Millenniumram

Excellent news, hopefully we can get this one wrapped up tomorrow. That will sort out the ST position Imo.

Indeed, the squad last year weren’t relegated on the pitch, so proved they were Championship standard. Keeping that level of player in League One is exactly what we need to get promoted back at the first attempt. Sadly the vast majority of that squad have left us, but keeping the likes of Davies, Forsyth and Stearman around should be huge for us, not on and off the pitch.

It’s an interesting debate, and one I’ve thought about before. Is our academy really as good as some fans make it out to be? Do we get overexcited about our young stars who aren’t really as special as we think they are? Those really are open questions btw, because I’m really not sure what I think.
You can look at Forest for example, much as I don’t want to. A lot of our fans say we’ve got the better academy, but have we? They’ve had players like Cash, Burke and even Brereton go for absolutely huge fees, far larger than what we got for players like Hughes and Bogle. Players like Lascelles and Darlow have also had established Premier League careers, whereas even Hughes and Hendrick have hardly torn it up after leaving us. And I’m pretty sure they were only a category 2 academy until fairly recently. That doesn’t reflect well on all the investment we put into our academy in my view - very few players have left for 10m+ and established themselves in the Premier League. 
We can look further than that as well, how many of the players we’ve let go have made particularly great careers for themselves? Hanson, once regarded as a “hot prospect”, has been released by Oxford. Farrend Rawson, due to be our next big CB, is at Morecambe. Zanzala plays for Newport. These were once regarded as our best young talent, and look at them now. Our academy has hardly churned out a load of top quality players. 
Now, I don’t want to come across overly critical of the academy. Without the players they brought through, we wouldn’t have even put up a fight last year. In fact, we wouldn’t have even had a team to put up a fight. We should be hugely thankful to academy staff like Wassall, who has found some brilliant external talent to bring in and develop, and the coaches that got these players ready to play for our first team when we desperately needed them (many of these coaches are now gone, sadly). 
But I do feel our fans have got a bit over-excited about this current crop that have come through, based on their performances when we won the U18 Premier League. First team football is a totally different proposition. Yes it’s amazing how many have come through at once, but this was through necessity rather than every player being absolutely ready.
Bird being linked with Coventry is no surprise, for example, that’s his level. A good Championship player, nothing more. And that goes for Knight, Buchanan etc as well. I don’t think any of them will go onto have established Premier League careers. Might flirt with the top flight now and then of course, but I think they’ll all spend the best part of their careers in the Championship (I’m not even sure Sibley will manage that). Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, a Championship career is a damn good career, which will set them up for life. Plenty of good players who’ve done similar in the past. But they’re not as special as some believe in my view.
Not really sure what my point is here. We’ve been at Championship level for most of my lifetime, so producing Championship level players is really all we should expect from our academy. So this is certainly no slight on them. But you sometimes can’t help but feel, with all the investment in our academy, we should be producing the odd player who’s really special, and goes for huge money to the Premier League. To be honest, I think we might have had a couple of those go for free in Ebosele and Ebiowei, thanks to Mel Morris and Quantuma. Do all the others get snapped up whilst they’re still 16, like Gordon and Delap? Maybe, but is there something we can do to persuade them to stay? Or are the big clubs just impossible to compete with? I really don’t know.
TL,DR: Our academy has done a brilliant job, but maybe we should expect more for our investment. Or maybe not. There might be more we can do to persuade our best talent to stay. Or maybe not. Basically I don’t know. This whole post was pointless. Thanks for reading.

