bluebruce

Entirely as predicted when we signed the player. Exactly why we needed a striker. Thomas may prove pointless without one.

Thought he was a central midfielder? He is on my FM.

Maybe he will move on to players who go by Daniel.

Sounds like he likes to link past-it free agent midfielders called Danny to Blackburn Rovers. Bit of a niche but whatever gains him followers I guess...

Well, I would love to have VAR too.

Was gonna say the same.

I can't ever understand this point of view, that fans pop up with from time to time. This regime has really done a number on the ambition of the fanbase. Financially alone, this club desperately needs promotion. Even if we came straight back down.

Taking league only, he has 912 minutes, so probably just under 10 full matches worth when you account for injury time. We'll call it 10 matches worth. It's a goal contribution every 228 minutes. 3 goals and 1 assist from 10 matches equivalent, so 4 goal contributions in 10 games, is actually pretty good when you put it that way, especially from a CAM role. Adding cup minutes increases it to 1080 minutes, or approx 12 games, with one extra assist, so 5 goal contributions in 12, or a goal contribution every 216 minutes. It's a small sample, but enough to suggest you're right that criticism is a bit overboard and it's worth seeing what we can get from him over a longer run. Not that goal contributions are the be all and end all. (For reference, they're actually very similar to Dack's numbers in the league, although of course he was struggling for fitness and is currently in form... 4 goal contributions in 914 league minutes is almost identical, and is also made of 3 goals and 1 assist. Dack has been much more prolific in the cups though, with 3 goals and 2 assists in 6 appearances. His average across all comps is a goal contribution every 154.7 minutes)

Of course he doesn't. If they're coming here they get a free pass. Which is fine to a degree, but I reckon he'd be the same if we signed me or thee.

Allegedly was our transfer deadline day striker target. They wanted 700k and we balked, he's out of contract in the summer. Presumably we may go back in for him in the summer if he doesn't sign on.

Tbf he had just scored 10 goals in 17 matches for Ipswich in the Championship in the first half of that season. When we loaned him, anyway, then he scored 0 in 7 for us and broke his foot, and we still decided to sign him fully.

Last I saw of him he was scoring a sensational overhead kick against Manure.

I can tell you right now if you want? It's getting rejected.

So he says twice that everyone will have sympathy, but we're not looking for sympathy.

We've been losing about 20 million a year, nearly every year since relegation. As sad as it is given how paltry our spending is compared to many, we definitely have a history of spending beyond our means.

It still wouldn't matter, not really. Again, promotion to the Premiership is worth a bare minimum of 170 million. Let's even assume we were giving him a pay rise, up to 80k p/w, on a 4 year deal and paying 10 mill as reported. That's a total of £26 million over the contract length (assuming we couldn't sell him on before or after relegation to League One, if we did indeed suffer successive relegations). Let's even call it £30 mill with bonuses. It would be how or even if we spent the remaining 140 million that would or wouldn't be an issue. It's not the league's duty to poke holes in a transfer that couldn't possibly cripple us in and of itself. I'm not saying it isn't the sort of thing our people should be putting into contracts though, it is.

If you do them club-wide, sure. On one player? Nah not so much. It would be a drop in the ocean, and absolutely isn't worth the EFL scrutinising the deal. Assuming this is what's even meant by this relegation clause speculation, and assuming there is anything in what Nicko said in the first place.

Personally I'm not sure why we didn't insert a clause specifying what we would do if we got promoted but the player showed up to the celebrations in ripped jeans, if we didn't go up but Steve Waggott's shares in Tesco rose by 23.42 percent, or if we got relegated but the star Betelgeuse went supernova. Frankly, I think it's a dereliction of duty for the EFL to not ask questions like these. (On a more serious note, who gives a fuck if we went up, signed a player on 65k p/w then got relegated? We'd have £170 fucking million in the coffers!)

What has happened before? Failing to sign a player because we bungled the paperwork? Maybe just on deals that we never heard about, but I'm sure it's never been out in public before. If we have form for it, we have zero chance in that appeal. And if the same person who botched it previously is still here, that's unforgiveable. The EFL staff have managed to read our forms properly and check for mistakes, and they're doing it for a lot more deals than we are.

I simply don't know how you've formed this opinion after the last few days. The interview is precisely what I'd have expected from anybody in his shoes. I feel like you watched a different interview to the one I watched.

There aren't any? As far as I'm aware. No quotas on foreign players, but you need at least 8 homegrown players or you lose a squad spot for each one you don't have (ie, you can normally register 25 players but if only 7 are homegrown you can only register 24).

He's allergic to negativity, and even his usual allies are criticising the club, so he's currently stabbing himself repeatedly with an epi-pen.

It's SW who is alleged to have been at the match. Not seen it from any official source.

A bit, but this sort of stuff is kinda beyond the pale, and I say that as a lifelong pedant. Especially in terms of then also being pedantic on the timing of a reply. But hey. I can see why nationality would be in there for identification, but I can't see why ethnicity would be in there. Presumably they submit a copy of the passport or something alongside it though? Which would say their bloody nationality. So it really is OTT pedantry for me. I agree, I don't entirely trust Nixon's version of events yet either, for various reasons including that he's a bit of a hack who I'm sure would report whatever the club told him if they wanted to get a certain story out. May be no coincidence it dropping a few hours after GB's interview. However (and this is for whoever it was who said why are we taking it as gospel) for the time being it's all we have to go on, so it's worth discussing. Shouldn't be assumed it's true though.

He's responsible for bringing in a flop. But the only way that £5 million bill was coming in was if we got promoted and Hirst played well enough during the promotion for us to think he could become a Premiership player. So basically it was never going to happen as it needed two extremely unlikely things to come off, and if those had both happened, we wouldn't have cared about spending it.