Mark Albrighton

That’s fine and goes a fair way in defending his scoring stats, but ultimately it’s still £10m for a player who’s played the equivalent of 12 games in 3 years. It further helps quantify our own recruitment.

Strange, I would have thought your shared fondness of white upper case “T”s on a green background would have been enough common ground.

Nearly 150 pages in less than a year? Nah I’m sure they’d be cool if we sneak an away point.

I don’t know if there is a strict budget. There probably is an outline of some sort, but I get the sense it’s not too rigid. If they feel the right player is available but for £5m more, then I don’t think that will prevent them from going for it. If the Trezeguet and Luiz deals are sorted, then up front looks like it’s the area in most need of attention. They could of course surprise us with another big money striker, but I would expect the value to be a (relatively) cheaper £12m or so as I don’t see us playing two up top and I also can’t see us having a £20m+ striker on the bench. I accept it’s possible though and it would be pretty exciting if they did. By my reckoning these Trezeguet and Luiz deals would also bring us pretty close to the 25 senior player limit, so I would imagine we’re not too far away from hearing rumours of some of the fringe players being loaned out/sold.

I suppose if you could get your hands on one, the paddy power fake shirt would probably be worth more now. Be interested to see how Huddersfield’s shirt sales do compared to previous years.

Yep done that before, not for a while though thankfully. But for a short time it happened on a few occasions. Definitely coincided with going into my thirties. These days if I do anything, it’s most likely I’ll find that I’ve fallen asleep on the sofa having failed to make it upstairs. Although I managed to burn myself on the oven while pissed the other week, apparently insisting to an indifferent group that I warm up some samosas and onion bhajis. My memory is also nowhere near as good as it was. I used to be pretty good at remembering specific moments late on into a night. That’s more or less gone now, literally no memory of burning my arm.

The similarities will become apparent when he’s linking up with Aguero-doppelgänger Wesley...

Don’t particularly care for paddy power but it’s good seeing a shirt without a sponsor. However I don’t see it lasting.

Yeah come on guys, you’ll ruin the surprise.

Based on everything I’ve read and just the general momentum behind the stories/supposed twitter itks about us signing them...I think both are about 8/9 out of 10. That Instagram thing for Luiz has bumped him up a mark or two, while it’s felt to me like the deal for Hassan has always been simmering away for quite a while, never really going away. For comparison purposes I think the likelihood of us signing Sturridge is about 1 out of 10, with an error margin of 1.

Judging from some of the reactions to his first press conference he’s gonna need that thick skin. I know the reaction to his appointment has been referred to before, but jeeeeeeeez, it’s literally worse than it was in here after two years. It’s like they’ve been stuck with him for a decade of mediocrity. Makes his strongest detractors on here appear like Ned Flanders in comparison.

The ever changing price tag currently being suggested as being €11m (just under £10m).

Batten down the hatches!!!

“In yo face Boulton & Watt” would be my guess. (I actually didn’t know those two were on the current £50 note, I assumed it was still the portly glumness of Houblon....shows how often I see that denomination)

£20m.

But we weren’t “cash strapped” throughout his tenure, which is what some sections of the media are suggesting/implying. It’s certainly the way Bruce would like to tell the tale. He had to sell a few players to buy the players he wanted, anyone would think he was the only manager ever to face such an indignity. Regarding Smith, I don’t know, it’s literally a different league in terms of spending, the club are trying to assemble a squad with quality throughout, filling in the sizeable gaps that have appeared through loan players returning, players out of contract etc. I suspect the majority will be very happy with anything other than a relegation battle. Personally, I’m not fixated on what the figure Bruce spent, net spend or otherwise. My biggest gripe is the pretence his hands were tied during every transfer window. If you can buy Bree for £3m and not play him or if you can offer Bolasie £80 grand a week, etc etc etc then you aren’t exactly on the breadline.

It’ll go the other way. Every time one of our players goes down injured it’ll be “Please be an itchy arse” or “look at the fingers, definitely a scratching motion.”

FWIW I have never heard of Carlos Soler, but his Wikipedia page currently has his birthplace as “Aston Villa”. Welcome home son. Edit - now someone has changed it to “Valencia, Spain” so I don’t know what to think anymore.

