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Welcome Sam hope its a successful stay. Happy we have more forward options.
I wonder if he will bring any Bournemouth 'shithousery' with him as we all know Eddie Howe trained his players in the dark arts
Of course 'shithousery' in a Stoke shirt a la Nick Powell is something to be enjoyed

Followed quickly by Tom Mince....then Gazzer would have reunited his dream front 3 to guarantee promotion and prove he was right all along

Unusually for me last season I predicted 5 of the top 6 and the only team to let me down was...well you know who Wigan Norwich and Brentford were the obvious stand out teams. This season is likely to be deja vu with the three relegated teams all in the top 6 along with Bournemouth. Although the 3 relegated teams have new managers but Imho they are 3 good appointments, so much better than our choice when we came down.
The remaining 2 places in the top 6 will be an absolute lottery, as grapey says so many clubs going through problems. Those are are relatively stable and marginally better than the rest are M'boro, Cardiff and Forest. All have decent managers who know their way around the championship and I think the remaining two will come from one of these.
This season it won't take much to hit 5th or 6th place. Frustratingly we are still a little way off and have a manager who still believes grinding out results is the recipe for promotion, so it's likely we will miss a golden opportunity to get into the playoffs so I expect a marginal improvement in points and finishing position.....10th.

Nicely put Mick!

Happy with this signing, someone who is comfortable on the ball and can pick a pass two attributes often missing from our midfield!! The speculation that he is a replacement for Powell seems a little bizarre. Surely our esteemed recruitment team wouldn't replace one player who has the potential to hit 15 league goals in a season with one who has scored 15 in 121 league games for Norwich? They wouldn't would they??

Sad to see one of our best young players flogged off to pay for shite financial management of the club, take a bow chief exec. Best of luck in your career, enjoy the relegation scrap next season. Maybe see you again at the Bet 365 in season 22/23.

Indeed come on the Czechs. To nick the essence of the Scots favourite phrase when England are playing .... I'll support anybody but Scotland'.

So the bbc a £5bn turnover business were outbid by little guys wanky talksport. It's more a question of priorities and they prefer to pay fortunes to average celebs and presenters, re-employing dodgy Bashir and training all their staff how to be Woke and avoid subconcious bias. Surely a deal to air the payoffs would be small change to the BBC.
I am being hypocritical because I live overseas and don't pay the license fee. But more and more it seems the BBC has lost it's way and it's Sports coverage doesn't justify even a fraction of the license fee the UK is forced to pay.
No doubt they will spend hours of airtime today talking about the champions league final.

Well good old BBC for their Cup Final coverage start with Ashley Cole reliving his glory moments with Chelsea and of course Arsenal ( no idea what Arsenal have to do with today ) then some highlights from previous rounds, clips from MOTD already seen, and then the event. All hosted by the lifelong Leicester City fan Gary Lineker. The BBC, self acclaimed for their lack of bias in all practices throw that principle out of the window. The thought of Lineker running around the studio in tears if Leicester win is only one of many reasons why I won't watch and haven't watched a cup final since we lost. Sounds thoroughly awful. Will be on the golf course and might check the result later.

p.s. I note on BBC 2 the alternative is lovely Doris Day slapping her thighs and cracking her whip in Calamity Jane...could be more entertaining than Lineker, sorry will definitely be more entertaining than Lineker.

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Thanks Matty D for your efforts at running the comp. Hope you return to it next season.

Its true it would be an absolute nightmare with hate spewed bile flowing out of Scotland towards anything that is English. But fast forward just a handful of years and they will have no more right to join the EPL than teams from Netherlands Belgium Scandinavia etc etc

It was an interesting if rather depressing press conference. The interest was mainly due to some pretty direct and important questions posed by the much maligned Ange. In fairness to MON he did give answers even though I didn't like them.
Next season is already nailed down as transitional and likely to see at least one of our young assets sold to give us a bit more manoeuvre under FFP that's depressing

You are right about Jones and Rowett, both poor appointments made by a board who through poor due diligence have made huge mistakes over the last 3/4 years including appointing Paul Lambert as the saviour from relegation. It's difficult to be too hard on the Coates family who as huge fans have continually backed managers with the exception of one season of Hughes where self-sufficiency seemed to be the flavour of the month. This strategy was one of the main causes of our decline.
We are still operating under the model that the manager has ''carte blanche' rule over transfers, a model that under Rowett has seen us being hamstrung financially by FFP.
We have been desperate for new ideas in the boardroom via a DOF who could add an extra voice to transfer knowledge and activity. The summer transfer dealings will be the responsibility of the manager and his transfer sidekick the ex fanzine editor from Millwall, hardly a dream team. With little cash to spend, unless we sell one of our assets, the transfer team will have to perform some miracles to deliver players who will improve us enough to get close to the playoffs. So we have a rookie manager in transfer activity and an analytical nerd spearheading our transfers. Our success next season will be defined by their ability in the transfer market. The list you outline is accurate, can we expect them to deliver? Their signings so far though not disastrous haven't significantly improved us, will this summer be different.....we will see.

There is a lot of hysteria over this announcement. Particularly those who cling on to the romance of the past of the once 'beautiful game'. Football has changed fundamentally and is now more about optimising business opportunities to create and safeguard profit to maintain their status.
Toothless football authorities like Fifa Uefa and the FA always launch strong words on issues only to finally agree a fudge compromise later down the track. And this will happen over the proposed European Greedy League. The premier can't survive without the biggest clubs so they won't kick them out. Fifa will never be able to impose a ban on players turning out for their countries, employment lawyers and human rights lawyers will be all over such an issue.
Sadly the power wielded by the richest clubs will continue to dominate and shape the future of football without major legislation being passed to limit their influence.
The Champions League is the main loser here and like the Premier League, without the biggest clubs the competition would be hugely diluted. So the inevitable outcome is that Uefa will cave in and modify the Champions League to allow the big clubs easy or non qualifying entry into the competition.
The losers of course will be the genuine football fans who long for the past and a genuine competitive sport , those seemingly more important to the clubs, the worldwide fan base, will lap up watching more of their super stars