duncanjwitham

I really don't get all the desire to put Shinnie in (or some of the other similar changes that are being suggested). Keeping the ball and moving it around quickly are what we're best at (the performance on Saturday notwithstanding). Our best chance of stopping them scoring is keeping the ball. Our best chance of scoring is through moving the ball around quickly and creating space. If you take one of the passers out for Shinnie, you're disrupting all of that in the hope that we affect their performance more than it affects ours. You're pretty much giving up before we even begin IMO. I'd s

If I was Cocu I'd be reminding Sibley about what happened with him and McTominay and pointing at Pearson.

The on-going will he/won't he investment saga, resulting in the players not getting paid on time because we didn't have enough cash in the bank to pay them. Mason Bennett joking about burning the stadium down.

Martin would absolutely be in my starting lineup every week. But taking a step back, the games Martin struggles in are the games where opposing teams sit deep around him and he gets isolated. Given we're up against Millwall, managed by Rowett, I can see the logic in the way we've set up. Waghorn can go and work hard, be physical, compete in the air etc, and we've got 3 very mobile guys in behind him who can all get on the ball and run at them.

Must be a chance this game is postponed, unless they can test everyone pretty quickly.

Those 4 have 126 international caps between them...

Are you allowed to have an opinion? Yes Is everyone else allowed to tell you your opinion is nonsense? Yes (That's a general 'you', not referring to anyone specific in this thread.)

Except he didn’t say that at all. He was asked about making the playoffs and responded to that by saying we’re just focussing on Blackburn. The same old “focus on the next game” stuff that every manager everywhere says. At no point did he say we’re focussing on the Blackburn game over the Man Utd one.

Changed your mind? 😄

He's not going to get that anywhere else though. It will come down to length of contract, if anything. I suspect he'll be offered one-year deal here, on lower wages, with maybe an option for another. If he thinks he can get a similar wage to what we offer for a 3 year deal elsewhere, he may well go.

I suppose it depends what happened. Maybe if we just told them we were selling it, and didn't mention either way who it was being sold to, and the EFL gave advice assuming it was to a 3rd party, then we could argue they never asked the question so we never answered it. They'd then just argue their advice was invalid so we failed P&S. I think it's pretty unlikely anyway - the club statement says we discussed the rationale for the sale with the EFL, and the rationale has supposedly always been Mel owning the stadium and using it as a concert venue etc. And that only make sense if Me

The only issue I can see is if we deliberately mislead the EFL when we discussed something with them. E.g. if we didn't tell them the stadium was being sold to Mel, but implied it was to a third party. Or lied about the basis the valuation was done on. I think it's pretty unlikely this is the case though.

I think that bolded bit is the key bit, based on my very, very limited knowledge, and what I can google etc (so massive pinch of salt with this etc etc). The value of the stadium isn't what it's 'worth' (in the sense of what my house is worth). It's what it would cost us to get an equivalent, modern stadium built to carry on the normal functioning of our business (i.e. playing football matches). If the cost of building new stadiums has gone up since the stadium was last valued, then the value of Pride Park has gone up too. And certainly the costs being banded about for other stadiums sugge

As much as anything, I suspect it’s the desire to just be doing something (anything) to keep fit. You go from training everyday and being in good shape all the time, to basically sitting on your backside for 6 months (because your knee won’t physically allow you to run or kick a ball or whatever). So you go to the gym and do weights every day, because you can do that without putting strain on your knee.

The biggest worry is quite possibly that he spends too much time in the gym doing weights and bulks up too much, making him even less mobile than he is now. I'm sure I remember one manager (possibly Clough about Miles Addison) saying they had to actively stop him going to the gym so often.