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I don't think Watford are too loaded - wages are high and apparently no relegation clauses so they will have to move on their better players and will have very little time to plan for a different type of football. Villa will be more prepared but will have serious FFP issues and therefore probably no Grealish, McGinn or Mings. Bournemouth are probably best placed to take on the Championship as they still have a few players from when they were last in it and not too many stars to move on - Ake is already on his way according to the gossip columns, they've lost Fraser already and I can't see Callum Wilson hanging around. Other than that they have a strong squad, most of whom I think would stay. Overall, I'd quite like Bournemouth to survive of the 3 as I think they'd be the biggest threat to us.

Yes.

I'd bracket John Bond with Ken Brown if you're going to bracket Stringer with Walker. Bond signed Peters - the best transfer in our history (though Huckerby a close second and Grant Holt an even closer third).

When the Board is controlled by the majority shareholders I would say that the majority shareholders are the ones making the hiring decisions, wouldn't you? Most private companies run the same way. The executive team are tasked with running the company - in this case Webber/Ward/Kensell and Farke. Not the shareholders. That's my point - the shareholders are not answerable to anybody, nor should they be, because the executive team are employed to be. As Directors, they are accountable (to themselves as shareholders) for hiring the right or wrong executive team. I have never heard of a situation where shareholders are held responsible for a company's performance or asked to explain it.

Yes, you're right of course. I've only been one for 40 years - no idea what it is. That's me told.

Could it be that his loan arrangement and contract was extended to 31st July to take in the possible playoffs and that we have until then to tell him/his agent about the option? We surely won't be the team paying his July salary.

Do you actually know the difference between owner/shareholders and an executive team? How can the owners of something ever be "unaccountable"? It's their pocket which is hit by relegation isn't it, given that their shares are worth less? The executive team have already spoken - that's their job. The shareholders role is to let the executive team do their job having put them in position.

I'd love to see us play with a back 3 with Lewis and Aarons as wingbacks, but we don't have enough cover in the squad defensively. Next season the most important thing for me is to make us a better defensive unit. If Farke goes with the same formation and the same players at the back, unsurprisingly the same thing will happen.

The "model" outlined by Webber requires us to improve our available budget by developing and selling on younger players. We must wait and see who is moved on this summer, bearing in mind what has already been said about keeping our "best" players - but I think everyone knows it is inevitable that 2 or 3 of them will go, and hopefully for big fees. However, that model also suggests that we don't want to make a trading profit and then pay loads of tax, so assuming parachute PL money takes care of the wages next season it follows that anything generated should be reinvested in players. We seem to be shopping in a slightly bigger pond already.

As someone who lives near Watford and knows lots of fans down here, their supporters are not at all "entitled" and are very unhappy with the way the club is run - effectively the coach/manager is always very temporary and runs the team within an overall club system. He therefore has nothing else to do apart from get results. The hierarchy believe that every manager has his own limited time period to be effective in order to keep the players focussed. This comes at the cost of having absolutely zero community involvement or impact, with lots of overpaid players driving massive cars and generally behaving like idiots - the one exception being Troy Deeney, the reformed jailbird who is a local hero. The football they attempt to play is slightly more ambitious than Burnley's but not much. If they come down they could lose pretty much every decent player, either back to Italy or to other London clubs, because that's the only reason they're there, and their entire model could implode - but it looks like Bournemouth's result today has saved them anyway.

Posting so soon after a bad result is never a great idea! Before the lockdown we got almost universal praise from everyone for the way we played. People are now saying we are the worst team ever for not even having a go at staying up, but they all have very short memories - at the end of February when we beat Leicester we were still in it. Since the lockdown we've been so off the pace it's like we'd given up. I just think it was inevitable that it would impact some teams more than others and our football depends on the stuff that's missing. It's hard to be passionate and proud when no one's watching if that's all you've got. That's why we've been so bad away from home all season I think - the home crowd lifted them to play at a level beyond and without that they've sunk back to our normal level, which is substantially below what is needed to survive. I'm not counting the last 9 games as valid because of the situation - I don't think it's fair to judge anyone on such an unprecedented basis. We're down, and I think we would have been anyway, but not quite in this manner. I don't think it will carry over, even with the same players; but some will be moved on anyway, and new ones will come in and they will create a new atmosphere. Doing again what has already been done is very difficult without new blood and I expect the "out" door to be quite busy.

If the Championship go for a salary cap it is just a matter of time before we get Premier League 2. You cannot stop people spending their money and the gap between the current Premier League and the Championship would be completely insurmountable without some kind of halfway house. The other danger is the removal of promotion/relegation. Our performance this season is a very good argument against having automatic promotion without any kind of financial assessment test. If I was running a Man City, Liverpool, Man Utd etc I might be arguing that allowing a team to take part in the Premier League without adequate means to compete is reducing the overall quality in allowing the already weaker teams to stay up too easily.

I think we have to be fair to Leeds and give credit where it's due, however much it might stick in the gullet. To come back from their meltdown of last year the way they have and see it through with largely the same squad is pretty impressive. I wonder if they will now jettison most of their players and buy a Premier League team? Pontus Jansson though - two years running.....

