So, the Championship season has started **Spoilers**

Thought I'd resurrect this thread instead of starting another. Looks to be a crazy year in the Championship this season. Lots of clubs spending big, others struggling to buy anyone and some finding it difficult to hang on to their own players.

Not going to make predictions, as I'm awful at them, but hoping the division is as tight and nervy as it was last season with no runaway winners.

Brentford have had a weird preseason. It was looking oh so rosy a month ago having signed some real talent, but things seemed to have gone awry since then. We had a very slow start to last season yet still managed to finish in the play-offs, so I'm not too disheartened yet.

We bought in:

- Lasse Vibe from IFK Gothenberg for £800,000. Top scorer in the Swedish top flight last season and a Danish interntional
- Andreas Bjelland for £2.2m. FC Twente captain, Danish international centre back and the highest % successful tackles in the Eredivisie last season
- Yoann Barbet for £500,000 Chamois Niortais in Ligue 2. Ball playing left-sided centre back with u18 caps for France
- Akaki Gogia. Right-footed inside forward we signed from Hallescher in the German third division. Ex-Wolfsburg forward who had a nasty knee injury a couple of years ago and dropped down the leagues for a season. Signed for free and a German youth international
- Josh McEachran for £800,000 from Chelsea. Much spoken about him in years gone by with a decent amount of experience for someone his age. With the highest percentage of passes into the opposition half and the most frequent passes forward per minute in the Eredivisie last season, he is set to be our midfield deep playmaker
- Ryan Williams. Interesting one this one, as he was released by Morecambe on a free last season. We've hired a free kick specialist coach who is coaching players on perfecting their contact with the ball, and he's identified Williams as one of only a handful of players in the world whom can put genuine top spin on a free kick (note that he believes most players who hit free kicks hard and rely on swerve do this through gravity, rather than top spin). Here's the vid on top spin and on William's free kick style
- Philip Hofmann was signed from Kaiserslauten for £750,000. A big technical target man, he's the current German U21 striker, scoring a couple against England U21s at The Riverside last season
- Konstantin Kerschbaumer was picked up for apparently around £500,000 from Admira Wacker in the Austrian league. Box to box midfielder with unbelievable dynamism and stamina.
- Maxime Colin signed today for £900,000 from Anderlecht. Seems to be a decent right back, and played for Troyes a couple of years ago in their Ligue 2 promotion campaign.

Great... and now for something a bit more demoralising. It turned out that our England U20 right back Moses Odubajo had a £3.5m release clause in his contract that us fans obviously knew nothing about. Hull swooped in a scooped him up, Bah. Then the little ****ers from Hull decided they'd play silly buggers with Andre Gray, knowing he and Moses are buds. They started putting in various offers, offering for both players, then for one, then for the other. They've just had their third bid rejected for Gray (unbelievably they bid LESS than their second bid, which was also rejected :confused:) at £6m + £2m. It's unsettled the guy, understandably, and he's barely featured recently.

Then the pitch. Oh the pitch... we had new drainage installed over the summer as Griffin Park is so close to the Thames, and the water table incredibly high, that our pitch barely drains at all. That was all well and good, but for some reason the seed didn't take and the pitch has summarily fallen apart. It's genuinely the worse pitch I've sever seen - it collapsed under a corner taker on Tuesday, the ground actually physically gave way! We've had to cancel our game on Tuesday against Birmingham just to relay the turf!!

And now on to injuries, which could be the undoing of us this season. Hogan, meant to be our first choice striker, did his ACL at the start of last season. After working hard to rehabilitate the ligament and getting back to full fitness, he's gone and done the same thing again and will miss the season.

Lewis McLeod, who we signed for £1m in January from Rangers, still hasn't played. He managed to put his foot down a rabbit hole at the training ground, yes a rabbit hole and has completely screwed his hamstring.

Josh McEachran broke his foot after one friendly appearance and will likely be out until Christmas. And the final straw has been Bjelland. Our international left-sided centre back, the man who was tasked with brining leadership and experience to our young squad, put his foot through the shoddy turf at Griffin Park during Tuesday's 4-0 loss at home to League 2 Oxford United and has done both ligaments in his knee - out for the season.

I've got my away tickets to Bristol City and Burnley this weekend and next, and of course I'll be screaming bloody murder at the ref and opposition players, but I've had the enthusiasm and excitement of this season completely kicked out of me. Yes, I know all teams have bad injury spells, but when added to the state of the pitch it's all getting a little silly now.

