I do all of those things. But my love of football is much deeper. Sunderland will always be my first passion. Has been since my Dad first took me to a night match when I was 7. But football is more than Sunderland. It is the beuatiful game. That is such a well earned name. Footballers do things that make me smile and love life. I cant limit myself to 20 or so each year. Imagine missing out on Maradona. Or Messi for the younger lads. Life would be so poorer.
I'm on the fence with Isidor, his pace is obviously a massive plus but it's his all round game that doesn't impress me. He's often sloppy in possession and his hold up play isn't great, can't afford him to give the ball away cheaply next season. The potential is there and I do think he will improve after having a full season as a CF.
Think most of us don't want to lose the team spirit and want to see some of the lads that got us here step up successfully. But we need numerous quality additions adding to that. Don't think the club are wanting to do a Forest here.
It will be a shame that we will make so many changes to the play-off winning side. The price of prevailing against the odds, I guess.
Team spirit is great but it'll soon drop if we're not competitive. I want around 5 of last season's team in the starting 11 and another 5 regularly playing/coming off the bench. But imagine if we just "hope" they can do it and by mid September, with the transfer window closed, it's painfully obvious that they can't. I absolutely adored Lynden Gooch. These days, I only cry over him about once a month We'll have affection for the new players who give everything in the red and white shirt just like we do the current ones.
Fulham spent 200 million a few year back and got nowhere, they dropped lads who were key to their promotion. There's ways to do things.
Totally agree with this. If we care about the players who got us up we give them the weapons they need.
For the record of our confirmed or close / rumoured deals so far, from a squad perspective Diarra replaces Jobe Sadiki replaces Salis Cresswell (if he comes) replaces Mepham Reinildo replaces Hjelde New keeper replaces Simon Moore New left winger replaces Watson New right winger replaces Poveda Mikautadze or new striker replaces Danns I don’t think this is the major upheaval it appears
I trust RLB to decide what's best and he's been very vocal on squad harmony and the group feeling connected and he really showed during the season it's a squad game He will find the right balance between the current lads and new lads
He gona be good around the place but let’s not be sentimental the lads not gona cut it starting a prem game with Var
Hjelde isn't good enough, but won't leave this window. Hurt his achilles hasn't he? There would be a big squad upheaval whichever league we were going to be in this season. Just glad we're after Diarra and not Doyle. I'd love nothing more than to see the play off team fighting at the top of the prem but it just isn't going to happen unfortunately. Ballard, Hume, Rigg, Mayenda, ELF, Mundle will all have a huge part to play this year. Hopefully Neil too, he followed Diarra straight away on insta, doesn't scream of someone away imminently.
I'm still wondering if our lack of bids for wingers suggests a 3 at the back with wing backs is a possibility more often next season. Walker-Peters and Reinaldo would make a lot of sense in that scenario. Reinaldo being able to play left of a 3. Same option on the right to play Hume right of a 3. The flexibility of Sadiki and Diarra would also be useful. There would be the option of playing 2 up front or 2 attacking midfielders supporting a lone striker. There's a lot of flexibility in it imo. We need to be targeting a couple of centre backs though.
We had talks with Lauriente but not sure where that’s gone. Leeds fans seem to think he was in Leeds today