It’s an interesting debate, and one I’ve thought about before. Is our academy really as good as some fans make it out to be? Do we get overexcited about our young stars who aren’t really as special as we think they are? Those really are open questions btw, because I’m really not sure what I think.
You can look at Forest for example, much as I don’t want to. A lot of our fans say we’ve got the better academy, but have we? They’ve had players like Cash, Burke and even Brereton go for absolutely huge fees, far larger than what we got for players like Hughes and Bogle. Players like Lascelles and Darlow have also had established Premier League careers, whereas even Hughes and Hendrick have hardly torn it up after leaving us. And I’m pretty sure they were only a category 2 academy until fairly recently. That doesn’t reflect well on all the investment we put into our academy in my view - very few players have left for 10m+ and established themselves in the Premier League. 
We can look further than that as well, how many of the players we’ve let go have made particularly great careers for themselves? Hanson, once regarded as a “hot prospect”, has been released by Oxford. Farrend Rawson, due to be our next big CB, is at Morecambe. Zanzala plays for Newport. These were once regarded as our best young talent, and look at them now. Our academy has hardly churned out a load of top quality players. 
Now, I don’t want to come across overly critical of the academy. Without the players they brought through, we wouldn’t have even put up a fight last year. In fact, we wouldn’t have even had a team to put up a fight. We should be hugely thankful to academy staff like Wassall, who has found some brilliant external talent to bring in and develop, and the coaches that got these players ready to play for our first team when we desperately needed them (many of these coaches are now gone, sadly). 
But I do feel our fans have got a bit over-excited about this current crop that have come through, based on their performances when we won the U18 Premier League. First team football is a totally different proposition. Yes it’s amazing how many have come through at once, but this was through necessity rather than every player being absolutely ready.
Bird being linked with Coventry is no surprise, for example, that’s his level. A good Championship player, nothing more. And that goes for Knight, Buchanan etc as well. I don’t think any of them will go onto have established Premier League careers. Might flirt with the top flight now and then of course, but I think they’ll all spend the best part of their careers in the Championship (I’m not even sure Sibley will manage that). Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, a Championship career is a damn good career, which will set them up for life. Plenty of good players who’ve done similar in the past. But they’re not as special as some believe in my view.
Not really sure what my point is here. We’ve been at Championship level for most of my lifetime, so producing Championship level players is really all we should expect from our academy. So this is certainly no slight on them. But you sometimes can’t help but feel, with all the investment in our academy, we should be producing the odd player who’s really special, and goes for huge money to the Premier League. To be honest, I think we might have had a couple of those go for free in Ebosele and Ebiowei, thanks to Mel Morris and Quantuma. Do all the others get snapped up whilst they’re still 16, like Gordon and Delap? Maybe, but is there something we can do to persuade them to stay? Or are the big clubs just impossible to compete with? I really don’t know.
TL,DR: Our academy has done a brilliant job, but maybe we should expect more for our investment. Or maybe not. There might be more we can do to persuade our best talent to stay. Or maybe not. Basically I don’t know. This whole post was pointless. Thanks for reading.

It’s only rumours so probably best not to discuss it. But he was there.

Cheers - this is a much more thoughtful version of exactly what I was trying to say.
I could be wrong but if feels like quite a few clubs in the Championship could point to at least one or two players over the last decade that they've either sold for big money (as with Forest and Cash), or who were later sold for big money (ie people who went on to be huge stars, but moved before they maximised their value). Who are the players we look at and think "If only we'd held on to them for another couple of seasons we'd have made £10million"? I just don't think they exist. Maybe Ebiowei, maybe Ebosele, as you say - but we've said that before.
Really don't want to sound critical of the academy, as its done an incredible job and I'd say its better to supply a steady stream of good Championship players than the occasional diamond. It's just that it is odd that we've never really done the latter. 

It’s an interesting debate, and one I’ve thought about before. Is our academy really as good as some fans make it out to be? Do we get overexcited about our young stars who aren’t really as special as we think they are? Those really are open questions btw, because I’m really not sure what I think.
You can look at Forest for example, much as I don’t want to. A lot of our fans say we’ve got the better academy, but have we? They’ve had players like Cash, Burke and even Brereton go for absolutely huge fees, far larger than what we got for players like Hughes and Bogle. Players like Lascelles and Darlow have also had established Premier League careers, whereas even Hughes and Hendrick have hardly torn it up after leaving us. And I’m pretty sure they were only a category 2 academy until fairly recently. That doesn’t reflect well on all the investment we put into our academy in my view - very few players have left for 10m+ and established themselves in the Premier League. 
We can look further than that as well, how many of the players we’ve let go have made particularly great careers for themselves? Hanson, once regarded as a “hot prospect”, has been released by Oxford. Farrend Rawson, due to be our next big CB, is at Morecambe. Zanzala plays for Newport. These were once regarded as our best young talent, and look at them now. Our academy has hardly churned out a load of top quality players. 
Now, I don’t want to come across overly critical of the academy. Without the players they brought through, we wouldn’t have even put up a fight last year. In fact, we wouldn’t have even had a team to put up a fight. We should be hugely thankful to academy staff like Wassall, who has found some brilliant external talent to bring in and develop, and the coaches that got these players ready to play for our first team when we desperately needed them (many of these coaches are now gone, sadly). 
But I do feel our fans have got a bit over-excited about this current crop that have come through, based on their performances when we won the U18 Premier League. First team football is a totally different proposition. Yes it’s amazing how many have come through at once, but this was through necessity rather than every player being absolutely ready.
Bird being linked with Coventry is no surprise, for example, that’s his level. A good Championship player, nothing more. And that goes for Knight, Buchanan etc as well. I don’t think any of them will go onto have established Premier League careers. Might flirt with the top flight now and then of course, but I think they’ll all spend the best part of their careers in the Championship (I’m not even sure Sibley will manage that). Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, a Championship career is a damn good career, which will set them up for life. Plenty of good players who’ve done similar in the past. But they’re not as special as some believe in my view.
Not really sure what my point is here. We’ve been at Championship level for most of my lifetime, so producing Championship level players is really all we should expect from our academy. So this is certainly no slight on them. But you sometimes can’t help but feel, with all the investment in our academy, we should be producing the odd player who’s really special, and goes for huge money to the Premier League. To be honest, I think we might have had a couple of those go for free in Ebosele and Ebiowei, thanks to Mel Morris and Quantuma. Do all the others get snapped up whilst they’re still 16, like Gordon and Delap? Maybe, but is there something we can do to persuade them to stay? Or are the big clubs just impossible to compete with? I really don’t know.
TL,DR: Our academy has done a brilliant job, but maybe we should expect more for our investment. Or maybe not. There might be more we can do to persuade our best talent to stay. Or maybe not. Basically I don’t know. This whole post was pointless. Thanks for reading.