Fun fun fun :)
 
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I suppose it will take time for the team to gel and all that, I was thinking what happened to that McLeod guy, what a silly way to get injured!

After watching Leeds twice I'm not seeing that much difference so far in play style, luckily we are still on the lookout for players, wingers in particular, we had a 1.5m bid turned down for a Belgium already.

Last night I can't really comment on, 10 men for 94 mins, we huffed and puffed but nothing to show for it. Wooton is a clown as is Doukara, not Championship players.

Need a few more players as now Cooke is out for three games it's an eye opener how we lack in depth. Luckily Murphy is back so can fill the gap.

Wood needs a goal, Dallas needs to get match fit but is looking good. Defence is still dodgy at times.
 
I watched some of last night, bit unfortunate but a definitely penalty. Hadn't realised Dallas isn't match fit, as he completed most of preseason with us? What's the feeling on Rosler so far?
 
Martini1991 said:
Boro just need not to get in the same routine away.
Wish Blackburn would stop being *****s about Rhodes
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You've got Nugent now, surely instead of Rhodes? 4m I thought was a lot for him!

toshj said:
I watched some of last night, bit unfortunate but a definitely penalty. Hadn't realised Dallas isn't match fit, as he completed most of preseason with us? What's the feeling on Rosler so far?
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I like him, speaks the truth. Dallas seems to drift out of the game a lot during the end so presumed match fitness isn't there. Rosler said the same. Weird
 
We just got a new CB from Germany who is supposedly quite good. Not really bothered if we sell Dunk tbh. If we get a decent offer I say take it. We will be bringing through plenty of quality young players soon anyway.

I have been very happy with our signings for the future, but still think we are severely lacking atm. Our defence will be solid as always, it will be goals where we are lacking again. 2 players to watch- Kayal, absolute quality CM, and Lua-Lua, got a feeling this will be hos breakout year.

I reckon around 10th this year. I just hope QPR go down in flames
 
Hasn't Lua Lua been around for a while, always seemed to score against us off the bench. He looked very good against Forest, real nightmare to play against. I wasn't sure if he was one of them inconstant players that was good one week, awful the next 2.
 
Andybtsn said:
Hasn't Lua Lua been around for a while, always seemed to score against us off the bench. He looked very good against Forest, real nightmare to play against. I wasn't sure if he was one of them inconstant players that was good one week, awful the next 2.
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VERY injury prone which means he has quite often been used from the bench, but he is very good at this level when he is fit. Can be a match winner on his day. If he gets a full season(unlikely) he can really become quality.
 
I didn't want nugent, still don't.
Don't think he'll be the striker we need.
Blackburn are just holding back a players career, it's shocking.
If karanka can sort out away formation, I think with the 3 strikers we've got how, we can manage well.
But I wanted Rhodes so desperately

Think the Rhodes deal is well dead, but meh.
 
Pighardia said:
Not really bothered if we sell Dunk
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From what I saw of him on TV last Friday he looked decent, but both times I watched him against us last season he looked the clumsiest defender in the league! Obviously I know it takes many more than 3 games to judge a player, but I have no idea how he wasn't sent off in both games against us last year.

Pighardia said:
I just hope QPR go down in flames
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Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Martini1991 said:
Blackburn are just holding back a players career, it's shocking.
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Please don't take this the wrong way, but Middlesbrough fans seem to think that every club should bow and scrape around them, and that clubs should be eager to accept their transfer bids. Didn't you have a Free Jelle Vossen campaign last year simply because you lot wanted him to join regardless of his club's stance - I thought it was ****ing arrogant at the time.

The same seems to be for Rhodes/Blackburn. I'm pretty sure they're under a transfer embargo, with a one in one out rule, so letting go Rhodes after they sold Guestede seems to be particularly poor business for them. Rhodes is one of, if not the, highest paid players in the league and therefore they're not holding back his career, but protecting an asset. Because of the embargo, it's not like they can then go spalsh £5m-£10m of the cash they'd receive for Rhodes, so holding on to him for the sake of their season seems entirely plausible. Just because Middlesbrough want a player, it doesn't mean that a club has to sell.
 
