Groundhopping Owl

I remember being desperate for Jeremy Helan to do well with us, he had so many physical gifts that you just felt like a good run to boost his confidence would be enough to make him a top player at this level. Sadly he never quite got there. Julian Börner is heading into this sort of territory for me. I accept he had a dodgy spell after Christmas (along with the rest of the team) but I love how committed he is, he really would run through brick walls to get us a win.

With or without the details of last night's meeting there's enough evidence to show that Chansiri's effect on the club is verging on ruinous at this point.

You're probably right there. The FFP figures sort of reflect that - a perfectly manageable £10m loss in the first year, £20m in the second but at least we got to the play-offs again, then suddenly the spending got bloated out of all proportion and we lost £30m to finish in mid-table.

Must sweep my hat off to DC, it’s some achievement to run a business for 5 years and learn absolutely nothing in that time.

Even if this is true, which in my opinion it isn't, it doesn't particularly matter. It looks like we're going down regardless of what happens and it's not the players' fault that the long-term future of this club is f***ed.

I expected us to get turned over today, but shipping 5 is the latest unconscionable embarrassment.

Star doing live coverage tonight: https://www.thestar.co.uk/sport/football/u23-sheffield-derby-wednesday-v-united-build-and-live-match-updates-2245954

I’ll be watching it in the pub with a City fan. God help me.

Boden used to live in Mosborough, next door to my best mate in primary school, he ended up in America didn't he? Pretty limited footballer so must have felt like he'd won the lottery.

When DC stopped Forestieri going to Derby we praised it as showing strength/ambition, but there was the sense that Derby could have offered £100m and we’d have still turned it down. We must have sold the least players of anyone in the championship by a mile. Stevie May, Hunt, Joao and Thorniley are the only ones I can think of since DC took over. There’s just a lack of business sense across the whole club.

At least we tried something a bit different. I could see the logic behind the Pelupessy as a right wing back idea, get him to do the legwork on the wing and free up Murphy to offer an attacking threat - which he did throughout. He made good changes at half time too. The goals we conceded weren’t really tactical, they were just down to the defenders having no confidence at all. A large part of that is on Monk’s head but purely in tactical terms I don’t think we did too much wrong yesterday.

My approach to Forestieri is to enjoy him when I can and try not to get too wound up about the dafter stuff. He’s massively talented, probably the most naturally gifted player we’ve had since the 90s, but he must be up there as one of the most frustrating too. He played well on Saturday given the pretty massive task of leading the line on his own, he deserved his goal. With my pragmatic hat on, I’d say that owing to his age, wage and injury issues we’d be wise not to give him a new deal. We’d have a job replacing that spark though.

Yeah I’d go with the OP’s XI. Plenty of threats across the pitch and we seem more defensively sure when playing a back four. Massive, massive game this one, if we’re going to arrest the slide then it’s pretty much now or never - the positives from Saturday will evaporate immediately if we don’t get a result here.

And Winnall and Sunderland. The way we’re run, particularly regarding transfers, is farcical.

We'd be at risk of too many vicious financial cycles. If you go down without much financial baggage and use the drop as a chance to rebuild and reorient towards youth then it can be a blessing (think of Southampton going up twice under Adkins), if not then there's little to stop you turning into the next Portsmouth/Coventry/Bolton.