interesting comment from sharpe on the live blog

piece of paper just passed around to every player... wonder if it's the confirmation of some signings to spur the lads over the line? 🤔

felipe, a centre back, confirmed at forest. opens the door for cook to depart?

sorry, i meant in terms of the potential for signings beyond o'brien!

are they still doing deal sheets? would probably be fine if so, provided gregg's already working on others now the o'brien move has moved onto the medical and paperwork stage

sounds like attitude to me. 6 months reeks of him sneering and thinking he's above them/the championship, and just using them as a short-term springboard to get a "proper" move in summer. no wonder most of the championship stayed well away

to clarify, sky are not reporting we've signed o'brien, just the exact same info we already know

sky reporting we're still in for cook, but that could be more to do with them being behind and the news its off not quite making its way along the grapevine yet

for a full season, fair enough, but i think that alone proves rich's claim today is wide of the mark, or is perhaps being misconstrued. you don't pay 1 mill plus full wages for a lad you're gonna have for less than 6 months of the season if you don't care about promotion, the play-offs, or doing well full-stop

agree. i think it needs to be gregg's contract task #1 once the window closes.

his distribution is absolutely shocking nowadays. he was pretty decent when he first came here, i remember it was a breath of fresh air after raya. i'm sure he used to play outside of the box a lot more than he does now as well.

where's that come from?

what was this??

i'd be pretty happy with Broughton if he manages to build on binning Hurst off and hopefully getting Edun out on loan by pulling off signing Porteous, Gelhardt and a midfielder off the back of it this window.

what a pathetic performance. if that doesn't loosen some purse strings, dear lord

selfish player in a team sport. good for the goal charts, but not the league position.

honestly think the venky's suffer a bit of sentimentality to some players, and it ends up f'ing us business wise. the fact we let so many players leave for nothing through stubbornly offering them a million contracts instead of just selling them is bizarre? and look at the brereton situation! as a fan, i get it, but as people running a football club? it's just not sensible business.

looking like louie annesley will be leaving this window before his contract's up. what a weird signing he's been? i know it's only gibraltar, but when you consider his age, the load of international games he's played, and just how long he's been here (five seasons now!) it's quite odd there's never once been anything whatsoever about him coming through into the first team, or even heading out on loan to develop? seems odd we'd bother keeping him for so long if we think so little of him? i saw him play for the u21s a few times, and he always seemed decent enough, no worse than many others on the pitch. odd!

pretty sure most of the first transfer window signings were based on players identified by john park and his team for mowbray if he'd stayed last summer. broughton and tomasson then cherry-picked from those they felt may fit their ideas. brittain and hyam minimum fall into that category, but i wouldn't be surprised if they all did considering we didn't have a recruitment head at the time. broughton was big on talking about park's contribution to that window as the latter left, which makes me think he was being gracious for allowing them to start on the front foot, despite coming in mid-window.

i certainly would be.. but i'm not josh bowler..

van den berg joins schalke.

putting words in my mouth. i think we'll get two in. if one is hyam, then i think we'll keep pursuing van hecke til we're forced to default to an alternative option. can very much understand why hyam would replace van den berg in the wanted list.

based on this, he is the exact type of signing Broughton was brought-in (sorry) to make. his interviews on podcasts etc. talk about this. this is the real brentford model they mean: find gems in the stats, moneyball it. it doesn't necessarily mean they have to come from europe just because that's where brentford found most of theirs.

two permanent defenders on the cards? 🤔 found it interesting that sharpe said hyam may knock a move for svdb on the head, not jpvh. any potential subtext there seems to suggest we'd prefer two permanent additions at the back, and good on us if we can pull off two permanents deals.

bit biased? an equivalent for hyam would be two promotions with coventry and 88 championship games in two seasons under his belt. he's more experienced than vdb in both championship games played and age. you might not be into the deal, but don't use cheap tricks to disguise the truth.