Gottlob

Got to say that my favourite thing about deadline day and maybe the whole transfer window was reading our signings being angrily described as a couple of 'bum boys' only here to placate Howe and Tindall.

Over the past two summers we've signed Tonali, Barnes, Livramento, Hall, Kelly, Osula and you can add Vlachodimos if you'd like for the first team squad. We've spent around £170-190 million on those players, and of the lot only Tonali has seemed like a certainty for the first eleven. So I'm not sure I buy the sincerity or the rationale behind the argument that we're only looking for the best of the best, ready-made players who can immediately enhance the first team. It just sounds like hot air in the place of serious squad building.

An injury to Pope or Schar and we are now severely limited for half of the season. I personally don't think our defence looks great as it stands, and while it's on Howe to improve our ball retention and turn things around away from home, if we do start to control matches more and force other teams to sit back, I reckon we'll struggle more than we'd like to break teams down with attention once again turning to our lack of quality wingers. The plus side obviously includes the return of Tonali, a really talented player who has the capacity to galvanise us out on the pitch, and I think Kelly and Osula were smart pickups. We do have a strong squad with everyone fit. But with Howe expressing his disappointment with our transfer business several times this summer and talking about players feeling unsettled, the end of the transfer window has provided nobody with a lift and it only increases the pressure on our current squad and coaching staff to perform this season.

I think what a lot of people forget is that stuff like this takes time. To be successful you've got to appoint the right people, buy the right tools and only then can you start to think about luring him to the embassy.

I agree, that's why I'm so pleased that we signed the injury-prone backup something or other Lloyd Kelly for £150,000 a week.

He's 21 years old and has just moved to a new team. Descriptions like 'competent', 'short of top level', 'decent', 'solid', 'average', etc. would probably be generous for some of the recent performances by Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento, and they'd also be more than apt for the likes of Dan Burn, Emil Krafth and our new signing Lloyd Kelly. I think Anderson would have been a useful member of the squad. He's added a bit of grit to his game, passes the ball nicely and has better close ball control than most of our midfielders, which is something we lack especially in the final third, plus he'd have been another option down the left if we're looking to free up Barnes and Gordon. I think it's a shame we had to sell him.

Pope needed his hands to save that one!

Isn't Madueke just an old and injury-prone Minteh?

I've never heard of anybody needing to 'access' a club crest. This isn't the Narnia chronicles and touching a badge sends nobody into a tailspin by which they end up inside the wonderful world of Oz.

He looks like a cross between Richard Pryor, one of the members of 3T and Hank Worden who played the senile waiter in the original Twin Peaks series.

We've appointed a sporting director and a performance director and a lead coach for the under 16s, but shouldn't we look into some sort of master illusionist or military specialist if we spend half of our time throwing up smokescreens?

Count me among the ranks of the unsurprised and what's more this is a point of great excitement for me personally as all of the dreams I've ever had for the club begin to come to fruition. On the other hand does it seem to anyone else like the Saudis have done her dirty, after all those years she spent helping them enter polite society through the backdoor? The more I think of it the more I'm angered by it, but at least we've managed to keep Bruno.

Was she cajoled out of place and then lowered from a very great height?

Is there any chance the club are leaking these transfer rumours just to up the price for Dan Ashworth?

I still don't understand why we didn't trade him to Milan in order to offset some of the cost of the Tonali signing?

I never really rated him since even at his best he was tough to watch on the ball and tucked in too much in a moderately successful bid to provide defensive stability. But he was a below-par Premier League player for what was for the most part a pretty below-par Premier League side, and it's hard to begrudge someone who was born in the area, came up through the youth ranks and wound up making a serious contribution to our first team while spending effectively the whole of his career with the club. Well done!

I'll always remember Matt Ritchie as a pugnacious fellow. One of several players to be dubbed 'the Scottish Messi' after Barry Bannon, Ryan Gauld and little Jimmy Griffin, in truth he never quite reached those heights but he plied his trade with aplomb even if that was more in the sandpapering vein than fine carpentry. I can still picture him with bloodshot eyes racing towards the corner flag as if the whole world along with it best stay out of his way, only for him to be mobbed by his adoring teammates. He was signed for what wasn't a paltry fee ahead of our Championship season, and proved useful.

So I'm guessing we bring in Ramsdale for £15 million, sell Pope for about the same amount, and then use the amortisation to bring in a genuine top class first choice goalkeeper?

Some player Adam Armstrong! Only one year left on his contract too . . .

If Southampton stay down we may be able to secure a cut-price deal for Adam Armstrong, who has only one year left on his contract, has the second most goals and the fourth most assists in this season's Championship, and would be ideal as a homegrown player to provide backup for the three attacking positions.

We have a bunch of midfielders with fairly discrete skills and with Bruno the lynchpin who holds all of it together. Without his ability to play out and beat the press our midfield is a bit of an unknown quantity. Of the rest I feel as though Anderson is the only one with the footwork to keep the ball and potentially link the play higher up the pitch: Willock makes quick movements on and off the ball and can score a few goals, Joelinton makes the odd surging run and Longstaff can arrive into space in the area. Of course his productivity hasn't been great, but overall I think Anderson has looked pretty good since he returned from injury, and I'd expect him to get plenty of playing time next season.

Isak is a top class striker, but Cole was quicker, more agile and showed better movement off the ball, albeit at a time when there was more space to be found between opposition defences. I also reckon he was a more creative finisher, and while he never had the same explosiveness at Manchester United he became more technically proficient, more adroit in the buildup play and better at heading the ball. He was a key player for them during their treble-winning season, and therefore part of two of the great Premier League partnerships, first alongside Beardsley and then alongside Yorke. For me he's one of the best strikers in the history of the league, just behind a class of Shearer, Henry and Aguero.

It was the lack of fatigue you dickheads.

Interesting comparison, and like a bolt from the gods, it's just struck me that while he lacks the running power and pace with the ball which Barkley had when he broke through as a youngster, still in build and gait Anderson is markedly similar.

If Eddie Howe needs a lesson in ruthlessness he should look no further than our own venerable leader his majesty Yessir Bin-Rumayyan, who would sell his own mother for a locker at one of the world's premier links golf courses and has done so in the past. What's more I have no doubt that if our poor form continues on to the end of the season, Howe will be the recipient of such a tongue lashing that in the philosophers' parlance he'll be a tabula rasa, meaning a blank slate, or in the everyday parlance quite literally licked clean as a whistle. There'll be no room for favourites or sympathy then, and I for one cannot wait to begin the summer's culling.