cowl

Not half! They had 3 corners yesterday and scored off 2 of them.

His passing was good enough yesterday, although I'd not go so far as to call it ‘absolutely superb’. His basic use of the ball from the back has never been the problem, though, that, like you say, his defensive reading is. Otherwise, he's made a couple of passing errors in his appearances, but no more than any of our other defenders.

To be honest, I don't even like the Panenka penalties, and yeah, I just want to see them go hard and into the corners also. I suppose my point though was just that he took that penalty in the shootout with supreme confidence, and the other lads out there on the pitch with him I'm sure had enough faith in him that he'd have hit it better than he did. Just a poorly struck penalty today. And though I've seen worse penalties go in, any keeper at least going the right way was always going to save that. It happens.

He'd taken one in a penalty shoot out though, at least. A very coolly taken one too, as I remember. Panenka-like.

Struggles to maintain his focus in games. Was superb in the first half, and though he saw enough of the ball even in the second half, the passes just weren't ever as crisp, or he'd hold onto it just a bit too long. The penalty miss did for him, but he'd already gone right off the boil by then anyway. Still, the positives were the first half, so I just hope he can build from there.

Two halves aren't ever alike this season, with the sole exception of the Pigs game. If we're poor in the first half, then we do at least rally in the second. And if we start a game brightly and maybe even get our noses in front, it only takes the opposition to make some subs capable of impacting the game for it to swing away from us and we concede. It is what it is. Anyway, I did enjoy our first half today.

He was signed within the summer window, so there was never any reason for him to be classed as one. Of course, we had to get permission for it, given all the restrictions we've been under, and that was what made the signing special, but that was all.

Bannan's penalty record for us isn't even that good, after all. He's missed quite a few.

The thought of League One is always much worse than the reality of it.

Horvath isn't an emergency loan though.

The current restrictions won't really be a problem, and the EFL won't likely put up much resistance to lifting them. And they won't really care that much about lifting them anyway because they'll have an equally effective way of controlling our expenditure. There'll be a 2 year period post-administration under which we'll be bound by a tight business plan with the EFL. We'll technically be able to pay fees for players, but we'll almost certainly not be doing that as it would seriously limit how many other players we'd be able to bring in. I think it's a good thing anyway. We got out of League One last time pretty much off the back of free transfers, after all. The main thing though is that it gives the new owners time to really focus on all the infrastructure that needs investment (for which they'll not face restriction limits).

Cheers. I actually think it's a good thing that the EFL do this when a club comes out of administration and have new owners. Even if they have a lot of wealth behind them, if they're not used to the financial environment of football, I think it's reassuring all around that the business will be monitored and spending forced to operate within even stricter limits than is otherwise the case. But the embargoes you'd been under during the administration actually were relaxed, it was just the business plan restrictions you were under that dictated your spending. In the summer of 2022 you could have paid a transfer fee and spaffed all your budget at once on just a couple of players, but that would obviously have been unwise. Wednesday will also have to be monitored and so, yeah, it'll probably be a similar story in terms of what kind of transfer business we do (i.e. mostly free transfers). To be fair, the last time we were down in League One, it was mostly free transfer signings that we made anyway.

Derby's situation was actually different though, and for a number of reasons. The main reason is that Derby were in an Agreed Decision with the EFL, which explicitly forbade any signings, so they had no recourse to appeal to the EFL for dispensation. That is reason enough why Derby couldn't sign anyone, but in any case they always had enough players that met the status of ‘permitted player’, so even without the Agreed Decision, they probably wouldn't have been given dispensation (except an emergency keeper, presumably). We're not in an Agreed Decision though, and furthermore, it seems we've been able to successfully argue that we lacked enough players that meet the ‘permitted player’ criteria; although the upcoming AFCON was probably the clincher here. Going forward though, I do expect the restrictions to be lifted, as they usually are once new owners are in place and the EFL are satisfied. So there's not likely that much for us to fret over here. As for the points reductions that the petition linked to in the OP is also wanting to see overturned, I really don't think that is ever going to happen; certainly not now it's already been done, so that would seem quite futile to me anyway.

Aye, certainly passes the ‘speaks well’ test, anyway.

Depends whether it's an SUV!