Dan

Surely a non league club can't hold out for that much. I'd take him but I don't buy they could turn down £3mil.

I've got Norway loaded and Hødd missed out on the title on the final day. No tycoon either.

There'll always be an excuse. Go back to any point in time on this place and there are always excuses made for it.

You'd moan if we signed Messi!!!

That is like finishing above San Marino in qualifying tbf

It bloody better be

Extremely short-sighted again. But good luck to him. I suppose their fans like him for a reason.

Sabah Baku that would be very rogue.

Maybe I should've called it a day. Maybe I shouldn't. The summer starts with a key defender (Kambwala) leaving to Saudi Arabia. But we are a well-oiled machine. We'll cope with no problems. In comes Tim Drexler from Sturm Graz as a direct replacement. On FM I find a bit of a thing for some players who defy logic in their performances. What I mean is somebody totally average on paper who just never lets you down. This is Ben Hawighorst, a left sided young CB who joined me last season from Leverkusen for £1mil as a backup / free hit sort of signing. He started last season in my team and barely put a foot wrong, his partnership with Kambwala was key. But I was tempted in by the wonderkid. I've played the game stricter on my squad roles, but bent my rule to make Mexican Fernando Biagio Patlan, a 19 year old LCB a star player, a bargain at £7mil on paper, a really good prospect albeit one of those hard ball-playing defenders who wasn't brilliant in the air. In also came Greek goalkeeper Christos Mandas - an upgrade surely on my previous 2.5 star rated, 'OK' goalkeeper Beau Reus, another who was alright but you would think plugging in better players for the on paper weaker ones should raise the level. We actually win the super cup away at Bayern 1-3 from 1-0 down. I really do wonder if we can actually haul them in this season. Then the Bundesliga arrived. We start slowly with just one win from our opening four games, including a loss at a likely struggling Kaiserslautern. We're not playing badly, but the frequency we're drawing games we're the better side in is getting ridiculous. What becomes really obvious throughout the season is the complete drop off of not far off everybody. Ondrejka, Duranville, Banzuzi, Yirenkyi, so many steady heads who have gone down a level. Was Kambwala the glue? The ability to draw games seemed to have no bounds as we kept a rare clean sheet in a 0-0 draw away at Bayern. We'd turned wins into draws. I don't remember the exact record mid way through, but I think we'd drawn over half our games, won about 4 times and lost about 3. I needed things to change in the January window. I've kept a lot of money spare. Partly because I've not really been spending loads of it. But it's time to get a bit more serious. Drexler has been pretty rubbish and Patlan, while individually isn't performing terribly, hasn't improved us. Hawighorst was doing better than him. So Hawighorst did get the occasional game. Problem is, he was the same. He'd also dropped off. I broke my club record to bring in Kacper Potulski on deadline day - a 'complete' centre half. We made it through the CL league phase by scraping past Brugge at home on the final day but were handed a tie against Villarreal, a team who'd beaten us pretty comfortably early in the league phase. Potulski's debut was the performance of the season - we beat Leverkusen away in extra time of the DFP Pokal quarter finals. We largely were the better side. Things are fixed. We then somehow ended up beating Villarreal 4-1 at home in a case of kind variance as we seemed to score every time we managed an attack, and completed the double with a 1-2 win at their place. We had a pretty strong February, but there were still red flags. We were still conceding goals. We were turning the games we'd have 25 shots to the oppositions 7 from 2-2 draws into 3-2 wins. It's still good, but I cannot have a team letting in 2 this often. It will always catch up with you. Barcelona beat us in both legs 1-0, but this sandwiched what I'd say is my worst result probably on FM26 in a 3-0 loss at bottom of the table Dusseldorf. In a bizarre twist, from the start of March, we only managed to beat two sides - Mainz and Gladbach, both of them twice. The league form was absolutely abject. But we seemed to save it for the Pokal which we retained to my almost amazement. Gladbach, a very similar level to the Bremen side we beat in the final last season, yet I went in with very little confidence. Team morale shattered. An "uplifting" team talk ending in everyone losing their shit with me. I was rewarded after the cup final win with a meeting with our new Chinese board, and quite honestly, I think it's fair enough. I do think our performances probably deserved more than what we actually ended up on, but this was as hard a drop off as I've had that I can remember. Not many of the signings worked. Mandas was a disgrace and has already been sold. Potulski was 'OK'. Patlan is a good player but I think in the wrong team, and shouldn't be a star player. The aim for the season was the Europa League according to the board, and I did ultimately deliver it, but I've swayed dangerously close to a really surprise sacking in this season. I got it horribly wrong. The team will be getting an overhaul in the summer. That's a promise.

