GREAT_BEARD_OF_ZEUS

The day they sacked Jokanovic, I laughed my backside off! Such a bad decision from the Fulham owners, they have massively downgraded in the coaching department now with Parker only really learning his trade. Anyway, I think it's obvious that Fulham are the blueprint for how not to survive and I hope the board have examined exactly what they wrong in order to avoid the same problems. That said it's worrying how similar they are to us, even reading those reasons you listed off I can see us being in danger of falling into the same trap on at-least 3 of them: They had 2 new goalkeepers and couldn't decide which one was worse than the other - we could well fall into this trap with Steer and Kalinic Their defense, apart from Chambers, was not Premier League quality - At the moment the same as us apart from Mings (who we've not even signed yet) They lost Schurrle to a virus for a quarter of the season and he was too inconsistent before that - Jack has had illness or injuries which have kept him out for big chunks of the last two seasons. Imagine if we lost him this season!

Don't get me wrong, I think he tailed off towards the end of the season (not sure how much the injury at Bolton had to do with that) and I would want us to sign another quality striker to really compete with Tammy and push him, but he's still only very young and the amount of improvement yet to come is easily worth £25m. Look at the players from our squad this season who are in that same age bracket: Tammy 21 Axel 21 Andre Green 20 Keinan Davis 21 Matija Šarkić 21 Apart from Axel he's streets ahead! And you'd still say that the others have the potential to become good, valuable players in the long run.

Think he'll link well with Grealish. Always remember how Jack and Carles Gill played some lovely 1-2s when they played together. Albeit they rarely did and the football being played at the time wasn't really set up to get the best out of either player. Imagine that now with Jack being a better player and under a manager that actually wants to play that type of football.

I always thought that about Arjen Robben, but he made a pretty decent career out of it

Exactly the same as me mate. I just don't want to just watch it at home, I feel like I need to be there, but the prices are just so astronomical and only going to go up like you say.

Where was that @Brumstopdogs if you don't mind me asking?

Been agonising all day over whether to just splash out and worry about it later. Genuinely just went to buy 2 Wembley box seats for £700 each from that Live Football Tickets website... Then realised there was an extra £200 admin fees and tax on top of each one!!!!

Missed out. Gutted. Think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and fork out for hospitality, just feel like I need to be there.

DS is so waiting to bring on Jedi & Kalinic for penalties!

He was kissing their badge the other day by all accounts. I mean if that's not a p*** take I don't know what is - he's still our bloody player! As @Mazrim says, he's where he belongs, leave him there.

I'm wondering whether it's just coincidence that Leeds suddenly rediscovered their form yesterday, or whether it was down to the fact that it was the first match in a while where the pressure was off? Let's face it Sheff Utd were as good as promoted so it was in effect a no pressure game in that respect. Wonder if they'll bottle it come the pressure of the playoffs - really hope they do!!

Football has a funny habit of dishing out karma at times. Think if Derby made 6th, the momentum they'd have vs Leed's hangover from missing automatics would have a huge impact. Not to mention that they'd be massively up for it due to Spygate.

I agree he's been very inconsistent, but at his relatively young age, you'd forgive that coming into such a fiercely physical league as this. Add in the fact that he's in a team/squad, half of which are just going through the motions knowing they're off in the summer - hardly motivating for the lad is it? If we sign him (which I also agree needs to be at the right price), he'll have the summer to settle and hopefully a better team/atmosphere to come back into next season. Worth persevering with if the price is right.

NEVER! Mmmmm my ball, my ball, my ball, my ball.

Rename the thread to the 20/21 Race for Promotion and lock it for 18 months. I know we're technically not out of the race but it would take a Fulham style winning run of last season to do it and we're a million miles off that. What's worse is that next season will be one of transition, so it's unlikely then either. Other than Kalinic, McGinn, a hopefully rejuvenated Chester and probably Guilbert, none of the current 1st team are either good enough or going to be here next season. That amount of change never bodes well in the short term.

I'm the same with Esso mate, just something about those forecourts I don't trust.

