Groundhopping Owl

Gnanduillet has signed for Hearts. Next.

Reach doing well

Seems a good move this - we’ve been crying out for another pacy winger since Murphy left, he’s young enough to still have plenty of potential and since he’s free his resale value is endless. Welcome to Wednesday Andre.

Brentford balanced the books by buying players who were good value and making sure to impose a coherent structure across the club. Barnsley have done the same, as have several others in this division. DC has landed us in FFP trouble and at the bottom of the league by spunking millions on the likes of Rhodes. It's completely irrelevant if the fans want a chairman to sign a certain player, the best chairmen keep a rational head and make smart decisions. Do you think the reason Brentford signed Benrahma was because there was a groundswell among their fans to sign a striker playing in

He's learning on the job after owning us for how many years?

Have to say this was my first thought too. I'm not opposed to managers with intensive working methods, but our squad just doesn't seem to respond kindly to that (then again, can we definitively say they respond to anything at this point?).

He's obviously trying to return to management and has got an agent out there linking him with every position they can find - he was consistently linked with the Schalke job until they gave it to Christian Gross. No thanks.

Derby trying to get Tyler Roberts on loan from Leeds, he’s a talented player.

Matty James going straight back out on loan to Coventry.

If memory serves the Millwall game was at the start of Jones’ last aborted season with us - both teams were dreadful but we went 2-1 up before half time, then Reda gave away a really daft penalty at the end for them to equalise.

I don’t particularly rate Gnanduillet to be honest. To sign a new striker do we think we’d have to cut short Marriott’s loan to be able to redeploy the wages elsewhere? Stephen O’Donnell could be a good solution for us at right back, though left back does seem more pressing. He basically signed a short-term deal at Motherwell after leaving Kilmarnock while he waits for a Championship club to come in for him.

It seems to me the word “manage” is being used slightly ambiguously here - I don’t think Hinchliffe means DC wants to pick the team every week like some owners, but giving someone the title of “manager” implies a degree of input into decisions on transfers, club strategy etc that DC has been totally unwilling to do.

You just know he’ll reappear in the championship with another side in two or three years and turn out to be better than whoever we’ve got at left back by then. Good luck to him. We’ve handled his development poorly so I can’t blame him for wanting to move on.

The most unreliable player I've ever seen for us. He could play brilliantly when he wanted, which was what made him all the more maddening. I wouldn't go near him.

Random thought but the best value to be found in a January window is often players from summer leagues whose contracts expire at the end of the year rather than in June - so mainly Norwegian/Swedish. A lot of the players wouldn't be up to Championship standard but Watford have signed a lad who's just scored 19 goals for the Norwegian champions on a free, they obviously think he's up to it.