DangerousSausage

@Ash, the talk about his strengths and weaknesses reminds me of when we signed Nemane. He was L2 quality at best in my view, but we could definitely have done with him at times last season. I'm looking forward to seeing Cotter play and making my own mind up!

Interesting reading @TheSkipper, thanks for sharing. Judging by that, his main problem is the stepovers. Barnsley isn't the kind of place that appreciates stepovers. It sounds like he's another wide player whose strengths are going forward rather than defending. I hope we can get the most out of his strengths - maybe he'll be a wizard on the wing for us? He also knows Martin Paterson (and Connor Grant) from Barnsley and seems keen to work with him again. That's a plus as well.

Sounds interesting, seems to split opinion at Barnsley but he played 40 games for them last season. Maybe starting games rather than being a sub will do him good. Hope he's a magical signing!

How absolutely tragic. He got married less than two weeks ago too. My thoughts go out to his family.

What a great message, he's a class act. Hope to see him in football again soon.

What a crazy time that was. It was so obviously dodgy in hindsight, but at the time I was desperate for it to be real but also somehow wholesome and above board. If it had been real, it would have broken my heart to see us turn into the kind of soulless club Man City have become. I wanted us to become a Fulham, to play the big boys but hold on to our identity. All moot now anyway. That's putting it lightly. According to a podcast about the saga, he sat Sven in a restaurant in Qatar or somewhere and arranged for a bloke to come in dressed as the king while all the waiters stood and clapped! It was Ray Trew who ultimately paid for it all. That season could have ended the club, but instead we had a fantastic season with excellent players with our next owner footing the bill. Shame we ultimately squandered it.

I hope you're proven right @Robbie and we can have a good laugh at this thread once the season's over! Selling players on for a profit can be a risky strategy as it puts pressure on the club to recruit equally high-quality replacements for less money. I hope we've got some good irons in the fire.

Interesting post @piedestrian. I agree that Jatta was brought in to replace Langstaff, who everyone knew would be leaving sooner rather than later. I think Jatta's form tailed off because he was overplayed and we had no alternative to him, but that's a separate issue. I don't think we replaced Crowley adequately, but maybe Jarvis or Grant can step up after a full pre-season. However, the Bass sale is a bit different. By the board's admission the offer came out of the blue, so now we're suddenly looking for a new number 1. It clearly won't be Griff, but we'd do well to get an upgrade on Bass. We have started pre-season training with one striker and no senior goalkeeper and an awful lot of work to do. Talk of asset stripping is way OTT though. The club is a long way short of breaking even and is dependent on yearly funding from the owners. If they wanted to cut their losses, they'd sell up.

A couple of hours after my last post here I suddenly came round to @ARLukomski's thinking. As I said yesterday, we'll have to see what rabbits RG can pull out of the hat but I'm not feeling very confident so far. And now we've sold the best keeper in the league and are suddenly looking for a replacement just when teams are reporting back for pre-season training. This doesn't look like the carefully planned recruitment that was sold to us. Also, signing players is never an exact science, sometimes players just don't settle at the club. The more gaps we have to plug, the more likely it becomes.

That's a good tip @Piethagoram! I'd never heard of Tranzer before but it's a good idea. Deutsche Bahn should really offer one-month tickets but there you go. For anyone else who's got a Deutschlandticket subscription (so pretty much anything apart from Tranzer), just remember to cancel before we play Darmstadt and you're good to go. The ticket is then still valid for July. I should have mentioned the Quer durchs Land ticket, which can really pay off of you're in a group, but it's only valid for a day.

In struggling with the heat too - yesterday it was 35, today it'll be 36 and tomorrow it'll be 38. It's still 26 or 27 outside when I go to bed. We've got shutters outside our windows, so that helps keep the heat off a bit, but the evenings are still uncomfortable. Luckily it'll be cooler from Thursday onwards (cooler being the high 20s). I hate these conditions. It's OK when you're on holiday with a pool and an air conditioned room, but it's crap if you actually have to do stuff. I much prefer autumn.

I can sympathise, I've also been messed about with holiday requests in the past (which is even more annoying when you've got flights to book). But I can recommend visiting this corner of Germany even without football, there are some beautiful places here. It's nice to be able to drink beer in the stands, but many clubs only serve light beer (2.5%) inside the stadium. I can't remember whether Darmstadt are one of them.

