Championship 2024-25

Season will be more or less over by January, I reckon.

 

We're not going to be cast adrift THAT much...

 

Oxford survive a late scare against Peterborough as they reach the play-off final for the final spot in the Championship next season, you'd have to say Bolton will be favourites

 

Bound to be more than a few clubs in the Championship on high alert for some of Posh's players, and not just Burrows

 

What time can you make it ?

 

If transfermarkt is to be believed then his contract expires this summer. However Peterborough have a 1 year option which they will activate.

However they will be forced to sell Edwards (1 year left), Burrows and Kyprianou considering they all have 12 months left on their contracts. I would love for us to be smart for once but you just know all three of those will end up at other championship clubs, while we sign Lewis for a fee of £4.5mil on a 6 year contract.

 

Edwards I'm not sure would walk straight into our first team, he is a little short for a CB, so I wouldn't be upset if we don't sign him, but Burrows and Kyprianou absolutely would, and we all know that we wanted the latter in January, though sadly I expect a fairly lengthy queue to be formed for the pair of them

 

The good news, joining us his competition is Morris, if you can even call him competition. Plays like a competition winner maybe? Burrows would be first choice here. There’s not many clubs bigger than us in the championship that he could walk straight into the starting 11.

Kyprianou wanted to come here, with Peterborough staying in League 1, and him having 1 year left on his contract, they won’t get what we offered for him in January now. Gino will be loving it.

Can’t see Burrows and Kyprianou costing more than £3-4mil combined unless some club really wants to overpay. Think our bid for Kyprianou was approx £2mil in January and they accepted it. With 6 months less on his contract £2mil would be the absolute max now. Same with Burrows.

 

Thing is though, Clev himself said that we'd have to be 'creative' in the window and highlighted the need for loans, which says to me that the budget even for top L1 players probably isn't there. We spent about £4m (not including loan fees and wages, though I am sure they were substantial for the loanees!) on players this season, I'd be very surprised if we matched that in the summer

 

Every club in the league and a fair few PL sides will have enquired about Burrows, can't see him coming here even if we promise that he'll start every game, imagine there'll be a bidding war that will push his price up to the £4m-£5m mark.

That being said I've watched a lot of him recently for an upcoming thread I'm building for here (hopefully finish it over the weekend) and actually don't think he'd be a great fit for us anyway. Obviously a superb crosser of the ball with great output as a result, he reads the game well enough defensively but felt he struggled in facing 1 vs 1s (both in attack and defence). Depends who we have as our leading man up front next season really, I'm hopeful there's a star striker coming in but unless they're very decent in the air, Burrows would be a waste.

 

Thought that Kyprianou that we nearly signed looked good.
Would like to see Oxford go up as not been to the Kassam stadium and it's relatively local

 

Also more likely to be relegated ? Oxford plus Plymouth, so only one place to avoid ?

 

With us having signed Elan Ricardo I'd have thought that would have been instead of Kyprianou, given they're fairly similar profiles.

I can't see us going back in for Kyprianou now, unless TDB is indeed leaving. Even then Kyprianou isn't necessarily an obvious replacement and Cleverley might have different thoughts on him to Ismael.

 

I'm not convinced by Burrows either. There's something of the Max Aarons to him in the way he seems to lack presence defensively.

 

Or in our case, a month earlier.

 

He might but then how much weight would Gino put on that? Minimal I'd have thought and we know loves going back for players he's tried to sign before.

 

But Gino also doesn't seem to love spending £2mil on players from the English lower leagues.

 

Absolutely. That's a far more likely reason it won't happen.

 

One of the most baffling things about an owner that loves player trading and making profits from them. Recent history is littered with lower league EFL players jumping to a stepping stone Championship club for a few million and then going for big bucks to the Premier League.

 

It’s almost as if he is incapable of learning and adjusting.

 

Considering Peterborough always seem to have some cracking players that they're able to sell on for big money (for a lower Champ/upper L1 team anyway), I do wonder if they 'should' be doing a bit better than Rotherham

 

Or alternatively there are other reasons why he prefers not to deal with English agents when splashing the cash...

 

None of them are in good form, looking at West Brom all season I have no idea how they got there, I suspect it's one of Leeds and Norwich, gun to the head I say Leeds

 

I thought Norwich were the worst team to come here.

 

After they went 2-0 up anyway! Weren't they very mid-table at the time? Seems they did pick up significantly after that

 

They were pretty much level pegging with us when Asprilla scored at that their place too. Their fans were revolting but what followed was a real sliding doors moment as they went on to win and our season died with a whimper.

 

The tie between Crawley and MK Dons must surely be up there if not at the top - Crawley have just won 8-1 on aggregate! And to think Fulham beating us by that scoreline over two games in 2000/01 was humbling enough after the two of us were neck-and-neck during much of the first half of that season.

Remarkable when you consider how close Crawley were to getting relegated last season and given their relegation rivals Hartlepool have had such a disappointing season in the division below - not to mention MK Dons finished 4th and must have been clear favourites to at least reach the play-off final. Digressing somewhat, but the MK Dons project has clearly failed (thankfully there hasn't been a successor) - surely they would have done better if they'd remained as Wimbledon?

 

They've yoyo'd between L2 and L1, with one season in the Championship, while AFC Wimbledon look pretty settled in L2 after a few seasons in L1, having started in the depths of non-league, it's hard to argue with that!