This Furlong bashing...

[Sliced]

For next season we must prioritise as follows:

Centre of Midfield, doesn’t matter what forwards we have without a midfield to win the ball and play.  We must not fall into the trap of thinking Livermore, Sawyers and Harper will be good enough as it’s only the Championship.  They aren’t and they won’t be.

Then, we need 2 new forwards to supplement Grant and Robinson.  Someone who can hold the ball up and play with their back to goal, but also knows where the net is and the other just a goal scorer.  Someone who gets on the end of things, the tap-ins etc. 

Once that’s sorted we need a RB to come in ahead of Furlong and then a LB to compete with Townsend.

Centre backs of Bartley, O’Shea, Ajayi and Kipre should be more than fine.

I don’t know what we’ve got in our youth set up to add to the above and maybe save a few £ but we’ll obviously lose a few loanees and out of contract players which will help the wage bill, thereafter SJ will probably be the sacrificial lamb to generate funds.

If there’s the remotest opportunity of keeping Okay then we should do pretty much whatever it takes. 

Going to have to replace a minimum of:

Gibbs, Ivanovic, Gallagher, AMN, Okay, Diagne, HRK.

Gibbs, Ivanovic and HRK may as well not have been here this season so no great loss and Kipre will effectively replace Ivanovic.

Agree on all points other than I'd keep HRK around as a backup and Sawyers is fine in CM for next season. It gives us a couple less spaces to fill

Disagree on HRK.  Your bench players should be competing for a starting role not just back up.  Would you be happy starting with HRK next year?

That suggests that over a 46 game season we need to be relying on the same 11-15 players. Over a 46 game season in the likely event we get a few injuries I'd rather have HRK in the starting 11 than.....I don't know.....Diaby, or a winger from the under 21s. HRK was our best striker last year. People can say "well, that's not difficult", but without HRK we wouldn't have gone up

[clem4england]

For next season we must prioritise as follows:

Centre of Midfield, doesn’t matter what forwards we have without a midfield to win the ball and play.  We must not fall into the trap of thinking Livermore, Sawyers and Harper will be good enough as it’s only the Championship.  They aren’t and they won’t be.

Then, we need 2 new forwards to supplement Grant and Robinson.  Someone who can hold the ball up and play with their back to goal, but also knows where the net is and the other just a goal scorer.  Someone who gets on the end of things, the tap-ins etc. 

Once that’s sorted we need a RB to come in ahead of Furlong and then a LB to compete with Townsend.

Centre backs of Bartley, O’Shea, Ajayi and Kipre should be more than fine.

I don’t know what we’ve got in our youth set up to add to the above and maybe save a few £ but we’ll obviously lose a few loanees and out of contract players which will help the wage bill, thereafter SJ will probably be the sacrificial lamb to generate funds.

If there’s the remotest opportunity of keeping Okay then we should do pretty much whatever it takes. 

Going to have to replace a minimum of:

Gibbs, Ivanovic, Gallagher, AMN, Okay, Diagne, HRK.

Gibbs, Ivanovic and HRK may as well not have been here this season so no great loss and Kipre will effectively replace Ivanovic.

Good post.

Apart from the reliance on loans I’d like some punts on players who Championship teams struggling financially will let go and highly rated youngsters from Champ bottom end and league one.

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I'm not sure anyone will sign Pereira. He's done nothing to disavow people of his hard to manage attitude and hardly looked great this season.

I’m struggling to see a team in this league that doesn’t have a better creative player. If you look around us McNeil at Burnley, Trossard at Brighton and St Max / Almiron at Toon have far more impact. Sheff U are the only exception.

[Sliced]

I think Furlong has improved massively in the last few weeks. Maybe it was a wake-up call seeing Peltier picked ahead of him. Sam has got the defence settled down nicely (at last), but we need back-up for all four IMO. I don't want to see Gibbs or Ajayi anywhere near the team next season.

Mistakes and penalties happen. If you can't score goals you're in trouble whatever happens at the back.

You're a bit of a contrarian Chesh. I remember you not rating Evans when he was blatantly our best defender, then Hegazi when he subsequently became our best defender...but to say Ajayi should be nowhere near the team is beyond comprehension. For the vast majority of the season he's been one of our only seemingly PL quality players, although in the past couple of months he struggled. Allardyce has sured us up at the back and made our back four look better cohesively than they are individually in the past 4 weeks, just as Pulis did, but Ajayi is not only more than good enough at Champ level, but he'll easily be one of the best centre backs in the Championship.

Having seen a full 46 games of Ajayi in the Champ last season where most people think he excelled, what was it that you saw that makes you think he's not good enough even for the Champ?

[Shabby Russian]

Completely agree with Cuzer on Furling. Think he has done reasonably well all season, but has stepped up another level in the last few games.
Compare  the criticism for his mistake yesterday and that given to Yokuslu for the penalty  he conceded against Brighton.