Totally bizarre decision. Can't think of any justification for it at all. Eustace must have been watching a totally different game.

You seem to struggle with nuance. I never said anything about a policy, nor have I implied it. I simply believe that in this current situation, we should attempt to renew the players with expiring contracts, at the right terms. I never mentioned their ages, that was all you - in fact Gally is older than the age range you said. Nor did I say it should have been a full-on policy 3/4 years ago, I was talking about a single player. It's all situational, not policy, and that's why you're putting words in my mouth by saying what you said. But what we did 3/4 years ago, not renewing the contracts of BBD, Lenihan, Rothwell, cost us an absolute fuckton in lost revenue, so even if it had been a general policy I espoused, which it wasn't and isn't, we'd still have made a lot more money on it than we'd have lost in extra contracts. Though I should probably clarify this summer on reflection - I wouldn't renew the broken Fleck, and although after his first few games I'd potentially have been ok with a cheap further year from MacFadzean if he maintained his form, I wouldn't now. Forgot about those two when answering your question. I was essentially just thinking about Dolan and Gally, who both have 1 year extension options that I'd exercise. If Gally won't commit to a further contract at reduced terms, I'd be open to offers for him. Same for Dolan, with a bit more leeway on his contract. Hyam, Siggy and Markanday are out of contract next summer and don't have extension options. I'd see what they want this summer, and if it's too much, again consider any offers or actively attempt to sell them. If I were to put words in your mouth like you have with me, I'd say that 'your policy' of letting everyone's contracts expire has fucked us over repeatedly, a lot more than it's benefitted us, and we have no money to replace them.

I thought it was pretty obvious, but: "You're basically advocating that every player under 26/27 should be offered a new deal to protect our investment. That will work out some of the time, but it will lead to some awful contracts." I never said this. Nor do I believe in that as an absolute policy.

None from the first team squad.

It's not the benefit of hindsight, it's the benefit of remembering that I was relatively happy with him in that season and thought it was worth protecting our £7 million investment. I do want to keep Gallagher, although it will have to be at the right wage level. But he has less potential to improve now than Brereton did in that season as he's a lot older. IMO we don't have the money to buy someone at a similar level but on less wages. Additionally, we were rejecting cash bids for him this January, so he does have some market value. BBD had scored 7 goals in the league from out wide and looked like a nailed on starter who may improve and we'd invested 7 million in, to justify a new deal. At that point his wage demands wouldn't have been too high, and the understanding is he wasn't on all that much. I'm not basically advocating that, you're entirely putting words in my mouth.

I'd have been perfectly fine with extending his contract after the 20/21 season where he scored 7 goals from out wide. In fact after the investment we had made, it was a pretty obvious thing to do.

I think we'll stay up now. Too many other teams around us in poor form who would need to all have better form than us to the tune of a few points. I'm actually more worried about next season.

20 million for a young, fully-contracted English player scoring as many goals as he was in the Championship is perfectly normal, I'm not sure where you're deriving that verdict. We got almost as much as that for Armstrong with a year left on his deal.

The latest LT article about Finneran, with quotes from GB, makes me think very much that we'll be losing him in the summer. All of the language is about being 'hopeful' he will stay, and acknowledging a 'life-changing' offer could come in from elsewhere. I can read between those lines.

Having a fit Sammy is even more important though.

Yep. Management isn't about just giving people what they want anyway. It's about knowing when you do and don't do that in service of the bigger picture.

If he gets injured or even if he just isn't as fresh for the next game, yes, it's very obviously a problem. I've seen enough times over the years where somebody gets kept on after they've clearly taken an injury and it just gets worse. Sometimes they make it through the whole game and seem fine, only for an injury to be announced a couple of days later. Sometimes they can make it through the next match too but then the injury becomes too severe and they're out for weeks or months. Or sometimes they just carry the injury and play through it for months but their performances clearly drop off. It was a fucking unnecessary risk because the game was won, end of. Even if we get away with it 100%, that stands. It was stupid.

That's not a remotely good enough reason to risk our best player when 4 goals to the good, he's had a knock and we're in a relegation fight.

Anyone got a good explanation for why we have kept Szmodics on the pitch?

I find it hard to find joy in anything at the club now. In recent years I'd generally have been overjoyed at today, but I find myself feeling little more than 'oh that's nice' and a bit of surprise that we have actually turned it on.

Or we could just make the least important of those subs, yeh, cool.

Actually the replay was pretty clear Gally got lucky with that one.

I don't see how we keep Szmodics, without him we'd have been relegated already. Eustace hasn't convinced me no matter how today ends. The off the pitch stuff is massively distracting and sabotaging us every transfer window. I'll reassess after the summer but my hopes for next season are very low.

There's no good reason to leave Sammie or JRC on especially. Szmodics looked in a lot of pain when he went down earlier, but he's the type of lad to play through the pain and regret it later. Even if that hadn't happened he's too important to leave on at 4 nil up. JRC is just made of glass and very good for us. Agree I'd have Gally taken off too.

Great footwork Dolan Wtf am I seeing here? Turning into a massacre

Think we'll be staying up now. And going down next year.

We really need to negotiate better sell-ons when we sell the silver. If he gets sold on for something very substantial like £73 mill, where it would be 50 mill profit, we would only see a further 7.5 mill. Something ludicrous (but who knows, the way fees inflate in football) like 123 million and our sell on chunk would still only come to 15 mill.

One of our two outstanding players.

Tbf, although it's been gutting and not the fees we should have been able to get, £18 million rising to £23 million for Wharton and £2.5 million with rumoured add ons of about another £2.5 million for Phillips are not numbers that make me want to give up the Academy. Not to mention all the current first teamers. The Academy pays its way and then some.

They have deadline day at the end of March? Might as well not have a deadline at all, it's less than a month until their final league game (though obviously the league's playoffs will continue a bit longer). Don't know anything about him, transfermarkt doesn't even have his age, he doesn't even have a profile on the Rovers U18 page (although he's played 15 games for them and 3 for the U21s...more amateur hour stuff from the website), but best of luck to him. Given the lack of data on him I'm guessing he only broke into the U18s this season so is probably 16, in which case this is an excellent loan opportunity for him to experience men's football nice and early. I don't like when we send 18 or 19 year olds to that level, but if he's as young as I'm guessing it's a good move.