Black ('n' White) Sheep

Even without Hourihane (if he is in talks with 'uddersfield):
                    Wildsmith
  Byrne  Davies  Cashin  Buchanan
                Bird  Johnson
Barkhuizen  Knight  Mendez-Laing
                    NEW CF
I'm feeling a lot more positive about the start of the new season now! COYFR! ?

Meanwhile, somewhere in Bristol…

 
?

Right, everyone act surprised when the Wildsmith announcement drops to help the web site admin save face 

What a lovely, lovely thread this is tonight. After everything we've had to put up with. Brings a tear to the eye and makes you think there is some loyalty in football and players like Cashin and Thommo genuinely love this club. Hopefully the brand new signings (Barkhuizen and Wildsmith etc) will come to feel the same. 
Derby are back!

Refreshing this thread like.....

Anyone seen any reports of a case of spontaneous human combustion in the Bristol area yet? ?

I think younger signings for the long-term would be good too... however, these are the players that every team will be looking for! Not many of that age are available for nothing and I don't think we'll be spending fees any time soon. We're still under an embargo so, for now, we'll just have to go with the best players available to us. If these are players in their early to mid 30s that will be coming in on free transfers then so be it if that's what it takes to give us a competitive side this year.

Tbf I'd take all of them.

☝️
This!
Chester, Hourihane, Barkhuizen, one of Huddz/Johnson and an experienced CF would be amazing for L1.
We had a very young squad last season and I'd say around 6 of the signings we're on about bringing in need to be experienced.
Complement this with finding some youngsters let go by bigger teams and we'll be on our way to building something competitive.
The only thing I'm slightly concerned about is the amount of CMs north of 30 we're being linked with when CM is probably the position where we're least in need of loads of reinforcements! We've already got Bird, Tommo, Knight, Sibley and Bielik (although, admittedly, the latter might be off on loan to a Championship team soon).

Wednesday fan here.
Joe Wildsmith first broke into the first team at a very young age about 5/6 years ago when Kieran Westwood got injured.
It was the season we got to the playoff final and Joe was very impressive when he played for us, tipped by many to have a bright future in the game.
Since then we have had a whole host of managers, the side has got progressively worse and when he has played in recent seasons, he’s had a pretty woeful defence protecting his goal. As such his confidence has taken a bit of a battering and he has made the odd error.
That said, if he can get a run of games at Derby and you can get him anywhere near what he was like a few seasons ago, he’ll be a very capable a league 1 keeper for you this season.
Also he’s still relatively young for a goal keeper.
Best of luck to you with the takeover, really hope you can get things sorted and start to move forward as a club again.

Isn’t it nice to be debating what players were getting again. 

Likes our kind of game too... Can distinctly remember watching a Burton game with some Brewers supporting mates last season and Jimmy Floyd shouted "get a hold of the ball Oumar!"... His response along the lines of: "how can I get hold of the thing when it's that far in the ducking air!"

Have a read of the 'open letter' from DC if you haven't done already.
Genuine bloke with good intentions... there's something in my eye...

Have a read of the 'open letter' from DC if you haven't done already.
Genuine bloke with good intentions... there's something in my eye...

I wouldn't be opposed to Johnno in lg 1. Would beef up the midfield next to more cultured bird (doubt we'll keep him) or mobile Thommo. Decent in the air, defensively would help. The odd goal too.
As for Huddz. No. Beautiful passer, lumbering passenger.

Now the takeover is done it’s not completely unreasonable to go full football manager mode. Assuming Byrne and Buchanan aren’t allowed to get out of their extensions, and we add some of the players we’ve been linked with, and nobody else under contract is sold, we could line up with…
Wildsmith
Byrne Davies Cashin Buchanan
Bird
Johnson Hourihane
Knight Sibley
Stretton
Still with the likes of Stearman, Chester, Forsyth, Mendez-Laing, Huddlestone on the bench.
Still room for improvement with a couple of players shoehorned in, but seeing as where we were a very short while ago, it looks like a good start!

Even without Lawrence, that squad looks a lot more promising than I’d hoped for a few days ago. Enough about it to be solid and compete at least. Are the goals there? I’d hope so with Hourihane’s creativity and the directness of the 2 new wide attackers. Collins or similar needed to be the man in the box to put it in!

Well now we can start speculating!
Assuming we're still interested in players that we've been linked with before (and rumours of up to 10 new signings coming through the doors coming to fruition) the squad could look a bit like this:
GK: NEW, Wildsmith, Foulkes
RB: Byrne (or NEW if he leaves), Bardell
CB: Chester, Stearman, Davies, Cashin
LB: Buchanan (or NEW if he leaves), Forsyth
CM/DM: Bird, Robinson, Hourihane, Thompson
RM: Barkhuizen, Richards
AM: Knight, Sibley
LM: Lawrence (yes, very unlikely, I know!), Mendez-Laing
ST: Collins, Niasse, Kazim-Richards, Cybulski, Stretton
Not bad!

Hope I get to meet Mr Ploppy Pants in person one day... If he comes across IRL like he does online I'll happily deck the Bamford!

Works hard but got the first touch of a brick wall! A couple of Cov supporting mates said the same thing.

Hope I get to meet Mr Ploppy Pants in person one day... If he comes across IRL like he does online I'll happily deck the Bamford!

I think the challenge might be to find out which one of us hasn’t….

Did we ever find out which one of us had poked his missus…?

Have a read of the 'open letter' from DC if you haven't done already.
Genuine bloke with good intentions... there's something in my eye...