It’s an old saying handed down by generations of roadsweepers. Look after your broom.

I’d say they were a bit on the expensive side, all of them with maybe the exception of Elphick and Chester who’s transfer fees seemed relatively sober at the time. Knock off a million for Jedinak, a couple for Kodjia, etc then it’s not as chaotic. But yeah, a lot of them served a function and a lot of them were readily utilised by Bruce and Smith.

I think it does factor in. If the argument is “oh he had to sell to buy” I think it’s relevant to look at who he actually had to sell. Veretout for instance was always going to leave, I don’t believe Bruce or the club were pinning their hopes on a season with Veretout in midfield, having not played a single competitive game for us since we were relegated. However, the money from his sale goes towards the final net spend figure. Essentially we brought in £10m for a player we weren’t going to use again. Great. But it was basically a free hit. A saleable commodity we weren’t ever going to use. When people say “he had to sell to buy” it’s suggestive that there was some reluctance in letting the players sold go, like they were integral to the team. It provokes a sympathetic response. It feeds into this idea that his whole tenure was similar to those few terrible weeks last summer. I don’t think that is the case for a fair few of the player sold. Ergo it shouldn’t provoke such a response. @markavfc40 Yes, fair enough I had completely forgotten Ayew, Gestede and Cissokho (I added Westwood in my edit shortly afterwards). I will concede that those three were probably closer to Baker in terms of Bruce reluctantly letting them go, just about. They’re closer to Baker in terms of whether Bruce relied on them than say, Carlos Sanchez. As I say, my main point is Bruce/we bring in £10m for Veretout or £2m for Gil or £3m for Gollini. Great. But I don’t think it’s particularly praiseworthy, what else were we realistically going to do with them? Let them rot with McCormack? They didn’t want to be here, I don’t think we really wanted them here, so they were sold and those significant funds were used accordingly. And without wanting to ignite the “what managers actually do in terms of transfer fees” debate, I assume Bruce had as much say in how much cash was brought in for Veretout as he did for how much went out for the Hogan deal.

While in fairness, he/the club may have brought in some money through player sales, how many were from players that he actually used? Players that he would have genuinely liked to have kept? Baker, yep I know he was reluctant to let him go. So fair do’s that was perhaps a bit of a hardship, possibly the biggest. Gollini, however it happened, his days here were numbered from early on. I don’t think he played many games under Bruce. I don’t believe letting him go was much of an issue. Gil/Veretout, I don’t believe either played for us in the championship. So again, I don’t think he would have been too downbeat about bringing in cash for those. Amavi, he played a bit, I know you didn’t rate him. I can believe Bruce may have wanted to keep him. Bacuna, a few million there was it? Fair enough, but if Bruce was unhappy about losing him, he would have been one of the few. Did we receive any money for Sanchez? If we did, then ok but again not someone who Bruce would have built the team around. Unless I’ve missed someone, I think these transfers out account for the majority of money being brought in. So does Bruce deserve a bit of credit for his role in some of these departures bringing in the cash? Yes, but by and large these were not players that were used by Bruce or had any real future at the club, so I don’t think Bruce would feel too hard done by for bringing in money for them in order to bring in his own players. Basically I’d be more sympathetic to the “sell to buy” notion if he had been forced to sell the likes of Chester, Grealish, Kodjia etc. Edit - forgot Westwood. Brought in a few quid for him too, and he did play him a bit. So maybe Bruce was reluctant to sell him.

The article says “his unhappy time at cash strapped Villa”, and there’s quote about worries of people not being paid. Yes, that happened. It was a terrible time. I am sorry Steve that you had those testing few weeks to endure. But the article makes it sound like it was like that his entire time here. I would genuinely like to know how Bolton supporters would view that article knowing that paupers Aston Villa were soon able to pay £70/80 grand a week to Bolasie, having already spent several million on Bree and barely played him...we all know the various examples that can be listed. There are valid points from the more pro Bruce voices, some of them well reasoned, but this is exactly the kind of shit that gets churned out that his detractors point to when they say his media pals come to the rescue.