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EMC will start ahead of Sakamoto and Sheaf will start.

Only if we’re signing a player who’d be considered league leading as with Grimes. Defensively, Thomas and Kitching are an effective pairing. It’s not the best in the league but it’s certainly good enough for a team pushing playoffs.

It was never a bad squad. We finished 9th last season and ought to have finished higher. This offseason we’ve improved on that squad so 9th really is a minimum expectation. With Torp growing under Lampard and Grimes incoming, we may be on the verge of sorting out our post-Hamer midfield...

It’s all relative, when people say Grimes is a ‘top player’, they don’t mean he’s world class. Lampard has coached at a higher level than most managers in the championship. He could emerge as one of the top managers in the league if our form improves when our top players return.

What’s he done at the Christmas party?!

I’ve heard good things about it, good value for money too if it’s a Cat A game. My GF got me a Mahou experience for the Ipswich game and that’s my first experience in hospitality.

This isn’t a dig at the ITKs because they only pass on what they get told and it adds a lot of value to the forum! It does seem that they get told contradictory things and specifics that may be exaggerated (things get lost in translation if the info 1st, 2nd or 3rd hand) or misinterpreted...

How so? It’s more of an evolution of where we’re at in our squad building. We’ve signed 17 players who have almost all been 27 or under. That’s the foundation of the squad so it makes sense to start adding more accomplished 28+ year old players with experience. We tried to sign Browne and...

Context is everything. When you get a massive windfall from 2 players, you’re going to prioritise building a team for the next 5 years. We’ve signed around 17 players since the playoff final, most of which are 25 and under so it makes sense to start add some experienced players who can make an...

Just accept that Hamer and COH just wanted to move on. Both players wouldn’t have been convinced to stay with an extra 10-15k. In the case of COH, I believe we’ve got a better player in Rudoni. Robins said that Hamer and Vik said on the coach after the playoff final they wanted to leave. In...

Integral is stretching it a bit. In a full strength team, he probably doesn’t even start for that team. I’m not insulting him, every team needs good role players who are happy to accept their role is to be limited. He’s found a niche role in the team atm and he’s played it well so deserves a...

We finished 9th last season and Grimes is more like Hamer than Eccles, if you want to build a profile of the two.

We played Sheaf and Eccles together too, it’s not really fixed. The profile we actually need from a perspective player is long range passing and a ball carrier in midfield. That’s what Grimes offers so imo, would slot in nicely alongside Sheaf.

Didn’t we play Hamer and Sheaf together? It’s not necessarily an either/or situation. If Sheaf is unwilling to sign a contract in the summer, we’ll have to sell him. It’s not likely we’ll sell him this window because he’s injured. So for at least 10-15 games in the season, we’ll have both...

Sheaf and Grimes, Rudoni/Torp as a AM in a 4-2-3-1 for me.

If Sheaf was winning to sign a contract, it’d be stupid to sell up. Form is temporary and with more depth in the squad, Sheaf’s minutes can be reduced to mitigate injury.

The stopgap would be signing players to get up to the Prem. We’ve signed a lot of promising talent that gives us profitability in the squad. We’re not going to get promoted if all we’re doing is signing 20-24 years to sell on. Using Grimes as an example, he’ll give us 4-5 years potentially and...

Yes, in the summer it’s unlikely we keep Sheaf though. Unless he is willing to extend his contract, which is a doubt. Maybe if we finish in the playoffs or just short of it, we’ll keep MVE, Sheaf and so on. It’s important we’re ambitious this window and next to demonstrate to the fans and the...

We’ll play similarly to how we did last season in a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 with Haji and EMC as our wide players. There’ll be plenty of energy from Rudoni to chase down defences, it was often the case that our defensive shape was a 4-4-2 in the early FL days too.

His stat line is similar to Hamer’s for us in 22/23 so it’s exactly the signing we need.