TRon

He's barely even been used as a sub for almost half a season. Do you think he's suddenly gone from that, to being ready to throw into the fray in the space of a week?

He also didn't find a reason to give Osula any minutes on the pitch, actions speak louder than words. I still think he'll play Gordon ahead of Osula FWIW.

I agree with you on his value £90m sounds about right, but how old were those players you mentioned there when they were sold for those amounts? Bruno's 27 now, every year we don't sell, his value depreciates. It's the same with Barnes. Different if they were 24. The only way we can stop even thinking about this is some wins tbh. If we are in the top 6 challenging for the CL, who will give a toss about PSR?

He's also quite diplomatic. He's not going to say "Will Osula's too raw, I don't have much confidence in him, I'm only bigging him up because Wilson's injured and there's no other alternative". But there's a fair chance that's what it is.

I googled it. It doesn't really change anything, still a remarkable coincidence that he's suddenly decided Osula's ready after barely giving him even five minutes off the bench for half a season. Not that I'm complaining, I thought he should have been given longer spells as sub anyway, we've been overly cautious IMO. I don't agree with playing Gordon as a striker instead, he's not got the physical presence and it disturbs the balance of other areas of the team.

No. I was just commenting that Osula has not been trusted with even 5mins of coming on as a sub in almost half a seaon, so if his sudden progress has happened at the same time as Wilson getting a new injury, that's a remarkable coincidence.

I think Wilson's injury setback has probably promoted him a notch in Howe's order, not sure it's got that much to do with any progress in training, but hopefully he should be more than ready to play a part by now.

Ironically that might be our best chance of keeping him. He's 27 now so probably at that stage where we could extract big money for him. But that might also be the reason why clubs won't pay anything like £100m for him. City might be one of the few clubs who might offer something close, but even they'll probably come in with something like £60-70million and we won't sell for that. FWIW I don't want to sell him at all, but not sure how we square that with PSR and future team building.

It's another expose of the ridiculous blowback from PSR, that's the issue. I'm sure we'd all be quite happy to have players employed by the club as cheerleaders or human cones for that matter if money was no object. It's when we aren't able to buy players we genuinely need for the first team because we are balancing the books that people get pissed off.

Then what the fuck is he doing here? It's like the Jack Alnwick situation from a few years back. On our books but when he was finally called on, was letting anything on target fly in.

Yeah this is hardly groundbreaking news like.

Think I'd rather see the Greek lad Vlachi-whats-is-name ahead of Dubravka if it's true. Pope has not been great lately anyway. Maybe it wouldn't be that big a blow.

They are specifically being blocked wilfully and legally from becoming number 1. In fact they are being blocked by specifically formulated rules to stop them even becoming number 2, 3 and 4. So you can judge all you like, it doesn't change that reality.

Yeah it was embarrassing, but Schar's performance was equally so last week. He's having too many lapses of concentration of late, it will come down to whether Howe believes there's any excuse for it. Kelly went missing for the Soucek goal but it doesn't define him as a defender. Or at least I hope it doesn't otherwise we should never have signed him.

Even though this setback is somewhat predictable, it's still not out of the question he can still bang in a few vital goals to get us into Europe in the last month or two of the season. Clutching at straws admittedly, but who knows.

Not even sure if that's his role tbh, he seems more of an organiser putting structures in place. Maybe Sir Jim Ratshit thought he was going to recruit him top managers and players when in fact he was more about sorting out dressing room furniture and ordering new printers for team sheets etc.

Yeah he's a cracking player when he's fit. Which is never.

Yep, there are two scenarios where we could justify making these sort of signings in the future: - PSR restrictions are dropped and we are allowed to spend big on as many players as we want to improve our squad. - We downgrade our expectations of Europe and are happy with a midtable finish.

Yeah he looked fantastic a year ago but he seemed to score all his goals in one game against us. Even our current signings of that ilk like Hall and Tino are still not the finished article, Hall is making defensive mistakes, and Tino is not providing effective overlaps. I am pleased we signed them, but it's a lot of money to pay for half baked players no matter how promising. I think with PSR restrictions we have to make future signings like that from abroad where we will get better value and potentially a bigger upside.

I just think that for players that aren't the finished article it's a lot of money with no real guarantee they will make much difference to results. Good prospects maybe, but you'd probably pay half for similar players from abroad.

I wonder if there's any mileage in playing him alongside Burn as a pair? Schar's been making a lot of mistakes in recent games, including some howlers against Brentford. I think we'll stick with Howe against Leicester but he must be on pretty thin ice by now.

They are the epitome of paying a premium forPL experience though. There's a question mark whether they would even impact results in the near future.

I think that's a misreading of the banner tbh. Demanding a team that tries is referring to a team that tries to win things, cups, titles etc. You seem to be reading it as "oh well we tried, that's the main thing, results are not the be all and end all".

Most of our signings of that season were a success on the pitch, massively so really. Unfortunately the ones still here are rapidly depreciating assets, so thanks to PSR, instead of appreciating that success we are reduced to seeing them as liabilities, even though we could afford to keep them on if we were allowed to buy upgrades.

I think Howe sees him differently, from previous attempts to sign him for quite a lot of money, that seems to be the case anyway. At the right price I think he'd happily take him. Whether Mitchell will sanction it is another thing. Depends if he's convinced Howe is the right man to take us beyond this season I suspect.