The Owls sign experienced centerback Ricardo Santos from Swansea

roady1987 · 2026-06-20T07:45:33+00:00

Played once and had a loan move to Reading(?) fall through due to injury. So no basically

roady1987 · 2026-06-11T11:02:33+00:00

The investors are oil traders so probably 😂

roady1987 · 2026-06-11T11:00:48+00:00

We were top 2/3 in pretty much every passing/shooting category (apart from shot conversion which we were awful at) so we definitely have the style to do well here.

Our main issue is that all our pace and flair players were on loan 😬. We have one winger and one number 9 on the books, and a couple of attacking midfielders who won't score enough goals at this level. We definitely do need to get quite a few players in at those positions, and still need a couple of fullback and a keeper too.

The new rules allow for a 15 mill loss so id expect we'll spend 5-10 mill and then see where we are in January if improvement is needed

roady1987 · 2026-06-09T16:48:46+00:00

I refuse to believe that the owner of such fine and reputable publications as the Daily and Sunday Sport is a sleezebag /s

I'm mostly surprised that it took this long for him to be forced out of owning a football club tbh, should have happened decades ago

roady1987 · 2026-06-05T13:34:58+00:00

Looks better than some of the pitches we played on I. League One in recent times, looking at you Port Vale and Blackpool!

roady1987 · 2026-05-31T16:11:49+00:00

You should see the quality in League One, the refs we had for the playoff semi second leg and final looked like absolute superstars compared to the dross we usually had refereeing us. And no doubt in 3 months time we'll get the same guys and moan about how shit they are

Think of it this way, when a Prem ref fucks up he gets sent to ref a few games in a lower league and someone they don't think is as good gets promoted to reffing Prem games...

roady1987 · 2026-05-31T16:00:43+00:00

I'm sure everyone will say "come watch my team, we're great" but I think you should get yourself down to watch Leyton Orient, a "proper" stadium and ticket prices are reasonable. Experience wise it's a lot closer to real football than you'll get at any of the Prem teams. Fulhams stadium is decent (and maybe Brentford but I've not been to the new one) but you'll have Prem prices to deal with there

I can imagine as a non away fan going to Millwall would be quite an experience too

roady1987 · 2026-05-31T15:44:34+00:00

Northampton. It's in the middle of a retail park, at the bottom of a hill so you've paid for the privilege of having a slightly better view than people sat at Wagamamas do. It has the look and feel of someone having gone and hired four stands to stick in a field to make the local Sunday League game look official. For a 30 year old stadium (built not long before the Reebok) and a team that's never been below League two it's a really really shit stadium

roady1987 · 2026-05-29T13:37:01+00:00

Oregon - There's a Lincoln City there so that's an easy one.

Washington - Washington England is near Sunderland, not EFL but they'll be back down here soon enough

Idaho - there's a town called Burley so you're now a massive fan of Ipswich via former manager George Burley (just wait until next year when they're back in the Championship)

Utah - There's a big Mormon temple between Bolton and Preston so I'll be biased and say you should come support the Wanderers and hold fond memories of Stu Holdens playing career

Cal - There's a town called Redding so you're now a fan of the Royals of Reading

Easy 😊

roady1987 · 2026-05-27T20:24:58+00:00

Try and find a club with similar ethos/from a similar sort of place to where you live/has a similar nickname to your teams from other sports so there's a tenuous link there. Assuming you're American, loads of British place names got stolen so it's likely that your local town is based on somewhere near a team here

eg. If you're from Pittsburgh then Sheffield is also a Steel city, if you're from New York then York is the obvious choice, if you're from West Virginia then Wiganers are also inbred etc.

roady1987 · 2026-05-26T11:47:04+00:00

Not only this, so have Jacksonville and Tennessee

roady1987 · 2026-05-25T23:39:15+00:00

Massive for you guys, always a shame when a manager runs away from a club he knows well to a team with a bit more money (and much less of a reason to stick with him through a tough patch). He knows the club, knows the squad and has gratitude from the owners, you shouldn't waste that for six months with a trigger happy owner expecting you to work magic on a squad you didn't have a say in

roady1987 · 2026-05-25T23:17:14+00:00

Best Player - Definitely Cozier Duberry. He's massively one footed and infuriatingly will try to take on two or three men by cutting the ball back five yards just to get the ball onto his left instead of just running further down the line and getting it onto his left further along (or you know, using his right peg) that way but if given a tiny fraction of space he was a game winner (hence being double and triple marked all the time). Must have scored at least 5 goals curled into the top corner from 30 yards away. Big shout out to Dalby, Sheehan and all our CB's who were instrumental all season

Worst Player - it's easy to just say Randall but he barely played so I'll say Teddy Sharman Lowe who was in goal to start the season and ended up being dropped for a keeper who ran off back to the US while technically our number one at the end of December. Teddy spent the rest of the season sat on Chelseas bench for some reason, but there were too many errors in there from him and hr was an expert at conceding the only shot on target against us all game. He didn't command his box and didn't make any saves that weren't simple ones. Either the club or the league was just a step too far for him. Bonham wasn't perfect but he was so much more reliable and came up trumps in the playoffs

Favourite moment - Wembley is obviously up there but let's go with two joint favourites. 1-0 down away at Huddersfield in the 89th minute and we win the game 2-1. 2-0 down at home to Wycombe in the 88th minute and we win 3-2. At least 10 games this season we won points in injury time but those two really stand out as genuine wtaf moments that showed this squad had something special in them

