Wow, the optimism for any signing can emphatically dissipate with a simple scroll through this forum. So, to recap, on the last day our deals are.... Fleck.... Not long ago I'd argue he was a big upgrade on Travis. A guy with bite, who covered the ground and who undeniably had far more goals in his locker. Whether he can still hack it at this level remains to be seen but I'm not writing him off because he is 32. Jury out yet but surely a reason to be quietly optimistic, especially when there is an Adam Wharton sized hole to fill and a manager crying out for more experience. On top of this Travis is still our player. If he really is all that then he will be playing for a promotion pushing team and his value will only increase with good performances. He gets the chance to prove why he should play for us or gets us a bigger fee than we would get for him now. Win win. On top of this we manage to sign a USA International, certainly one of our top targets, who has scored 15 goals in 37 games at the tender age of 22. Raw prospect but hopefully plenty of growth in him and we get him on a try before you buy basis so if he turns out badly we aren't hugely out of pocket. Backed this up with a young Liverpool kid who has the physicality to hopefully stop us conceding quite so many soft goals. Admittedly he hasn't had the best loans previously and I am honest enough to admit I have seen nothing of him to form a good basis but there must be a reason he is still at Liverpool. I rate Ayari. I don't care what happened at Cov. There is a brilliant player there. McFazdean another vastly experienced player that has stood out when playing against him and has the physicality to outmuscle and bully if his legs are still there at 37. O'Riordan was beloved by Crewe fans and hopefully a real steal of a player with plenty of potential and Chrisene looks good when moving forward with the ball. All fairly positive, no? I remember years ago reading through the comments on here. They sounded out our decline and several posters were actively praying for relegation and hoping we got beat which I found bizarre. They wanted rid of the woeful manager at the helm, who at the time was Mowbray and called for us to bin the worst player they'd ever seen, that player was JRC. My response must have been quite inflammatory as it was immediately blocked. I was similarly angered at the tripe dished out when we signed Szmodics. He doesn't look too bad now does he? To my knowledge this is my first post since. I don't know if it will see the light of day either. I certainly expect more to disagree than agree. Yes, we have massively cut costs. Yes we aren't run well, (the on/off nature of the McGuire deal was a fiasco) but recruiting the kinds of players JDT asks for whilst not spending vast amounts highlights to me a job well done in the end. Our future may well be determined in the Indian courts. Venkys for all of their failings have never shirked putting money in. Hopefully they are allowed to continue to do so and in the summer we can finally begin a Brentford model of reinvestment based on selling players of the calibre of Adam rather than letting them walk for free. If this isn't the case then maybe I understand the doom and gloom of some posters but until then I'm fairly content with the job done by Broughton in this window despite him having both of his hands tied behind his back. Despite the soft underbelly and the injuries we have suffered this season some of our football has been fantastic to watch and I for one am optimistic if we can keep JDT and offer him better players in the summer then we really could turn around some of the pessimistic followers and look forward to a brighter future.