Reading the story again, it looks like we're aiming to recruit a replacement for Alex Bass and then a further goalkeeper later in the window. Looks like Griffiths is considered one for the future then. I'm still not happy. It opens up another completely unnecessary gap in the squad.

Here I am trying to be Mr Balanced, meanwhile the club sells the best goalkeeper we've had since Bart and replaces him with a youngster without a single senior appearance to his name! Absolutely crazy. And then Gagliardi talks about having competition. Good luck at our club Harry, and remember the disappointment at this decision is no reflection on you.

That's a good signing for them. He didn't always catch the eye for us, but we looked a better side with him in the team.

Some interesting points in this thread. I don't know whether Paterson was truly the first choice (although he may have been first choice following the interviews). From the board's point of view, RG is chiefly responsible for assembling the squad while the head coach's duties don't start until the players report in for pre-season training, so there was no rush. However, I wonder if our lack of a head coach caused us to miss out on transfer targets. If I were a player, I'd ideally want to know who's going to coach me. So that bugs me. We have some serious quality to replace and we haven't done it yet. However, there's a month to go and what truly matters is the squad we have in August. I'm a bit nervous too but it's too early to write MP and RG off. Regarding coaches, coaching players who played in a different position to you is part of the job. Our last three head coaches didn't even play professionally. A lot of talk about coaches from fans is just conjecture because from the outside you just don't know. There are former players unable to elicit more than a grunt, and there are people who never played at all who have excellent tactical knowledge. What matters is what happens on the pitch, and we haven't kicked a ball yet.

Playing really well too, but we've missed some good chances to double our lead. We know how this ends. Germany's coach looks like a cross between Like Williams and Pierluigu Collini! PS GOAL!

Thanks for the update @Ash, it'll be interesting to see it in action. It's a bit strange that it's at the back. I much prefer to stand at football. However, it should also be a way to make tickets more affordable as it raises capacity. But if the prices and capacity remain the same, what you've basically got is a seating section you're officially allowed to stand in. I hope this will be changed in coming seasons.

The advantage of Brazil is that he already speaks the language @TheSkipper! Very interesting move for him, I'll keep tabs on him. I don't know how he performed at Oxford, but he was in their first 11 pretty much all season, which is a massive step up in just two seasons. Good luck to him at his new club.

It'sThanks for the feedback everyone! @Piethagoram, I think most people who are flying will have booked by now, but there are always stragglers! I wouldn't quite agree there, even though they're clearly the biggest name. The friendly has fallen under the radar a bit as two weeks later they're playing a friendly against AS Roma at the Fritz Walter Stadion. We've also been waiting a long time for ticket details. For the other two, there'll likely be a typical pre-season crowd and atmosphere, but at least you'll see the inside of a German ground. The Kickers game is being used to mark an anniversary (so maybe they'll make an event of it), and it'll likely be the most competitive game of the three. Last season, Darmstadt played (and beat) Coventry in front of a crowd of 4,500 (including 500 Cov fans). However, that was on a Saturday and not midweek like our game. They'll be tough opposition as they play in a higher league and started training two weeks earlier than Notts. Kaiserslautern offer stadium tours, apparently you can make private bookings for groups of 20 people. It's a fabulous stadium too. This page has a couple of email addresses to write to: https://***.de/de/stadion/stadionfuehrungen-2/

Newport away is a bit meh as the opener. We've got a good Boxing Day fixture for a change, but sadly away, at Chesterfield. Oldham away is in January so take your thermals. Bristol Rovers at home on the final day could be spicy. Now that Mansfield, Doncaster and Bradford are gone, the league is a bit beige with few real highlights. But we've only got ourselves to blame for that. I've changed the post title.

He's head coach there @gtownjohnno and was a coach before. The vast majority of managers were coaches previously. I think goalkeepers can be at a disadvantage in terms of tactical awareness compared to a former midfielder, but it very much depends on the individual. I wouldn't write anybody off as coach due to the position they played in.

True @Fan of Big Tone, but he was put on the spot in that interview and couldn't really spill the beans. His answer was quite emphatic though. Plenty of former goalkeepers have gone on to be a manager. The current Florist boss was a keeper and it didn't do him any harm.

Well done England, I'll definitely watch the final. Time to try out my new England shirt!

This is a bit strange and unexpected. Talk of him being interested in the top job are just conjecture, he wasn't even assistant head coach until a couple of months ago. It was probably in the offing though. That would explain why he wasn't mentioned when the new coaching team was announced. Perhaps he never had any intention of being part of the new team for whatever reason.