GrahamC

Logic says that we don’t offer him anything but I just have a feeling that Pearson rates him & that if he’s willing to take a big pay cut it’s not yet a definite no. Could be wrong but he’s currently the only one out of contract this summer that I’m not sure which way it will go.

Since joining Walsall in January he’s only started 5 league games & been on the bench far more often than he’s started. Seeing as this is in League Two, I’d suggest @Davefevs is right, he’ll need another loan before being near contention.

I’ve got a lot of time for them as Somerset’s major club & believe the catchment area is easily big enough to support a league side. Sadly ownership has been their issue for some while & having heard a few things about the new regime I fear it is going to get even worse for them, rather than better. GJ’s achievement in getting them to the Championship was an incredible one, far greater for me than us reaching the playoff final, for some to suggest that was the beginning of their problems is truly incredible, because he didn’t spend any money in doing so & there was no mess to clear up afterwards, they were simply outgunned by much bigger clubs with budgets many multiples of times greater.

I’ve always thought this comment (made most recently by Richard Gould) was a bit misleading, but I could be wrong. I understood it to mean we currently had a top ten budget, but seeing as we started the season with Kalas, Wells, Dasilva, Bentley all still on the wage bill, plus had Weimann, James, Naismith, Baker, Martin on it too, that wasn’t too surprising. Pearson has been really open about us needing to get our wage bill down & so I expect more signings like Sykes & Mehmeti from L1, plus contract renewal renegotiations (so cuts) like we did with Weimann & Wells. I was expecting our wage bill to continue to fall or at least even with inflation still not to rise, making new signings on less than those they replace.

He couldn’t play for us this season, as he’s already featured for Fulham in the league cup as well as Nice. I’m not convinced there will be such a big queue to sign him, he’s barely played in France, not getting on the pitch since November & I’d say we were a very realistic proposition for him, he’s definitely not getting another Prem club & so provided he is willing to be reasonable with his wage demands, if we are interested I could see this happening. However no way will we simply be offering him what Dasilva is on, the plan is to cut the wage bill, not perpetuate it just with different players.

My recollection was Hutchings cost £130k. At Brentford he usually played on the right side of defence, Ward used him in centre mid, presumably for his energy & running, basically as a Carlton Palmer clone. I’m not still altering what I always thought, a terrible player who seemed a stranger to the ball, he seemingly could never control it & so just did lots of running around. He wasn’t the worst signing no, but he was very poor.

A couple have already been mentioned, I definitely got swept up in the hype that Marcus Stewart would be a big success, likewise saw Caulker as a future England player & Rose as someone who would drop through the leagues pretty quickly. Bit more obscure, but saw Andrew Jordan play for the reserves or whatever the equivalent was back then & thought he’d have a great career, clearly he had his issues but I definitely thought he’d make it. Matty Hill on the other hand I thought was too limited technically to make it, just showed what guts & total commitment can do, he had an excellent career, you don’t play for the likes of Wolves & Sheff U if you’re a mug.

If he’s up for it this would be an excellent move. He can play in a variety of positions (saw him have very decent games in centre mid), he’s a goal threat (as Man U might recall) & still in his 20s. Could be nonsense but be delighted to see him back.

35.

Shouldn’t that **** be concentrating on trying to work out how to get points against the likes of Accrington Stanley, who have done the double over his shower this season?

Makes sense, Haiti is going to be a very difficult place to get back from, with minimal infrastructure & after losing their opening game Bermuda are going to struggle to qualify, anyway. In the past he appears to have largely played the games that were outside our regular season, but as he’s 33 this summer it looks like he’s signalling that he won’t even be doing that in future. Bit of a strange situation for him as none of his team mates are remotely his standard so you can understand why he is thinking of calling it a day.

It’s not factually correct, for starters. Some of his 18 penalties came against the sides that he’s listed, so he’s double counted them in order to make Kane look poorer. Never trust someone (he’s a Liverpool fan) who does that. I think it is very easy to argue players of previous eras played against fewer poorer sides, because frankly when the Soviet Union & Yugoslavia existed there were fewer European countries to start with, plus the San Marino’s, Gibraltar’s, Faroe Islands etc, didn’t play international football, but you lose credibility if you use incorrect information like this.

This is one of many things I don’t get about the blue few. Geoff Bradford was the only Rovers player to play for England whilst with them, I’m also pretty sure he scored on his only appearance. Mike Barrett died tragically young whilst still a player, Stuart Taylor is their record appearance holder, others like Harold Jarman & Alfie Biggs are legends to them. None of them have any part of their ramshackle ground named after them, every club, no matter at what level, has stands or standing areas named after people associated with the club the way we do with Atyeo & Dolman. They don’t even possess the thought process to do this.

Really surprising, isn’t it? Not what we saw at all.. Comments like he just ambles about, missing tackles & passing the ball square. As I posted earlier this was his first start of 2023 & on that evidence, probably his last. Half the problem is even if he actually is, he often doesn’t look like he’s trying, which is one sure way to piss off supporters. Moving to a club of that size at a level he can easily play at, was a brilliant opportunity for him, but he’s not taking it.

Probably his last for a while, too. Just subbed off, contributed absolutely nothing.

This also shows typically incredible naïvety. I was no fan of Bakinson at all but he’s still in his early 20s (24) & played around 50 league games in the Championship for us & then went on loan to Ipswich. Who seriously thinks someone of that standard “wouldn’t have a club”? Either someone who knows little about football or is naive in the extreme.

Both Goater & Wells have missed a lot of internationals when they fell during our season & both have played in sides where none of their team mates are remotely of their standard. One of Bermuda’s squad plays in the Greek second division, another is in Finland, but many are in England at clubs of about Bath City standard. When they played Montserrat a while ago I watched the highlights, they lost 3-2 Nakhi scored both, Lyle Taylor got 2 for Montserrat, they both looked what they are, from a totally different level to everyone else who was on the pitch.

Bakinson’s first start in the league this year, he’s been very much a back up with occasional late sub appearances recently.

Absolutely & the footage of the way Cotts celebrated the Wilbraham goal with a clenched fist & “******* have some of that” is what he’s clearly saying, shows what it meant to him & those players, too. People will forget but Swindon actually started the game well but we had absolutely battered them by the final whistle.

Jody Morris isn’t exactly pulling up any trees there, won just 2 of the 10 games he’s been in charge. Not been the greatest of loans for Kadji, got on with 6 minutes to go today & has had similar very late sub appearances for them recently.

Uli Hoeneß. Pretty decent player in his time, too..

The Olympiakos match fixing case is remarkable, witnesses mysteriously dying, others changing evidence after blatant intimidation, such as the referee I mentioned whose bakery was bombed. Greek football has been dodgy as **** for years, our FA is totally spineless though, all sorts of criminals & human rights abusers have been able to sportwash & money launder by buying their way into so many teams from Chelsea to Portsmouth.

This bloke’s the chairman, but he’s not the owner. That’s the bloke who was accused of match fixing in Greece but miraculously all the charges were dropped, that bombing of the business of one of the referees who was originally going to give evidence clearly just a big coincidence.. Be delighted to see them come back down, spent an incredible amount just to be in the relegation scrap, nothing against their supporters (don’t like Cooper much, such a whinger) but how this bloke was ever considered a fit & proper owner is remarkable.

The Norwood challenge on Williams was incredibly even worse. How on earth that wasn’t a retrospective red card I have absolutely no idea.

One of the reasons I’ll be delighted to see them relegated this season is they cheated FFP in the first place to ever get to the Prem & now did this to get back up there. A club with a league one ground & (until recently) dubious Russian money. They are pretty much everything that’s wrong with modern football.