Another striker to go with Bristric. Hold the front and back page but if we did this. I'd actually take Adebayo on two conditions - he was third choice on top of my other mystery striker and it was a one year reasonable deal. I'd have said the same with Ings as well.

Boring answer but Huth. That was a massive shift for both clubs as Stoke went for the massively inferior Wollscheid and we got a player perfectly suited to how we played.

Bristric I can only assume is a McCarron link, sort of signing I'd have imagined a club like Lommel would make. We had a similar sort of mixed bag under Maresca. You're right though as a general rule. I don't think we have a clue and it's reflected in the desperation like this. Desperation never leads to anything good and we're always seemingly desperate. There were definitely bargains about the EFL to be had. Not just throwing a load of money at another player on the way down. If the £20k thing is legit, which like I often say would be very on brand, then ****ing hell. That's £3mil committed to a player who you've got no chance of a penny back on who has a reasonable chance of being finished pretty quickly. It stinks.

You know what was a very good deal, the sort of deal I'd absolutely back them if they started going for. Whatever the equivalent of Ipswich signing Wes Burns for £100k in 2021 is of today. Novel concept.

The benefit of the doubt for these idiots just has to stop now. Every single time it's based on spurious hope that we haven't been stupid. Then the truth is revealed. We have learnt absolutely nothing. Not a jot.

3 years is just a disgrace if that's true.

They seem to have two methods which are shit or bust, or just do nothing and hope for the best. The two times we went for the latter, we produced the two biggest underachievement relegations I can remember. Literally 1 and 2, on the podium. They have an incredible knack of playing it wrongly. The comparisons every time we sign an ageing player to the Pearson years are really silly. Do people not remember that a little bit better, if they're going to bring it up? With the exception of Cambiasso (who was a huge coup anyway), and the likes of Wasilewski, I don't remember any of his veteran signings being anything other than squad supplementary types. If he'd signed a Burns (which actually I could see) it wouldn't have been from a position of needing him to work to achieve our aims. In this era we throw our eggs in risky baskets.

I completely understand that three of the last four years (and even part of the other year) were completely toxic, miserable and we're fed up of it. We're probably going to win more games than we lose this season. People want to be positive. I get that. But some of the stuff I read on here about this sort of signing. Rudkin gets universally bashed but all of a sudden if we pay up a solid Championship level deal, in League One, for an ageing player who was pretty pace reliant, who has since had a bad injury, that isn't just something to shrug our shoulders at is it surely? I remember the first time we got relegated and it was out with the toxicity of Tielemans, Maddison etc... whoever and in with the humble, good lads Coady and Winks. Like I said above, if this is a loan, or a reasonable, one year deal - fair enough. But if we tie ourselves into yet another risky deal, all on the premise of "we have to do this to get out of the league" (not true, didn't see Lincoln or Cardiff doing this over and over again), to then hypothetically be promoted, still in the shit financially, still needing an overhaul, where the same sort of thing will be trotted out for the latest version of this sort of signing. This isn't negativity for negativity's sake even though it feels like it. Even though we are scarred. I'm just not willing to overlook it in this position. Overlooking these sorts of things are why we're in this position in the first place. I'm being ultra picky and have good reason to.

Fine on loan. Anything more... nah.

Belgrade derby next month!

You've just got to hope a prospective buyer views us the way MacAnthony does really.

So they'll put the crap blocks on sale, people will wait for the better ones and this will in turn justify them only taking the smaller allocation when we could comfortably sell more. Sounds about right.

I think time will tell but I personally think you're overestimating the level of performance we've served up. On the flip side, does Skipp go into Stockport for Norwood last season and raise their level? On paper, yes, he should be comfortably better. In terms of actual performance I don't think there's a great case personally.

We weren't really good in any position other than scaring the occasional belter, which as this dried up later in the season the results did as well. The defence was rubbish but we haven't had a proper defensive midfielder in years, which is where I'm pointing fingers at Skipp. For somebody who gets credit for doing 'dirty work' I don't think he's really that good at it.

ffs

They live in another world.