RE: Rob Dorset linking us to loan deals for Chalobah and Hayden Exactly so either Dorset's talking out of his backside or he's not quite got the details right. We're only going to be signing players on loan for two reasons: 1) If they've not played much football recently and we want to assess them before making it permanent in the Summer, i.e. Hause. 2) To get a premium player in who isn't prepared to commit to us now, but there's a deal in place to sign them if we go up i.e. Abraham (only we didn't negotiate the second bit sadly) Mings falls into the first bracket, so I'll be disappointed if we use the two freed up loan spots for those types of deals. My hope is we now bring in someone who falls into that second bracket - I think Chalobah probably just about falls into that bracket - albeit that it's more due to his potential than recent exploits for Watford. Hayden fits neither. We can see he's playing and match fit. I don't think you can class him as a premium player - I'm sure he would do a good job for us but he's a PL squad player who's getting games because Newcastle have a lot of injuries that's all. Also, he wants to move to be nearer family so a loan move where he's got to possibly go back up to Newcastle in 4 or 5 months time isn't really what he's looking for. I think if we are looking at him, it would be on a perm deal.

I think we're going to sign 3 players before the window is done. A defensive mid, another centre back and a fullback (primarily left sided). We've realistically got one loan spot left so going off the links, I'd go for one of the following combinations: Option 1: Gibson (fee) + Chalobah (loan) + Justin James (fee) Option 2: Mings (loan) + Hayden (fee) + Justin James (fee)

I remember there was a lot of fuss from Chelsea fans about him being allowed to go. Not really followed him though - is he still any good? Doubt it is true - if Mings is as close to signing as it would appear, then that's our 5 match-day squad loan places all done.

Black Panther... Best picture nomination???? Oh come on!

Oh reeeeally, is that right!!? *thinks about it for a minute* Ah bugger that would make sense.

Oh and Dyson hand dryers. Over-engineering of the highest level!! I get that there was the need for something better than the older generation of dryers which had about as much power as a cat's fart, but there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the design! But oh-no, Dyson had to completely revolutionise them just to appear clever didn't they!? So what've we got now? The 'airblade', a nonsensical device, requiring you to dip your hands into what is essentially a giant toaster and instead of drying them, simply blows the water up your sleeve! THEN not satisfied with one ridiculous effort, they bring out the 'airblade tap' - an even wilder contraption which, aside from rendering the sink inaccessible for normal use, thanks to it's crap sensors sets the tap and dryer off at the same time, blasting the water up and out of the sink and into your face!!! IDIOTS!

People who, when I'm showing them something on my laptop, use a pen to point at something and actually touch the screen with it! I have a high spec machine, which I had to fork out for when I started my own business - then in the first week I had a female client who forcibly tapped her leaky biro against it, the bitch! Excuse me love , that's a couple of grands worth of kit there! Just because you use a work supplied piece of junk that you don't give a shit about, don't assume I do. My business partner (who is complete technophobe) does it and I sound really precious when I say "can you not do that mate", arggghhh!!

Ooh young and shaven hey? Not half!

A handy (and stark) illustration as to how big the club's task is in this window and going into the Summer, should we not achieve promotion. Some might argue about the banding of certain players - for instance, it may be that by the start of next season, many if not all of those in the 'bench quality' bracket may be pushing for a first team spot. Likewise some of the players whose futures look doubtful now, may redeem themselves in the second half of the season. However it also works on the assumption that we'll make El Ghazi (50:50) and Hause (more than likely) permanent signings, not to mention the fact that DS may not see all these 1st XI caliber players fitting his system long term. I work out that even if if you take all of those players in green + four or five from the orange + a few promoted from the youth... we still need to recruit a further 10 players in order to have a 25 man squad with balance and at least 2 players in competition for each position. That includes finding replacements for arguably our best two players. No mean feat huh? You can begin to see why we might be clever taking a punt on a few lower league targets this month - give them 6 months to show whether they're serious options, then reassess where we spend our money in June.