I don't place any blame on Eustace for the substitutions. We were doing the square root of fuck all before the subs anyway and it was up to the players who came on the pitch to perform. I do blame him that in general they weren't up for it. That was a real Mowbray like Cup performance. All momentum killed stone dead. We'll get absolutely battered on Sunday now.

Never a foul in a million years. He's soft as **** like the rest of them. Players like JRC and Buckley are going to have to decide which way they want to go now and pull their finger out or they're going to disappear without trace. Sigurdsson's no better either.

JRC is so over-rated and this season he's been beyond woeful. Get rid.

Pears isnt good enough but tonight is nothing whatsoever to do with him. You're getting even more boring on that than when you used to blame the referee every week for us getting beaten.

Ditto. I think Vale and Duru have shown up very well. The rest of them - blimey. Very poor half I don't think I've ever seen Sigurdsson play well. He doesn't even stand out against this level of opposition.

This.

He's already answered that in the affirmative hasn't he?

I think you're absolutely spot on with the legal interpretation. As regards the statement attached to the accounts they simply CAN'T say "We can put money in if we want to, we just don't want to under the current conditions" can they? I think that they've just inserted as nebulous a statement in as they can to create confusion which at the same time will just about allow the accounts to be signed off.

Thanks for clarifying. So no relevance to us then?

Sounds like one to be avoided. Seemingly a fairly questionable attitude in general plus would the player himself be buzzing at the prospect of a move he would probably perceive as a backwards one?

What, so we can concentrate on trying to finish 17th instead of 19th? That has to be the worst post I've ever seen on here. Good job we didn't have the same mindset in 2002.

I doubt the 51% figure is correct but even if it was they'd still have the final say over investing in one of their Companies (us).

We can probably discount instantly any player the parent clubs want to sell outright as we go round with the begging bowl hoping for loans or loans with an option to purchase we've no intention whatsoever of ultimately exercising.

We need a further 3-4 permanent signings that will improve the first X1. Anything less than that has to be judged as a massive failure. The padding out of the squad by adding two or three young PL loanees can come after when the core permanent business has been done. Instead we do it the other way round, it's the same every year the majority of the business is a few random loans of anyone who's still available at the last minute in positions that aren't our priority whilst key areas remain unaddressed. I think we can see which way this is heading by the long tortuous and no doubt ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of Dembele. Leaving aside the question of whether he's any good or not the fact "the money men" are baulking at a £1.5m fee is utterly ludicrous given the money bought in over the last 12 months or so.

Knew someone would say that. It was actually "only" £5m but what made that all the more unforgivable for me was the fact he'd already been on loan here and we'd seen beyond any doubt he wasn't all that. (Albeit a lot better than when he joined permanently)

I watched the second half of the Sven documentary yesterday and I found it a very uncomfortable attempt to try and airbrush history and make him look like this nice poor old chap who was dying of cancer. Back in the day I found him a thoroughly unpleasant character. When he was England manager, nothing was ever his fault, nothing was ever anyone's fault. He turned various tournaments into a farce with the WAG circus and wasted the best group of players we'll probably ever have. Like Allardyce at a later date also ended up losing his job due to greed, getting caught up in a fake sting thinking he was auditioning for a lucrative job. On a personal level he just shagged his way around with little thought for the consequences be it with a work colleague at the FA or a high profile Celebrity of the time. All the while his ridiculous partner Nancy whatever she was called sat back and tolerated it until he lost £10m due to being scammed by his financial advisor at which point she promptly dumped him commenting in the documentary that that was far worse than all the infidelity which probably summed them both up. Really really wish he'd never ever got anywhere near the England job. When you look back now, that period was so ludicrous you could hardly make it up. Probably best he never ended up at Ewood either. Did the dirty on Jack and even if he'd made it to Ewood would probably have shafted him and us at a later date. A journalist participating in the documentary described him as completely amoral which was probably about right.

A prime example would be this £6m striker we've been linked with. I'd be amazed if we go ahead with that but we'd be unlikely to ever lose money on him and as you say as a general rule of thumb you have to invest in a decent bit of quality in the first place to have the best chance of turning a decent profit.

OK, if you want to be pedantic about it, do they not have any "midfield" targets of their own?

If most will have no impact - then we shouldn't be signing them!

For me we need players who are going to improve the starting X1 and we don't need cover at LB, we need a new LB! So if the lad from Liverpool is a significant upgrade on Pickering and is coming in as first choice to replace him then fair enough. If not and he's merely coming in to sit on the bench and pad out the squad then I absolutely despair. Someone from our own Academy should be doing that, we're allegedly completely brassic yet we'd be prepared to pay Liverpool to take a young lad off them not to play. The link to Cantwell seems odd in so far as we were very heavily linked with him in the early part of last summer's transfer window. New Head Coach, new recruitment team, do they not have any targets of their own? As for whether he's any good now, I've no idea but his career does seem to have stalled badly recently so it's probably a deal to be approached with extreme caution.

Pick the strongest possible starting X1, bench a few after an hour when the game is hopefully won. Can't underestimate how important momentum is.

He was also extremely reluctant to hand Wahlstedt a start and we soon saw why.

Are you annoyed that the manager you don't like because he says "you know" in his interviews has started well or something Eddie? As for recruitment, just because the modern trend is to go down the DOF/Head Coach/ Data led approach that doesn't mean the standard of recruitment in general is any better than it was under the "old fashioned" approach. Brighton and Brentford are two Clubs who appear to do spectacularly well with their recruitment but there are a lot more you can point at whose recruitment appears to be pretty terrible.

You're on your own with that one. Let it go.

I'm not particularly aware of the links to the others and apart from Ruddy I've no real view on whether I'd want them or whether they'd be any good or not. So far we've signed zero former Birmingham players so let's see what happens. I'm rather more worried we'll sign no-one at all than where they'll be coming g from if we do sign them.