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Well no, the footballing authorities are responsible for PSR, and shame on them. Every boring thread on this forum is ultimately their fault. But operating within that, he's had a yes/no choice on helping the club and being given tonnes of money for the privilege - beyond his value as a footballer - and chose no. Bosman transfers are a knife in the heart of football clubs nowadays. That goes for Lloyd Kelly, Tosin Adarabioyo and anyone else, by the way. I don't expect Miggy to fully understand that, in fairness to him. That all said, we clearly made a big mistake giving him a new contract instead of selling him after his hot streak season, so that is on NUFC. Have to admit at the time I imagined there would be a gentleman's agreement about him moving on before it ended, though.

He'd be seriously fucking us over by rejecting suitors offering him a wage rise for the sake of an extra 12* months here, mind. Very serious damage to the club. Given he rejected Saudi in January, he's probably already largely responsible for us losing Minteh - the gap would've been much smaller to bridge, at least. The thing is, he's educationally subnormal. Lovely lad, but dead stupid. *Edit: My bad, thought his contract here expired next year. Bollocks.

I agree with all that, although one thing that's left out is Wood's nous. The little digs, the triggering of the press, the dark arts of making yourself a nuisance for defenders. We can't really expect Osula to be fully up to speed on that yet, but I'm sure Eddie - and hopefully Wilson - will teach him.

The other thing is PSR (once again). It's basically created a parallel economy. If you lose a player on a freebie, you don't just lose the money, you effectively lose the permission to replace them - it's catastrophic.

I'm in the halfway house on this. I agree they're probably going to spend money not knowing exactly how they're going to cover it further down the line. But they can still be considered competent despite that - even if it did get them into a sticky situation this summer. If you prepare with 10 solid escape routes in mind, but for various reasons - e.g. very bad luck with injuries, including to decent candidates for sale like Lascelles - they all fall through, it doesn't necessarily mean you've fucked up if you resort to the "break glass in case of emergency" plans. Even if it is a very uncomfortable experience.

That's fair comment. But it's still funny to see people wanting to live in a magic world where everything we do is right, and yet anyone who chooses not to join us becomes shite.

So, just for fun, does this suggest that our recruiting choices possibly aren't impeccable? Seeing as we were inches from signing this guy, and casting doubt on any of our strong links is pretty controversial.

Basically. @KaKa debuted the phrase on here in 2011, according to the search function. But more popular since 2020.

It's a good question, but we've got to be saying something decent to be attracting all these kids - they certainly weren't signing for us a couple of years ago.

I think we created a lot of those goals by playing like drunken sailors a lot of the time though. It's good to know we can do it, but I wouldn't say we had controlled aggression for big chunks of the second half of the season - games like Luton and West Ham, which did wonders for our statistics, but aren't really what an attack is supposed to look like if it's functioning well.

This is part of what I call the Ashley trap. A negative outlook creating a doom spiral.

*2 significant signings - we're spending something like £28m on Hall too. I sometimes forget this myself... But yeah, them combined I'd say is at the very upper limit of what we can do without a big sale/s before next June. Or some surprise new sponsorship... Think the loans point for RW is a very good one. There's still ways and means for us to play the game, and I'm sure the club is examining every angle. I think you're partly right, but the flip side is people having dickie fits over the shock of us selling someone like Bruno next year and how it speaks badly about the club's management. We're better off having our eyes open about what's going on. Doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking to invest and expand, though.

That's more like it.

Still wonder what could've been

Hmm. I guess all England based kids are on our radar to some extent, though.

Thought so. But don't follow the links that religiously so wasn't sure!

Does anyone recall when we started being linked with him? I.e. pre or post-Mitchell?

Well, not exactly strange given how weak we've been at youth level, but it has been a big weakness for us. Gives us an extra option in difficult situations and, to put it bluntly, puts another player on the financial conveyor belt.

Well, we'll need cover for Barnes

I'd rather him than DCL. We have a good hit rate on identifying talent. Excellent, in fact. Considering that history, plus Mitchell, plus our financial situation, plus the players we can't seem to push out the club - let's give one a shot.

Sure but we're still essentially talking about one shit season in a career, in a season where a suspiciously large number of his teammates went down and stayed down with reaggravated injuries too. Botman's record is going to look awful by Christmas too. Just seems unfair to single out Willock as being cooked when we've got players like Targett around.

Could you imagine 4 millionaires being made to fly across the world, stand and sing for 6 supporters

For those who think he's intrinsically injury prone. It's a big season for him to prove he's sorted out, but it's not like he's always been like this.

https://archive.ph/aOUf5

Yeah, culturally speaking, him and Tottenham feel like chalk and cheese. I was shocked at the appointment, really.