A few questions which make no sense...

[Ndiayewillalwaysloveyou]

"Frees and loans" but we only used 4 loan slots when we always maximise this to 5?

Spent 19m roughly last summer on transfer fees with a useless manager but nothing at all this summer with Wilder?

Why did we keep saying we bidded for Souttar when we wasn't paying for transfer fees? (Decent money)

If we kept Hamer/Brooks/O'Hare we'd actually have a very good chance of the top 8 so selling em and not replacing makes zero sense for wanting a successful season?

 

[FatPaul]

Are you seriously trying to bring logic to this fuck fest?

 

[dc_blade]

There were always going to be sales this summer because of the loss of parachute payments and the new SCR regulations. I assumed we’d lose Hamer plus at least one of our young prospects. Not much to be done about that and in some ways we were lucky that we had valuable assets to sell.

What doesn’t make sense is the lack of a plan to replace these players and keep the squad balanced. We should still have had the resources to put together a competitive group and I bet our wage bill is still relatively high for the division. But somehow we’ve ended up with a million centre halves, right backs, and defensive midfielders and basically no attacking midfielders or wingers.

It seems like Wilder has been misled about what would be made available to him. Im not sure he’s recruited all that wisely himself but you have to feel he’s been put in a more or less impossible situation.

 

[Pittsburg Blade]

Bidded?

 

[3Cheers4Ramirez]

The baffling lack of even a winger on loan indicates that we want to invite a struggle, for the love of the struggle

And that's what we'll get

 

[metalblade]

A shotgun style of recruitment fire into a tree and pick up whatever falls out/

 

[BangorBlade]

Things are that bad we couldn't even manage to sign the Barnsley lad Cleary

 

[georgebernardshaw]

Bidded?

That’s what he saided..

 

[Ron_Justice]

There is only one answer to, I think, every question mark around this window. There's no conspiracy. There's no asset stripping. There's no systematic problem with our recruitment.

It's quite simple. There's no money because the owners aren't willing to fund £30M black holes from their own pockets. Does that make them bad owners? Maybe. Maybe they should be prepared to lose millions in the hope of maybe making it back in the Promised Land of the Premier League....

 

[skegblade]

SImple answer debt

 

[Ricardo Mantelban]

I hate Americans. They are self centered, over confident, arrogant, religious zealots and they no fuck all about football.

 

[Chezzy Blades]

1 - last season we had parachute payments, this season we don’t. They probably also didn’t think Selles was useless when they appointed him.

2 - It was only Danny Hall and some Leicester fan on Twitter regularly saying we’d bid for Souttar I think? My labrador knows as much about our transfer moves as Danny Hall, all our actual loans this summer have hit the media either through national outlets or journos at the other end.

3 - They would argue BBD and Donovan are the loan replacements for Hamer and Brooks this season even if that is a short sighted approach.

The real sickener and unanswered question is O’Hare. He was our best attacking midfielder left, was under contract beyond this season and had started the season well. To agree to sell him to a rival and then not at least have a loan lined up to replace him is bonkers and will no doubt cost us some points this season.

The realistic aim right now is to try and get 12 points clear of the bottom three but that’s not a given. 62 points would normally have a team somewhere between 10-14th and if we pick up injuries in attacking midfield or forward positions I’m not sure we have enough.

 

[AWetFlannel]

There were always going to be sales this summer because of the loss of parachute payments and the new SCR regulations. I assumed we’d lose Hamer plus at least one of our young prospects. Not much to be done about that and in some ways we were lucky that we had valuable assets to sell.

What doesn’t make sense is the lack of a plan to replace these players and keep the squad balanced. We should still have had the resources to put together a competitive group and I bet our wage bill is still relatively high for the division. But somehow we’ve ended up with a million centre halves, right backs, and defensive midfielders and basically no attacking midfielders or wingers.

It seems like Wilder has been misled about what would be made available to him. Im not sure he’s recruited all that wisely himself but you have to feel he’s been put in a more or less impossible situation.