It’s an interesting debate, and one I’ve thought about before. Is our academy really as good as some fans make it out to be? Do we get overexcited about our young stars who aren’t really as special as we think they are? Those really are open questions btw, because I’m really not sure what I think.
You can look at Forest for example, much as I don’t want to. A lot of our fans say we’ve got the better academy, but have we? They’ve had players like Cash, Burke and even Brereton go for absolutely huge fees, far larger than what we got for players like Hughes and Bogle. Players like Lascelles and Darlow have also had established Premier League careers, whereas even Hughes and Hendrick have hardly torn it up after leaving us. And I’m pretty sure they were only a category 2 academy until fairly recently. That doesn’t reflect well on all the investment we put into our academy in my view - very few players have left for 10m+ and established themselves in the Premier League. 
We can look further than that as well, how many of the players we’ve let go have made particularly great careers for themselves? Hanson, once regarded as a “hot prospect”, has been released by Oxford. Farrend Rawson, due to be our next big CB, is at Morecambe. Zanzala plays for Newport. These were once regarded as our best young talent, and look at them now. Our academy has hardly churned out a load of top quality players. 
Now, I don’t want to come across overly critical of the academy. Without the players they brought through, we wouldn’t have even put up a fight last year. In fact, we wouldn’t have even had a team to put up a fight. We should be hugely thankful to academy staff like Wassall, who has found some brilliant external talent to bring in and develop, and the coaches that got these players ready to play for our first team when we desperately needed them (many of these coaches are now gone, sadly). 
But I do feel our fans have got a bit over-excited about this current crop that have come through, based on their performances when we won the U18 Premier League. First team football is a totally different proposition. Yes it’s amazing how many have come through at once, but this was through necessity rather than every player being absolutely ready.
Bird being linked with Coventry is no surprise, for example, that’s his level. A good Championship player, nothing more. And that goes for Knight, Buchanan etc as well. I don’t think any of them will go onto have established Premier League careers. Might flirt with the top flight now and then of course, but I think they’ll all spend the best part of their careers in the Championship (I’m not even sure Sibley will manage that). Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, a Championship career is a damn good career, which will set them up for life. Plenty of good players who’ve done similar in the past. But they’re not as special as some believe in my view.
Not really sure what my point is here. We’ve been at Championship level for most of my lifetime, so producing Championship level players is really all we should expect from our academy. So this is certainly no slight on them. But you sometimes can’t help but feel, with all the investment in our academy, we should be producing the odd player who’s really special, and goes for huge money to the Premier League. To be honest, I think we might have had a couple of those go for free in Ebosele and Ebiowei, thanks to Mel Morris and Quantuma. Do all the others get snapped up whilst they’re still 16, like Gordon and Delap? Maybe, but is there something we can do to persuade them to stay? Or are the big clubs just impossible to compete with? I really don’t know.
TL,DR: Our academy has done a brilliant job, but maybe we should expect more for our investment. Or maybe not. There might be more we can do to persuade our best talent to stay. Or maybe not. Basically I don’t know. This whole post was pointless. Thanks for reading.

