Leeds accept a bid for Ross McCormack worth £11 million. A quality player, but this is football going mad (again). I never thought I'd see this sum move between clubs in the championship for a striker who is untried at the highest level. Leeds will be able to build an entire new side - fair play to them for getting so much!
I tend to use Fabian Delph as the modern barometer of Football Madness but this may take that role now... Makes me even more angry that Shelvey went so cheaply
Sign of the times, but I read that Fulham will receive £90m (yep....) in parachute payments over the next 5 years. Unless Felix Magath is a complete buffoon, they are virtually guaranteed to be in the top 3 this season with that sort of money behind them. It certainly makes what RD is doing look tiny in comparison (and what about poor old Jose Riga at Blackpool, he has got a squad of ten players). I am going to have a wild guess about the top 3 in the Championship this season... 1. Fulham 2. Cardiff 3. Norwich or maybe... 1. Cardiff 2. Fulham 3. Norwich We have got about as much chance of breaking into that as Benny from Crossroads had of pulling a bird from Hollyoaks.
On the face of it, promotion should be a gimme, but Burnley and Leicester (and Derby almost) had other ideas, last season, and here is why I think it doesn't work out like that. The clubs who come down have a huge wage bill, which swallows up a lot of the parachute money. Not only that, but the players aren't good enough, that's why they went down, and any players they had who were good enough got sold off to a Premier League club.
The only things that throw me off about Norwich and Fulham are their managers. I assume all players at Norwich know that Neil Adams crossed Chris Hughton, so there will be trust issues. Unless he does a large overhaul - then I think that will prevent them getting the momentum they need. With Fulham - it's no secret how tough his coaching methods are. And it's sadly a sign of the times that someone once so renowned has had his stock fall this dramatically due to the modern players not willing to put the same effort in. Of corse if he continues to spend in a similar matter - it might not matter. But for these reasons, I can see perhaps a Wigan stealing a march in the race for promotion.
I can't see any of the three relegated teams bouncing back. For me, Wigan and Derby will be the front runners, with Brighton fulfilling their dreams via the play-offs. Stuart Pearce will be sacked by Christmas. Wolves and Brentford will surprise a few with upper-middle finishes. We'll end the season around 17th... with a new manager. My crystal ball is clouding over now...
while 11m is high for a championship player, if we had been in the championship when we sold shelvey and jenkinson i think we'd have probably have got 5m a piece. hopefully one of the good things about having the douche as owner will be not caving in and selling for peanuts as we usually do.
As FHB has already said, the example of Burnley shows that an astronomical wage bill isn't a prerequisite to get promotion out of this league. The big name players in the Championship on enormous wages seem to be the kind who wouldn't be up for a Tuesday night in Rotherham, who haven't got the fight you need to get out of this league. On the other hand, QPR's promotion, and the jammy way they achieved it, kind of shows you can just about do it with a bunch of overpaid primadonnas. £11 million for McCormack, very good striker though he undoubtedly is, is ridiculous. Fulham are the only side of the three relegated that I can see bouncing back. Norwich have made a strange appointment in Neil Adams and I'm not convinced Solksjaer is any good as a manager either. I can see Derby going up, plus Wigan.