A million centre halves? We had three and just brought a fourth in on deadline day, one of them being an unproven youngster. That's the bare minimum.

 

[Bladeloyal]

There is only one answer to, I think, every question mark around this window. There's no conspiracy. There's no asset stripping. There's no systematic problem with our recruitment.

It's quite simple. There's no money because the owners aren't willing to fund £30M black holes from their own pockets. Does that make them bad owners? Maybe. Maybe they should be prepared to lose millions in the hope of maybe making it back in the Promised Land of the Premier League....

30m black hole cannot be funded by the owners,a maximum of 11m a year .stark financial reality players had to go and squad trimmed back

 

[Ron_Justice]

30m black hole cannot be funded by the owners,a maximum of 11m a year .stark financial reality players had to go and squad trimmed back

Absolutely. And we (the overall fan base) need to come to terms with it.

 

[Greasy Chap Butty]

There is only one answer to, I think, every question mark around this window. There's no conspiracy. There's no asset stripping. There's no systematic problem with our recruitment.

It's quite simple. There's no money because the owners aren't willing to fund £30M black holes from their own pockets. Does that make them bad owners? Maybe. Maybe they should be prepared to lose millions in the hope of maybe making it back in the Promised Land of the Premier League....

Even if they were, no owner is allowed to fund a £30m black hole, due to new SCR rules.
It's £30m per 3 years.

 

[Ron_Justice]

Even if they were, no owner is allowed to fund a £30m black hole, due to new SCR rules.
It's £30m per 3 years.

Yep, and we need to spread the word. Too many folk explaining the owners actions as a Firesale/Asset Stripping.

 

[Cheeky Blade]

last season we had parachute payments, this season we don’t.

Do you they knew and understood what parachute payments were when they bought the club?

 

[Chezzy Blades]

Do you they knew and understood what parachute payments were when they bought the club?

I don't know, they don't communicate much at all! But you would assume they would have had advisors who would tell them if they didn't. They will have had the financials of the club examined with a fine tooth comb and had to pass EFL checks evidencing how they'd fund it for the next few seasons. I can't believe in 2026 such a big financial transaction/purchase would happen without them understanding parachute payments but I suppose you never know.

 

[Cheeky Blade]

I don't know, they don't communicate much at all! But you would assume they would have had advisors who would tell them if they didn't. They will have had the financials of the club examined with a fine tooth comb and had to pass EFL checks evidencing how they'd fund it for the next few seasons. I can't believe in 2026 such a big financial transaction/purchase would happen without them understanding parachute payments but I suppose you never know.

I only ask because they seem to have underestimated the size of the task re: running a Championship football club.

There was always going to be to a large gap that needed plugging. It’s the same for almost every club in the division.

 

[AWetFlannel]

There is only one answer to, I think, every question mark around this window. There's no conspiracy. There's no asset stripping. There's no systematic problem with our recruitment.

It's quite simple. There's no money because the owners aren't willing to fund £30M black holes from their own pockets. Does that make them bad owners? Maybe. Maybe they should be prepared to lose millions in the hope of maybe making it back in the Promised Land of the Premier League....

Yes, the expectation for owners of Championship football clubs is that they will have to fund losses of millions of pounds a year, particularly if they want to get anywhere. I'm not sure there are any that don't.

There are absolutely systematic problems with our recruitment, there is clearly a lack of vision and plan, it was a fire sale.

 

[Blacksea]

With these,it's not just understanding parachutes,it's understanding football.If they were aiming to make millions,why would you even buy a football club, especially this one?
If these are such smart business people they wouldn't have been anywhere near us,we all know the joke about how to make a small fortune in football,but these apparently don't.
Even if we had gone up,what would these have been prepared to fund in order to attempt to keep us there?,that would have been just as laughable as what they've done this season.

 

[Ron_Justice]

Yes, the expectation for owners of Championship football clubs is that they will have to fund losses of millions of pounds a year, particularly if they want to get anywhere. I'm not sure there are any that don't.

