Cowboy

Bah 'eck lad, tha's reet dafft if tha thinks thuhs owt in Table 11.2 wuth t'pryce orra sticky bun!

If the idea is to establish a base camp of mid-tableish stability with the more experienced (slow/old/incompetent?) players, then blend the youth in, then you really need that to work early on. Ripping that idea up and throwing the youngsters in half way through the season from a low starting position in the table is a potential recipe for relegation if club morale is low. I don't know what the answer is given the material available though, but I'd take the chance on youth now and hope that things start to work by Christmas or so. It looks a worrying muddle at the moment.

* uploaded. 🙂

Too embarassing.

♬♭♪♫♩In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight ♬♭♪♫♩

There's no need to be so canal about it!

Strangely, I think Delap might turn out to be the best signing of the lot. He has pace and power and a very decent first touch. Looks Premier League quality to me.

Certainly not. He's massively over-rated anyway, with serious holes in his game defensively, poor decision-making, team work and inconsistent work rate. Yes he's flashy and exciting at times, but to try to re-integrate him now sends a terrible message to the rest of the squad and would not be worth the effort anyway - the return would almost certainly not be worth it. Sell at whatever the best price might be, which will be well below what some are expecting.

Quite. Literally no-one is going to pay £20m for a good athlete, albeit an injury-prone one, whose touch and finishing are not the best.

Patience on the terraces is going to crucial with the very real looking risk of nil points after four or even five games. Every draw is going to count after losing that first easy looking game amongst a run of tough ones so badly. Nerves will need to be held, and toxicity repelled.

Yes. It's very hard to stop the rot when you're on a downward spiral and there are players downing tools (whether on or off the pitch), without wholesale changes which are probably unaffordable without dipping down a level to become competitive again. Couple that with still unrealistic expectations in certain sections of the fanbase after not-so-recent 'successes' and the poison very quickly comes to the surface again after the slightest setback - not that the performance on Saturday was a particularly slight setback, it was absolute crap! I'd agree that the answer is very much a back to basics approach and a mass clear out of all bad eggs and old donkeys, even if that generates more worry about relegation - I don't actually think a cheaper, younger, scratch team with more fight and a lot less baggage would be more likely to be in a relegation scrap than this shower of ***** anyway.

He will if you offer him a sugar lump and whip it away before he can eat it!

I presume their contracts and salaries make all of them very unlikely sales, given their low perceived value. Three millstones and one debatable perhaps?

He's done well in the past, but he's a very 1990s style defender with his best years behind him.

Talk about stating the bleeding obvious! Lisa Stansfield would be better than Barnes, or at least more mobile.