THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

You know it isn't hard for people to identify who it is you're referring to, right?

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You're probably right in saying 'most don't work out' but a hell of a lot do too. And you could argue out two most successful seasons in 2008/09 and 2021/22 both squads were filled with loan players
Mitchell, McClenahan, Quinn, Chadwick, Puncheon, Gleeson, Townsend, Balanta, Adam Smith, Alan Smith, Hall, Beevers, Bamford, Afobe, Baker, Grigg, Murphy, Carruthers, Spence, Green, G Williams, Walsh, Poyet, JFC, J Williams, Barnes, Colclough, Healey, Wheeler, Morris, Fisher, O'Hora, Laird, Robson, Watters, Parrott, KKH, Kioso, Coventry, Corbeanu, Maghoma, Payne, Bate.

Have you had a drink bruv???
Half the players you listed weren't from the seasons you mentioned and were either here for half a season and ineffective or we finished in poor positions/relegated

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I know they weren't and apologies if it wasn't clear. The new paragraph was intended to just list many examples of relatively successful loan signings regardless of league performance or length of loan, not just from those good years. But I was making the point that during our best seasons 2021/22, 2014/15 and 2008/09 - sorry I missed the promotion one in my previous comments - we had many successful loan players in those squads. And actually of the list around 50% were either on loan during those seasons or were previously on loan and had made the move permanent before the season started.

And yes some players were there when we were shit, like Maghoma, Murphy, JFC and Quinn but they were the shining lights in shit teams.

Hindsight is wonderful but what a fucking disaster that transfer window was. We sold of all the china plates and left one of the best young managers in the country with a pile of wet cement and expected him to make it into something special that could be displayed on the dinner table. It was an impossible task and consequently he got the boot.

On the subject of woeful decisions is there any truth in the old rumour that we had the chance to sign one or both the Murphy twins on permanent transfers but wouldn't pay the not unreasonable transfer fee?

At the first game away to Cambridge I was sat behind some of the families of the coaching team and one of them was messaging a friend about how tough the season was going to be. They all knew, right from the start, that they had sold gold and bought duds in that window. It set us back years.

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"you don't seem to understand much about football" - Zeberdee