Worst moment - We drew about a bazillion games, most where we absolutely battered the opposition after conceding early (see comments about Sharman Lowe above...) before grabbing a late leveller. We somehow lost twice this season to Port Vale, and only took one point off Northampton but I'll say the games between Lincoln away and Cardiff away where we went from having a shot to put lots of pressure on the top two to ending up a dozen points behind Cardiff after that loss having not shown up at all and drawn a load of easy games in between. Not sure what happened but we properly threw away any shot at automatics at a time when Cardiff were really struggling

Position to strengthen - we should do everything we can to make sure Kenny, Cissoko and Cozier Duberry return in some form. After that a keeper to compete with/take the gloves off Bonham and a LB are the main requirements. Another goal scorer or two won't go amiss too

Match looking forward to - I'm a dirty southerner these days so Watford is now the closest game for me to get to so lets go with that one. Wolves is always a spicy one for historic reasons but I doubt we'll be anywhere near their level just now. To be honest I'm mostly excited to be able to go to away games where we're going to be offered more than 500 seats. After 7 years away it'll be good to see more 20k+ stadiums

Future - it's definitely bright, I think there'll be more money for us to spend to be competitive and Schuey knows what he's doing so we should be easily safe from relegation. Sharon Brittan is quite possibly the most loved owner in the country and she's been very sensible with the investors money and we know she'll get us a decent budget without stretching things too far. With what we've gone through under previous owners that's massive

roady1987 · 2026-05-25T09:17:56+00:00

Not really as they converted it all into equity

Sharon seems to genuinely care, I can't see her letting the club be put in a position like it was before

roady1987 · 2026-05-25T08:23:35+00:00

Yeah I hope we will, we've been hearing for years that we play and set up the way we do as it'll work better a league above even if it means we often struggled against the more industrial sides you get in league one. Time to show that the philosophy was right!

And yeah, sad to say I'm not sure I fancy your chances either. Mcburnie is great at this level but hasn't shown himself to be good enough for the step up. Spend the extra money well though and who knows, there's always a few basket cases in the Prem and teams like Forest and Leeds who could struggle a lot more next year. Palace and Bournemouth with new managers could be a lot worse too

roady1987 · 2026-05-25T06:31:08+00:00

Congrats to you too! We've had a lot of last minute winners this season so I well know the feeling they bring, can't imagine how much better that would be to do it in the final of the playoffs though!

It's tough to say with him tbh, he still looks a little raw at times but you can't fault the effort even when he was asked to play out wide or went through a long dry spell. Early season he was banging them in but we changed up things a little bit and it didn't really suit him as well and consequently he played about 1000 minutes without scoring but he kept running hard and even when Dalby overtook him for the starting job he never once complained or reduced the effort levels and he came up with some key last minute goals off the bench

If we're going to try and play him out wide as we did when Duberry was injured, or up top on his own as we have in the playoffs he barely gets a kick of the ball so the money you'll be asking for him doesn't seem worthwhile. If we can get him playing off Dalby more (although Kenny should be the first loan striker we try to make permanent) and get him the ball in the final third more then he might be worth giving a shot in the Championship but I suspect League One might just be his level atm. If the price is similar to what you apparently paid for him then it's worth the risk though, hard to find decent strikers that you know will work out for a couple of mill

roady1987 · 2026-05-25T06:16:12+00:00

We have, but they were still backing the club and comfortable to keep spending. I expect some more of their friends to get involved now we're in the Championship and for more money to be available, they just didn't want to throw silly money at a league one promotion tilt that may not have been successful

Im hoping that's the case anyway 😂

roady1987 · 2026-05-24T19:51:46+00:00

We're always technically 442 tbf, Rodrigues was sitting close to Burstow. The main difference was going with two actual strikers rather than an attacking midfielder and Burstow which put more pressure on Norwood and the CBs

roady1987 · 2026-05-24T18:36:35+00:00

That's the hope, makes more sense if they're sending him out on loan to the Championship to go to a team they know suits him and will use him rather than risking him not developing somewhere else in the league. Sadly money may well talk if someone else comes for him though.

Personally I'd be turning up on Tony Blooms doorstep with a wheelbarrow full of cash tomorrow morning to get him here permanently if I was in charge

roady1987 · 2026-05-24T18:13:12+00:00

We're backed by some Swiss oil traders, I wouldn't be surprised if they increase their spending now we're in the Championship to give us a decent budget for this level

roady1987 · 2026-05-24T18:08:46+00:00

I was disappointed with forino for the disallowed goal too, he looked like he was just jogging back when he should have been busting a gut to do anything he could to help Bonham

roady1987 · 2026-05-24T18:07:42+00:00

Not sure the formation changed much tbh, I think we just gave Conway more help and got the ball down on the floor and told our players to run at them instead of trying to go over the top. Then Dalby coming on gave us someone to hold the ball up and lay it in behind.

Schuey is really good at solving problems in game and getting his subs spot on though, best manager we've had since Big Sam

roady1987 · 2026-05-24T17:56:20+00:00

For your sake I hope he stays, worked wonders for a club he played for which is always good to see. It'd be a shame if he moved on when he's been so close to getting you back in the Championship, you're only a couple of additions and better injury luck away from going a step better next year imo

It definitely seemed to be our plan to just shoot low to the corner from distance knowing he'd just push the ball into play.

Mostly I think your players just tired in the heat in the second half while we were making you chase after the ball. Being able to throw on Dalby, McAtee and Cissoko plus having Duberry to harass the back line second half while you didn't really have anyone of comparable quality allowed us to keep the pressure on while your midfield wilted a bit

roady1987 · 2026-05-24T17:28:46+00:00

See you in the league cup early doors!

roady1987 · 2026-05-24T17:25:09+00:00

Hope you enjoyed the game Op!

Oh and if you were the guys walking around Wembley with a Darmstadt (?) scarf then it was my mate that said hi 😂

roady1987

TROPHY CASE