It’s an interesting debate, and one I’ve thought about before. Is our academy really as good as some fans make it out to be? Do we get overexcited about our young stars who aren’t really as special as we think they are? Those really are open questions btw, because I’m really not sure what I think.
You can look at Forest for example, much as I don’t want to. A lot of our fans say we’ve got the better academy, but have we? They’ve had players like Cash, Burke and even Brereton go for absolutely huge fees, far larger than what we got for players like Hughes and Bogle. Players like Lascelles and Darlow have also had established Premier League careers, whereas even Hughes and Hendrick have hardly torn it up after leaving us. And I’m pretty sure they were only a category 2 academy until fairly recently. That doesn’t reflect well on all the investment we put into our academy in my view - very few players have left for 10m+ and established themselves in the Premier League. 
We can look further than that as well, how many of the players we’ve let go have made particularly great careers for themselves? Hanson, once regarded as a “hot prospect”, has been released by Oxford. Farrend Rawson, due to be our next big CB, is at Morecambe. Zanzala plays for Newport. These were once regarded as our best young talent, and look at them now. Our academy has hardly churned out a load of top quality players. 
Now, I don’t want to come across overly critical of the academy. Without the players they brought through, we wouldn’t have even put up a fight last year. In fact, we wouldn’t have even had a team to put up a fight. We should be hugely thankful to academy staff like Wassall, who has found some brilliant external talent to bring in and develop, and the coaches that got these players ready to play for our first team when we desperately needed them (many of these coaches are now gone, sadly). 
But I do feel our fans have got a bit over-excited about this current crop that have come through, based on their performances when we won the U18 Premier League. First team football is a totally different proposition. Yes it’s amazing how many have come through at once, but this was through necessity rather than every player being absolutely ready.
Bird being linked with Coventry is no surprise, for example, that’s his level. A good Championship player, nothing more. And that goes for Knight, Buchanan etc as well. I don’t think any of them will go onto have established Premier League careers. Might flirt with the top flight now and then of course, but I think they’ll all spend the best part of their careers in the Championship (I’m not even sure Sibley will manage that). Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, a Championship career is a damn good career, which will set them up for life. Plenty of good players who’ve done similar in the past. But they’re not as special as some believe in my view.
Not really sure what my point is here. We’ve been at Championship level for most of my lifetime, so producing Championship level players is really all we should expect from our academy. So this is certainly no slight on them. But you sometimes can’t help but feel, with all the investment in our academy, we should be producing the odd player who’s really special, and goes for huge money to the Premier League. To be honest, I think we might have had a couple of those go for free in Ebosele and Ebiowei, thanks to Mel Morris and Quantuma. Do all the others get snapped up whilst they’re still 16, like Gordon and Delap? Maybe, but is there something we can do to persuade them to stay? Or are the big clubs just impossible to compete with? I really don’t know.
TL,DR: Our academy has done a brilliant job, but maybe we should expect more for our investment. Or maybe not. There might be more we can do to persuade our best talent to stay. Or maybe not. Basically I don’t know. This whole post was pointless. Thanks for reading.

I know he hasn’t B4, and let’s hope he doesn’t! I’m afraid there’s still plenty of time left for him to though.

Looked pretty comfortable during the second half today. Could be a good pickup for the U21s, and for the future.

Love you as our negotiator B4

Ah yes, the Mel Morris approach

"It wasn't me who scouted him (Oduroh), but somebody at the club I had mentioned in my pre-match press conference last week," he said. "We don't have a recruitment team at the moment. Every club has around 10 to 15 people working in a recruitment team, but because of what has happened at the club we haven't had one.
"Pete Shuttleworth, who is the club analyst, has probably spent 24 hours a day scouring not just this country but the continent. As an analyst, has gone above and beyond to help this football club. It's the same with Jon Howard. It's a collaboration and we are all working beyond our roles but that's what this club deserves and how it has to continue moving forward."

We would never sell any players, they would all leave when their contracts expire!

So was mine writing it!

I thought Kirchner said 32Red has another year? Not the first time he was talking s*** though, to be fair.
I also hope the new sponsor isn’t anything to do with betting. They profit off of peoples mental illness, and as a sport we need to be moving away from plastering their logos everywhere.

More like 15 to 20m mate

My minds blown reading that. 

Would be an outstanding signing. Was a good player for Brighton a few years back, even in the Premier League. At League One level he should be a class above. Would be an extremely good replacement if we lose Knight/Sibley.

Would be an outstanding signing. Was a good player for Brighton a few years back, even in the Premier League. At League One level he should be a class above. Would be an extremely good replacement if we lose Knight/Sibley.

He's keeping a low profile because @Millenniumram is moving to the smoke and on the look out for accommodation.  #Ihaven'tgotacluereally. 
I miss his input into @frogggs food thread though.

Yep, attacking midfielder or a number 10. Not a winger or number 9 ?

See how he does this season when given a full chance in his right position…