He hasn't been getting much game time unfortunately. He has shown flashes of skill with us, but too many coaches seem to not want to play him, including the Greek team. Add to that the emergence of Tommy Watson and the signing of Mundle and I think he's going to be struggling for game time here.
I think all of this hopefully will become clearer when we appoint a new head coach / manager. Hopefully he can say to KS and KLD that he wants to keep a) b) & c) but get rid of others who don't figure. Busy Summer ahead I think.
chris rigg has verbally agreed on the new contract so all this he's going to the mags isn't all what it seem, still needed it on the dotted line when he turns 17 but for a being a mag he's loving it here at the moment
Excellent to hear. He should get a lot of game time next year. Starting to feel like an obvious starter already.
It seems to be set in stone on here that Clarke will be leaving, is there actually anything in this other than speculation? I'm not sure selling off the best players is part of the plan, this summer will show that, one way or the other. For my part, I hope Clarke, Neil, Ballard etc., stay and go forward with the club, romanticism? Probably.
I think we have to accept that part of our project under KLD is to buy,improve and cash in. We can expect at least one per season to leave for money we won't turn down if this strategy is to be successful. Clarke is the obvious target.
Can't particularly improve the team through the transfer market without selling players these days, especially as a championship club. It's disappointing but just a fact of modern football.
I kind of agree with you, except that we keep saying we need Championship ready players, well most of our team could be described as Championship ready next season, several have said that with a couple of good additions we can go places. I would agree with that so long as we don't lose what we already have.
But how do we add players if spending without selling just doesn't happen in this league? All the teams at the top of the spending charts have made a big sale(s) over the last 3 windows, the teams that haven't made a big sale are at the bottom of the spending lists
I think Clarke will go. His agent has been saying he wants to stay but he is now priced outside of Sunderlands wage structure. Making it sound like he would stay of Sunderland were willing to go over the wage budget for him, not convinced that's true as he will always be offered more in premier league, will get a signing bonus and get the chance to play at the higher level.
So Roberts has just signed a new contract so why are people concerned that dodds is having conversations about next season with him. Why would we have given him a new contract if we didn't think he was going to be here. I'm sure lots of players will be having conversations amongst themselves and staff about next season. If the new coach comes in and doesn't fancy him he'll not be starting every week. Why does every comment that comes out of the club have to be turned in to a negative. As if any coach will take a job when someone else picks the team. I've said it many times before, the club has made more than enough mistakes this season for us to complain, without having to speculate about pure bollocks that no one knows about, but some people want any snippet to beat the club with. Call me a happy clapper but I'd hate to wake up in the morning with such a negative attitude
It has been said on here that we are near the top of the spenders since we came up, with everything geared towards creating extra revenue going forward, plus, whatever some say, KLD has made funds available so far, who's to say that he is not prepared to push it further this summer with a promotion push in mind? Pure speculation, but then virtually everything discussed on here is just that. Nobody who is really in the know, and I would imagine that is a very, very small group, has actually said anything either way. All we have is KLD stating that it's a 5 year plan. Being sustainable doesn't mean you can't invest, it does mean that investment has to be calculated carefully with an adequate return on that investment, it's easily arguable that getting into the Premier League will provide that.
Yes, I am the one who keeps saying that. But it also comes with the caveat that we don't have a very big net spend. The Stewart sale covers over half of our incoming transfers fees since promotion, then other sales we've had probably lead to the net spend being between 5-8m. Still high but without the sales our squad would be poor. You have to sell to spend, it's a fact of the championship. KLD can't just 'push it further', it's not allowed.
Would be the best signing of the summer. He's a precocious talent, but definitely suited to playing through the middle, rather than out wide. Hope we can tie him down for 4 years.
I’d snap your hand off to get £5m for him. Clarke is already more than likely leaving if we can get a fee for Roberts too and reinvest in wingers and a 10 who can actually play to a strikers strengths we’d be a better team.
We’ve played this well mind. His choice now is stay, earn and play first team with a view to either a later transfer upwards or promotion with us or leave and play back in the 21’s and play twice a season in the cups for another 3 years.
