I've always looked at 12 games as the benchmark. A quarter of the season should see a fair sample of the league's opposition.

On 02/09/2025 at 04:58, theAnticlough said:

Good news on Jatta. But now it gets interesting.....If he won't sign our extension...then we probably have to sell in January (the Bros let Wootton and Ruben see out their contracts, but we were trying to get back to the EFL). That means we have to showcase him. So we have to play him. We currently have L2"s top scorer, so we will have to play 2 up front. Or drop Dennis (unthinkable for me at the moment and it'd kill his morale).

It could be be a difficult balancing act, and MP's team selection will be influenced. There will be input from the financial, I mean technical board :)

Scrub all of the above, or at least modify; who knew the club had a rabbit up their sleeve?

Such contractual clauses aren't so common as in the NBA, for example, where almost every other contract has a 1-year player option or a 1-year team option on top of the guaranteed years. That Notts were holding this 1-year team option was a real game-changer and now we have Jatta signed through to summer 2027.

I think we have to give Jatta credit too, him and his agent could still have made life difficult, but who knows what assurances have been given about the next two transfer windows.

What does it mean for the team? I think we still have to make sure to showcase him, and he'll want to do that too, but it's not as desperate as if his contract was running down.

We'll want to play Jatta and we'll want to play Dennis - but MP doesn't have to force it if he doesn't want to. But 2 up front and a midfield diamond behind it looks the way to go here, if we want to have our strongest players out on the pitch.

Edited September 4, 20251 yr by theAnticlough

Just because Jatta has had is contract extended by another 12 months doesn't mean that the Club won't sell the player at the next available transfer window if another club makes an offer the brothers can't refuse.

All this extension is basically doing is keeping Jatta's value a little higher than it might have been. I still think that Jatta will be very marketable if he starts scoring again, & strikes up a good partnership with Dennis.

I think we've already picked up that the money earned from the sale of players goes into the running costs of the club, such as wages & running costs, & we may even see other players sold if the price is right.

Jatta could still leave in January @Robbie, but this means we're under less pressure to sell if the price isn't right. If he were out of contract in the summer, there would have been clubs trying to exploit that and sign him for a reduced fee in January. Now we can name our price (or just keep him).

I'm disappointed another striker hasn't come in for competition though, especially if we're playing two up top. I'm very happy with Dennis but we'll be very thin as soon as injuries and suspensions come into play.

Yeah, that Jatta could still leave in January is a given.

But the year extension is a massive pressure release which will have knock-on effects to MP's team selection, the media focus, and maybe the mood of the squad

Jatta turns 27 in January, his next contract could be the most important of his career/life. We should have a highly motivated player for the rest of the season/half-season.