There are absolutely systematic problems with our recruitment, there is clearly a lack of vision and plan, it was a fire sale.

An expectation that isn't allowed to happen anymore. £11M a year is all they're allowed to put in. How would that have covered to losses from last year's income? We had to sell. If we're selling players for £7M each. And then spending that on recruiting, we're still in the red.

Leaving loans and frees. Frees are likely to be older, riskier, and still need paying and the Elite (the only ones worth bringing in) loan market is more expensive and risk adverse than ever.

 

[Chezzy Blades]

Absolutely. And we (the overall fan base) need to come to terms with it.

I don't think we're 'poor' in Championship terms but the squad is unbalanced and the money we do have could have been used better.

We now have 5 centre midfielders (7 if you throw in Choudhury and Shackleton) but none of them who are naturally attacking midfielders. Riedewald, Philips and Choudhury are three very well paid players who all fill the same role and all came in this summer. The same could be said for Peck, Arblaster and Rothwell, you ideally don't want more than one on the pitch at the same time in the two man midfield Wilder seems to favour. That's 4 highly paid centre midfielders going to be sat on the bench or not in the squad every week.

Four right backs for one position. Is Doherty not fit? If so why is he on the bench. In the two games since Seriki got injured we've put a young centre half there who clearly isn't a right back and then signed a player and stuck him in. At Cardiff we reshuffled to move Baptiste away from right back and still didn't bring Doherty on.

Three left backs is also one too many. He keeps putting McCallum in at centre half but probably won't now Kitching it here. We do have 5 centre backs (though it's easy to forget we still have Zatterstrom) which is about right.

I think we could have easily not signed Choudhury considering we have three other players who can play right back and six other centre midfielders and used that money on a decent loan who could play on the left or number 10 (ideally both). We've got two injured attacking players at the moment (Chong and One) and are already resorting to bringing Shackleton on when BBD cramped up.

If he's planning to play a flat 3-5-2 then we probably have a more balanced squad but that totally negates Donovan and even then we don't have any centre midfielders who can drive forward with the ball and prevent our strikers being totally isolated up front.

I think most people (well some people!) knew we had to cut our cloth due to SCR and us being the only team to lose our parachute payments this summer, but that doesn't mean we should be happy that the recruitment we have managed as left us with a heavily unbalanced squad and quite a few of our top earners being so similar they won't all be playing most weeks.

 

[Ron_Justice]

.

 

[Ron_Justice]

With these,it's not just understanding parachutes,it's understanding football.If they were aiming to make millions,why would you even buy a football club, especially this one?
If these are such smart business people they wouldn't have been anywhere near us,we all know the joke about how to make a small fortune in football,but these apparently don't.
Even if we had gone up,what would these have been prepared to fund in order to attempt to keep us there?,that would have been just as laughable as what they've done this season.

If we'd gone up, their project would have been MUCH more attractive to new investors and eventually a new owner. That backfired so now they're cutting their cloth.

 

[Keen Blade]

30m black hole cannot be funded by the owners,a maximum of 11m a year .stark financial reality players had to go and squad trimmed back

Does that £11m apply to both loans and equity investment by owners ?
I appreciate that SCR limits the wage bill in any case.

 

[Bladeloyal]

Does that £11m apply to both loans and equity investment by owners ?
I appreciate that SCR limits the wage bill in any case.

To be honest I don't know ,one for the finance lads

 

[Davalon]

Selling and reducing the wage bill was inevitable.

Having an unbalanced squad with a reduced attacking threat in terms of numbers, not quality, is unforgiveable and unprofessional.

Whoever is to blame.

 

[Blacksea]

If we'd gone up, their project would have been MUCH more attractive to new investors and eventually a new owner. That backfired so now they're cutting their cloth.

Well it would have been interesting on the plans they would have had to sell to potential investors to make it attractive to them to do the investing.
What they actually did in response to not going up maybe showed that those potential investors had a lucky escape