GrahamC

Good job Bailey Wright doesn’t still play for us or he might have got banned again. Real shame but as the season doesn’t have much left to play for & we’re expecting a few back after the international break it could have come at a worse time.

Remember talking to Wes’ dad privately on here when he was with us. He was absolutely scathing about their academy then, despite being a big Cardiff fan & he said no one from the year that Wes was in (they let him go at 16) ever made it there. He’s gone on to have a very decent career & is a regular starter at Ipswich. Absolutely no idea (or indeed care) if their set up is any better now, but from the outside it does seem odd we get so many Welsh lads, it would be like them picking up youngsters from Taunton & Gloucester.

Interesting to see how many youngsters that we still pick up from over the bridge. The keeper Casa-Grande here is from Newport, Hutton grew up in Caerphilly, Wood who was on the bench recently is from Monmouth & Taylor-Clarke is another Newport lad. You’d think this would be Cardiff’s main area to scout but we seem to regularly pick up a fair few from there.

Spot on. Greaves joined AC Milan in 1961, at the height of Italian football being at its most ultra defensive. He hated it there, didn’t get on with his coach & couldn’t wait to come home. In his 10 league games for Milan he still scored 9, imagine how many he would have scored if he was in a good place & appreciated by his coach. He is right up there with the most prolific scorers of all time, like Gerd Muller (68 goals in 62 games for West Germany) & Ferenc Puskas (84 in 85 for Hungary).

Plus it’s now been widely reported that not only was he not interested in signing another contract but that he was pushing for a move from the start of the season. People always reckon there is some much better solution out there but as it is obvious now there was only ever one bidder, to get them to raise their offer twice strikes me as the best we could do in the circumstances.

You’re right. It was under Millen & Di Canio had just taken charge of them, so quite a while before O’Driscoll.

Interesting stuff. Obvious but worth pointing out that the pandemic fundamentally altered the transfer market beneath the Prem & I guess this is a good way of trying to ensure you still get market value. In Semenyo’s case it now seems clear that whilst we understandably tried to get an auction going, only Bournemouth were interested, so as we needed a sale to stay inside FFP, this was the way we chose to make sure we didn’t sell too cheaply in a situation where there was only one bidder.

It was, Tinnion signed for us whilst Russell Osman was manager. Osman took a lot of flak for the decision to get rid of Dziekanowski but he also paid a ridiculous £75k to sign the excellent Mark Shail & brought in the very underrated Stuart Munro on a free transfer. Even one of his poorer signings in Liam Robinson saw us double our money on him a year later. Ian Baird was shite though & there were a number of non league standard players on frees that he also signed such as Colin (dead) Loss, Henry McKop & Rodney McAree, plus others even I have forgotten.

He went on loan to Hereford but only played once, then there was a bit of a fuss on here about him being on holiday In Dubai during the season. This explains both issues.

This is an incredibly lengthy post & so I’ve deleted a lot of it in my reply, firstly because I don’t disagree with all of it but also because it would dilute my points. You are factually incorrect about Cornick’s scoring record, as he’s never scored 18 in a season, last season he got 13, that’s his highest, this season (in 7 Luton starts) he had 2, in prior seasons it was 1, 9 & 8. He scored 38 goals in total for Luton. Soccerbase has this data. Secondly whilst I accept comparisons of players are simply opinions, Andy Smith never scored a single goal in English football, Bas Savage got very few in his entire career & none of them above league one. To compare these two players to someone who got double figures in the Championship last season therefore seems very odd to me.

Yep, with the exchange rate at that time, a figure of £2.3m seems to be the correct one.

Last thing from me on Haikin. I think this is a Pat Mountain decision, he’s our expert in this area & I simply don’t think we were impressed enough to offer Haikin a longer deal. We therefore told him this & so he sorted out a return to his former club. We didn’t feel comfortable trying to negotiate a third of the season with just one senior keeper in Max, but as we are pretty much safe now & I still think we could bring one in as an emergency loan, have simply brought the decision forward 2 months.

Quality, but disappointed that more don’t see the flames emoji as the only possible correct response here.

Spot on. Denis Smith bleated when he got sacked but anyone who thought the solution to our defensive issues was to swap a very decent midfielder in Andy May for that joker Dave Thompson & bring in the woeful Brian Mitchell as well, totally deserved it.

Wiles-Richards has been on the bench for the first team 7 times previously, so unless we have already made a decision not to extend his deal which expires this summer then it will surely be him. As an aside I do wish we could keep the Cornick pile on to just one thread, it is becoming borderline obsessive now.

We would be allowed to sign a goalkeeper on an emergency loan if that happened, because we would have no one on our books with league experience. I was told a while back he didn’t make a great impression at all in his only U21 game & that we were also surprised just how rusty he was in his first week with us. Not surprised that he’s going but thought it would be in the summer.

Someone on here said a few weeks ago that Barnsley were on the charge & so I pointed out they had a tough fixture list coming up (Plymouth, Wycombe away & Sheff Wed) so wouldn’t keep up the pace, shows how little I know.. On a remarkable run, had they not been denied a blatant penalty over the river tonight would have made it 9 wins on the trot if they stay ahead.

You just described almost all of Ivan Toney’s career there. Most of Brentford’s penalties (& they get loads) are like this. Massive cheat.

I think some of that is fair, but can’t see the point in going back further than his last 4 seasons. He said himself he was a late developer, he’s not an Academy product but has as you point out, played 4 seasons of Championship football in a row with certainly an inconsistent scoring record. I’ll be interested to see what Pearson thinks is going to be his best position, because at present we seem to be rotating a lot of players in the front three (goalkeeper aside the only area we really have choice) & nobody is really nailing down a spot. Having a good pre season will be key for him as will building up an understanding with whoever else is picked. I’m not expecting him to ever be prolific but (unlike some) I’m not writing him off just yet, either.

Geoff is by a country mile the best sport presenter we have had in this part of the world. He mixes an understanding of the game, having played it at a decent level, with an ability to ask good intelligent questions & not be fobbed off by sound bites or spin. It makes no difference at all that he’s ex Rovers, it was all a very long time ago now & whilst he will have some affection for a club he served in various capacities, he’s a Liverpool fan, which in his case is totally understandable.

He did, Houghton signed him for us & then Toronto. Probably the best keeper I have seen play for us in my 50 years. Basso was inspirational, Cashley had a brilliant season when we got to the top flight (I’m just old enough to remember) but despite the side in front of him being really very poor, he kept us in games. You don’t get to play in a European Cup final unless you’re pretty decent.

Thought it was effectively that the old company was bankrupt so the only 2 saleable assets that were left (Jan Moller was the other, who joined Toronto) were sold to clear some of the debts. Think the Harford money that Birmingham paid was what we still owed Newcastle & presumably Malmo were owed money for Moller, too.

Think some bloke is caught shouting “I wish you were dead” Cotts’ post match interview was bleeped out as a result, the Press Association reported all this at the time. Every club has tossers that follow them but most don’t bang on about how “loyal & true” their “family club” support is. They’re really weird, said it before they’re like some odd cult.

Joao cost Reading a rumoured £6m, is on telephone numbers & injury prone, he’s only scored 5 this season in 13 starts. A few years back I was a big fan, that ship has sailed now.

Remind me if that ***** ever did anything about the abuse Cotts got? He said it was amongst the worst of his career & I think we all know Steve is neither a whinger about these type of thing or someone who hasn’t heard this type of stuff before, but what he alleges was said to him was truly disgusting & yet they’ve done nothing about it. ******* family club my arse.