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toshj said:
Please don't take this the wrong way, but Middlesbrough fans seem to think that every club should bow and scrape around them, and that clubs should be eager to accept their transfer bids. Didn't you have a Free Jelle Vossen campaign last year simply because you lot wanted him to join regardless of his club's stance - I thought it was ****ing arrogant at the time.
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Yeah, I don't mean any offence either, but I have exactly the same feeling tbh, and was going to post something similar.
 
Selling Rhodes removes their transfer embargo.
And its a record breaking transfer for the championship, and he wants to leave.
It's not arrogance in this case.
The vossen one was arrogant. But the Rhodes one isn't. He needs to be in the PL, and Blackburn aren't going to get him there.
Boro should get promoted this season.
But if another PL club comes in for him in the meantime, then no hard feelings. Rhodes desperately needs to leave Blackburn for the betterment of his career.

Also. I'm not sure on what to say about previous seasons. We've not exactly been anything special.
 
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Also.
Boro met the valuation. Then it got changed higher.
They also refused to sell Rhodes to the PL last season.
They don't care about the player.
 
Martini1991 said:
It's not arrogance in this case.
Boro should get promoted this season.
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Martini1991 said:
Also.
Boro met the valuation. Then it got changed higher.
They don't care about the player.
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There's no guarantee Boro will get promoted this season. Sure, you have better odds than Blackburn, but as things stand we're one game into the season and you're both Championship sides. There are plenty of good sides out there, and spending money guarantees nothing in this league; for instance, Bournemouth got promoted, Ipswich got into the play-offs on a team which cost five figures in transfer fees and little old Brentford got there despite being tinpot.

Boro aren't a Premiership team, but insist on behaving as one. You have no ordained right to be promoted, you're simply one of a number of clubs whom are aiming to get promoted.

I was under the impression that Blackburn wouldn't automatically come out of their embargo if they sold him, but I could easily be wrong. However, even if they do have the embargo lifted, they may only be able to spend a couple of million of the £14m you're offering. So it's really not a great deal for them. Also, a valuation is just that. It's not a guarantee of acceptance, it's a negotiating amount and one player's worth to one club is almost definitely going to be different to the worth of that player to another club. Selliing him to Boro would see them likely get **** all money to spend, be exceptionally light up front and make the division even tougher. They're completely in their right not to sell up.

Also, they pay him more than anyone else in the league - even when he joined three seasons ago he was on £40,000 a week - so they do look after him.
 
I agree there's no guarantee, but they certainly should be vying for it. They could have been promoted last season if the away scoring exploits weren't so poor.
And Blackburn have factually previously prevented him moving to the PL.

Boro should act like a premier league team though, it's the only way I feel they'll actually become one again.

I get the impression people just hate the boro :p.
 
I think it's just the over confidence, like last season :p

You've lost two of your best players in Tomlin and Bamford and Stuani might be another Kike ;) Nugent is good at this level but not sure he will be the difference you need. Surprised you didn't go for Gayle, how do Bristol City have 10m to spend on him?! Ridiculous.
 
To be honest, I'm not comfortable or happy with the transfers.

I can understand selling tomlin. I called it in fact.
Same as loaning out carayol, I also called it. Although I expected to sell him.

Don't think nugent is what we needed. And stuani could very well be another kike.

I feel if you gave an attacking minded manager the boro team, and the budget we've had this season. Auto promotion would be guaranteed.
 
I agree, Karanka is too Jose minded. You had a double figure goal scorer in Clayton yet he's happy to have him and Leadbitter playing square balls all day. No need at all.

Also funnily enough of all your signings Fabrinni will probably be the one that changes the game most, looked good when I saw him for Millwall, very quick, agile and skillful.
 
Yeah. I get so wound up with karanka.
The away stuff really really annoys me.

As soon as I saw the formation last Sunday I knew it would be a disappointing result.

If it's the same thing this season. Then we won't get promoted. In my eyes we've only just to say got a replacement for Bamford in nugent, in total terms of goals scored. And stuani should replicate the same scoring as vossen.
But we needed to add to the tally, not spend 7.5m to achieve the same results.

Then we've just switched out tomlin for fabrini/downing, which is an upgrade, but not enough.

Which is why I wanted Rhodes, he would be a promotion guarantee for me. Gestede is a bargain at 6m imo, which is why the Rhodes thing annoys, because gestede was just as good last season.
 
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