateer was one of our best players? was Tom Cannon one of our better players? Every team loses players on free transfers, it's not like we're the only team - the other season i think everton lost 10 players for free. There's no evidence to suggest that these departures are because we have demanded too much or that we simply couldn't find buyers. Club 'Lost' future fees since 2015 Manchester City £343m £343m £343m Manchester United £273m £273m £273m Chelsea £246m £246m £246m Arsenal £148m £148m £148m Liverpool £116m £116m £116m Tottenham Hotspur £115m £115m £115m Birmingham City £106m £106m £106m Sheffield United £97m £97m £97m Hull City £91m £91m £91m Fulham £87m £87m £87m Note: Lost future fees are defined as the difference between the amount a player was sold for the identified club, and the amount they moved for in their next transfer deal. Instances where the next fee was lower than the previous one have been excluded. All figures converted from EUR to GBP at prevailing rate in relevant transfer window. English clubs only. Source: Transfermarkt

If these figures are even true and not just something someone has plucked out of the air... If you've ever tried to sell anything second hand, you'll know that you never put the price you want, you put something beyond it to give yourself room for bargaining. if they're putting 12 and 6, it probably means that they'll take 9 and 4 or something. I know the insistence here is that the club are incompetent, but when they do sell players they often get a decent price for them: from Maguire to McAteer - we've been getting good prices for years. I think the question here and commonly over the last few years, is not the price we need to get for individual players, but that no one wants to risk spending ANY money on players that have been sh!t for years...

Sure, the recent performances have not helped, and figures and popularity are beginning to drop - they can't afford to stay out of the news long - but even the double relegation has kept us in the public eye.

That's fair enough, no doubt many have forgotten why they even started to follow. But given the power of social media, having a pre-established following of 25M is no bad thing. It's a figure that money can't buy - any new owner will come in with a view of being in the PL, if they achieve that, it's much easier to get the attention of those already following than to try to gain anywhere near that many new followers. Proof of that is, despite all the media focus, wrexham still only have 1.5 million followers on instagram. Also, if you look at the figures from 2023-24 (see link) we still ranked 11th in england, with +2.2M new followers in that period. So maybe not as silly or make believe as you think. https://football-observatory.com/WeeklyPost467

Doesn't help when the body who are supposed to co-ordinate such worldwide agrements are just a corrupt money-making greed machine.