menzinho

Yeah it is very strange that he was supposed to be on loan at Wigan this season... It doesn't fill me with confidence that Wigan clearly didn't mind him leaving them and he's only been there a month. The statement from Wigan is odd and doesn't provide much clarity; "after a period of adapting to his surroundings it was felt a change would be beneficial". Is Wigan really that different to London!? That makes it sound like he got sent to the moon to play football! I don't know, I feel like this is going one of two ways, he's going to be great or he'll barely play and get sent back before January.

You generally tend have high hopes when you sign a player from a top Premiership side, even more so knowing Chelsea spent £4 million to get him from Everton when he was 17! I feel like he's been bought in to play at LWB, feels like we've been looking for someone especially as we were in reportedly in for Boyes before... Doesn't exactly add a reason to be positive about JJ staying. In terms of Ishe, I hope he does well and a bit like with Iorpenda and Abbott we'll be feeling gutted by the time the season ends because we'll know he's not likely to return!

It seems this morning some reports have been going round about us potentially signing Ishe Samuels-Smith, a left-wing back, on loan from Chelsea.

Yeah I feared the worst when I saw the Burnley teamsheet, I was pleasntly surprised and really encouraged after watching that to be honest. I thought all the new players did well, mad to think Dean Campbell is still probably putting names to faces but he played like he'd been in our team for a season! In fact the trio of him, Cooper, Evans for a first-time all playing together looked really quite impressive. I'll leave my feelings about inverted wingbacks to one side but Lipsuic, up against Edwards who was playing for Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League a few seasons ago, was really good too. And Cal banging in a goal like that was like turning the clock back a few years, we need someone like him who is capable of scoring from deep every now and again and after yesterday's showing he's off to a good start. All in all a really solid performance against a team that has aspirations to go straight back up to the Premier League, if that is the kind of standard of performance level we should be able to hold our own in League 1.

There is a now a glaring difference when you look at our first team on the club website, everyone has a new photo for the season, everyone except JJ that is...

I'm guessing we'll get some sort of update about the players who will and won't be in contention for the weekend, but assuming not much has changed from last weekend it's pretty slim pickings right now in terms of first 11... Belshaw Gibbons Ness Bedeau Kouhyar Lipsuic Evans Tsaroulla Roberts Cooper Acquah Subs: Griffiths, Brown, Baker, Robertson (hopefully), Reynolds, Ndlovu, Smyth. The wingbacks and attacking midfielder positions are still a massive issue for me, zero depth at the minute and that's without injuries. I don't think we'll win, Burnley might have a had a bit of rough season last year but I think they'll have too much quality for us. If we can be somewhat competitive and even score I'll be happy.

It's a strange one with Jodi, because what I can find, and I don't trawl the depths of social media, I've not seen even a kind of half-credible journalist suggest that there are clubs that have bid for Jones. That's not to say things aren't going on behind the scenes but some journalist eventually picks up on these things. If nothing is going on and he is injured, as per Martin Paterson, then there is absolutely no reason for the club to put out a statement and that’s kind of where I’m at with it. He has had a very disrupted pre-season so I've no reason to doubt he is injured, but if it turned out he's been training all this time and the club used an injury as smokescreen for his departure, I’d be pretty disappointed.

He's an attacking midfielder and he's also pretty good off the ball in terms of pressing effectively too from what I've heard, so he sounds like a good fit. Clearly you don't play that many Championship matches if you've not got something about you. It does sound like he could be perfect for us, and from the Swansea end they said the loan is with an option to buy. Great that he's had a pre-season and is ready to go he'll probably be in the starting 11 for Saturday, assuming he has managed to avoid stepping on all the cursed relics seemingly buried under our training ground!

He's definitely heading somewhere, this is from the Southend manager after their match this weekend; "We’ve had a trialist in and we’ll hopefully do business once Harry leaves, which will probably be on Monday". I know York could pay him stupid wages, but maybe the lure of playing a League higher has tipped it in our favour. I guess we'll find out pretty soon.

It just didn't work out with Traore, considering he had 3 season playing in the top division of Norway you'd have thought he would have been a hit not a miss but that's just how it is with transfers sometimes. Surely him going means someone else is coming in to take his spot now. It's interesting to me that this time last year we had signed 5 players on loan. This season we have either missed out on players or are just extremely reluctant to sign loanees. I understand that you don't want to over-rely on loan players, but to have not signed any is weird to me. If we can get a player from the level above that isn't ready for that level, like Iorpenda, Luker and Abbott were, you can quite easily strengthen the side.

0-0 at full-time, not exactly a classic. I've seen the full-match replay on the site but I think I'll give it a miss. I did watch the post-match interview with Martin Paterson after, and it hasn't filled me with the reassuring comments I was hoping for! Obviously the injury situation is not good, 1 fit proper wingback and 1 fit central midfielder is worrying. But I totally agree we are light on players and to be in this scenario 1 week before the first competitive match starts is not good. He made it pretty clear the goal-scorers in the team aren’t there and the way he was speaking about the players who have come in from the NL was a kind way of saying they aren’t ready. He made it pretty clear he he doesn't control who comes in and out, felt like he was making it known to the fans that the lack of players isn't down to him.

Yeah, Kilmarnock didn't jump at the chance to get Roos back again, he is potentially going to be a very costly back-up. I really don’t get the Jones rumours though, he seemingly loves it here but he’s unfortunately pretty injury prone (not helped by the fact he gets clattered in some matches) and he’d cost quite a bit too. It doesn’t strike me as a great deal to be done, for another club that is. It’s a shame we haven’t released the team from either the WBA or Barrow friendlies because had he played in either or both, you’d think then he’s not going anywhere. I really hope he is staying because it would just add more strain to the summer recruitment.

I've seen the reports about O'Reilly potentially coming on loan to us, it would be a definite yes from me! He'd be a great option as one of our No 10s. Sounds like Sheffield Weds were interested but there was no guarantee of the game time, whereas with us he'll definitely be in contention for our starting 11.

The radar for last striker was a bit off, let’s hope we’ve reconfigured to the Jatta/Rodrigues levels! I've seen lots of excitement around this signing, I'm a touch more reserved because he's only played 15 league matches in Finland so it does feel like a bit of gamble to me. Looking at his matches played, he missed the whole of the 2025 season but then this season in the 13 matches he's played (technically 14 but that was only a 10 minute appearance) he's scored 7 goas. The global rankings is pretty interesting, just got to hope it's acurate because if we'd just signed a striker who scored 7 goals in 13 matches in League 2 we'd all be over the moon!

You kind of forget with Tovide that he is still very young, it feels like he’s been around for longer because he’s played 120+ matches already. But he's only 22 so to already have that kind experience is insane. I think he’s got all the attributes you’d want from a forward, it’s just that goal-scoring knack that needs to be sharpened. Maybe that would change with us though because the style of football you get with the Crowley’s is always a bit more attritional; they don’t exactly open teams up to create those gilt edge chances for forwards like we do. When he's played against us I've usually been very impressed, I like him and I think his potential is really high.