Blimey, you do get exercised quite easily. My original post (which you might want to re-read) was about looking at other things as well as your own eyes when trying to "judge" a player, particularly if you didn't play yourself at a high level, but you've taken one part of it out to critique and you started the "sourness" by doing so. I'm not prepared to get involved in one of the personal ding-dongs which this messageboard seems to specialise in. I apologise if I've offended you by disagreeing with the points you've made. The point is, with regard to Kenny Maclean, some might think he's had a bad season, but his stats disagree - that should be enough to make people at least think twice. If I have criticised players (which I have) it is when I have considered more than my own eyes, because I accept that I have limited knowledge. There is a reason Farke rates him so highly but maybe those who are criticising him can't see it.

Well I think you've just proved my point. All of the people you mention are money makers and businessmen who judge purely on results. If you don't see why having done something at a high level is helpful to enable deep understanding of elite athletic performance then that does indeed explain some of your comments.

I suspect that a lot of contributors to this messageboard never played football beyond school level, so it's a bit rich that they feel qualified to judge an individual players ability. You can look at everyones stats these days to see what their comparative contribution is, to supplement what you think you are seeing on the pitch and that should give you a reasonable idea about who is doing well and who isn't. If you do that, you'll see that Maclean has done OK compared to those he is competing against for his place in the team. He is one of the few players who has improved his overall game this season - the only other ones being Krul and Hanley.

Yea but if he'd scored the one chance he had for us he'd have got there quicker.....

Drmic has 37 caps for Switzerland, who are not a rubbish national team - ranked 12th in the world. He must have more ability than we have seen so far.

I agree with this. We were always off the pace - just not this much off the pace.

I don't think they would have played like they did with a crowd in there, so they wouldn't have been "no shows". We were caught cold by a good Southampton side and maybe they would still have beaten us, but I genuinely believe that in front of a partisan crown we would have beaten both Everton and Brighton and probably Man Utd, and we would have had a very different end to the season - probably still relegated, but in a very different way.

I agree with you about footy being nothing without fans - tonight that performance would have been enough to have the Chelsea fans getting on their backs and our away fans screaming us forward, just like in the cup game. And can you imagine the noise at Carrow Road for the Man Utd cup game, when Cantwell equalised and we were pushing for a winner? But you saw nothing against Man Utd or tonight against Chelsea that shows that they are bothered? Well, I did - and I'm quietly confident for next season. I think we have a great chance of coming straight back. I think they'll be determined to repay us and put things right.

I agree that it's too early to write off Rupp - his poor first touch gets him in trouble, but once he sorts that and is more on the same wavelength he could well be a valuable player for us. I also think Drmic still might come good actually - some of his footwork is quick and he will get more time in the Championship (if he stays). Everyone is also being hard on Klose - hasn't played for a year then expected to come back in and immediately be a competent CB against some of the best strikers in the world.

Strange though that before the restart we didn't get any of this criticism, having just beaten Leicester and given Sheff Utd a very close run. Everyone said that without crowds it isn't a fair way to judge - including Martin Samuel. Suddenly now it's OK to judge because we've been useless without crowds. Most journalists or twitterati just write ill informed rubbish; these two are no different - they demonstrate that they know nothing about why we did what we did.

The problem Aarons has (and Lewis come to that) is that he isn't big enough to ever be the type of player a top 6 team now looks for as a fullback. Appallingly weak in the air and not great at one-on-ones so would be targeted by every opponent. I suspect his only hope is for a Leeds or a playoff winner to shell out the required £20m or so necessary based on a reputation going forward. Neither of our fullbacks is actually a fullback, just as Godfrey isn't really a CB. I do wonder if Farke has wanted all the time he's been here to play a wingback system but hasn't had the personnel for the 3 at the back. I still hope that's the plan for next season.

It will be a very interesting couple of months. Our squad is top heavy with not quite good enough players who are on long contracts, and moving some of them on is not going to be easy. Clearly we have some money available to buy in fresh legs and if we already have the seven detailed, with at least another 2 or 3 on the radar, there will be some exits. How this window is managed will ultimately determine whether the Farke/Webber time here is deemed a long term success or just another short term Alex Neill type hiatus. Remember though that when we went down in 2016 we were left with what we all thought was a squad more than capable of bouncing straight back - we had gone down with 34 points and had scored 39 goals; lots of our losses were by the odd goal. We won at Old Trafford; drew at Anfield. We had 23 points by early January and were 3-1 up against Liverpool and a win in that game would probably have seen us end up safe, but then the roof caved in. That bought Alex Neill a few months, but in the end his inflexibility and commitment to those players who had got him to that high point cost him his job. I'm not sure Farke has that long after the end to this season, which has been embarrassing and has destroyed his reputation as a coach. He has to be completely ruthless to succeed and I don't think he can be. I was a huge Farke fan like everyone else, but he seems to have lost his way, just like Neill did when the results went against him. I like Webber a lot. I admire his honesty and his priorities. Will he get rid of Farke when he needs to or will he wait until they both have to fall on their swords together?