2025/26 END-OF-SEASON SQUAD UPDATE

The Prince-e-Paul said:

se9addick said:

valleynick66 said:

The real list we want (but won’t ever get) is who has been told to find another club or accept not being involved. 

For lots of the deadwood there’s little incentive to do the hard yards to find a new club. We need to be actively flogging them.

Now that I'd pay to see! Maybe even Players in the Stocks. £5 a bag of rotten tomatoes? All proceeds to Upbeats, that way the players can't really say no without looking like a ****. That could even be a more popular half-time watch than the Crossbar Challenge. 

Ha, didn’t even occur to me that “flogging” means something else linguistically outside of London! But yes, a sponsored flogging of some of the worst offenders could have funded previous transfer windows! 

charltonbob said:

se9addick said:

SporadicAddick said:

WSS said:

Can imagine with Dykes it's a "make a decision before you go to the World Cup or it's thank you and goodbye"

Why would you imagine that?

Because if we don’t tie him down now we won’t be able to afford him after he wins the golden boot. 

Erm, you do know he plays for Scotland don't you ? 

charltonbob said:

se9addick said:

SporadicAddick said:

WSS said:

Can imagine with Dykes it's a "make a decision before you go to the World Cup or it's thank you and goodbye"

Why would you imagine that?

Because if we don’t tie him down now we won’t be able to afford him after he wins the golden boot. 

Erm, you do know he plays for Scotland don't you ? 

I don’t understand why you seem sceptical  🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 

I think a fair amount of the retained list, won’t be retained!!!, think the club will be taking a haircut on quite a few but that needs to happen for us to evolve, hopefully the board have the appetite for this.

.

Berry really hit form in our play off run last season. Then he got injured away at Wycombe I think and never really got a look in since. Wish him well wherever he ends up next 

JohnnyH2 said:

Garrymanilow said:

When was the last time we had a retained list where there were only two players who we let go? It's such an improvement from the past decade where we would just churn through an entire squad of players every season and have about 7 professionals on the books before we started making signings.

1998 was the last time I can remember letting only 2 go, Chapple and Tindall, and Tindall never made an appearance for the 1st team

It's an omen, I tell thee 😊

Croydon said:

Taking sentiment out of it we should be looking for much better than both Godden and Dykes imo

Godden surely has a role to play - even it's from the bench and to cover injuries to other strikers.

The player has experience, nous and composure - and can convert the type of chances our other forwards are unaware of.

Godden scores goals.

How much would it cost to replace what he brings?

Why dykes is there is because there is a real dirth of strikers. Is Godden going to be another chuks but worse in that he’ll average 5 games per season . Desperately need two new strikers better than kelman and ahadme (yes we still have him) and two new creative midfielders better than carey who as a creative midfielder doesn’t cut it. Jones of course knows all this and will be asking for money 

balham red said:

Not much to discuss there really

Do not underrate us posters. We are on our fourth page of discussion already.

Walkingred said:

Not a huge amount to be learnt from that. I think we can assume that if we find a deal for Dykes then we'll likely be listening to offers for Miles Leaburn.

I think we can assume you are wrong.

wolfgang said:

My names for the "bomb squad". Players who will not want to leave because they have no hope of getting equal terms elsewhere:

Burke
Knibbs
Rankin-Costello
Docherty
Ahadme
Olaofe

I would handle Docherty more gently, i.e not slash his tyres in the car park. With the others, no holds barred.

We are permitted to register 25 senior players, but unlike in Leagues One and Two, that number includes goalkeepers. Assuming we will want to register 3 of those, it does not leave any room for sentimentality or keeping mediocrities around because they can "do a job".

My fear is that it will so expensive to slim down the squad, that it will cut into our transfer budget. 

I think that we were damned lucky to stay up this season just ending. If we play that badly again we will go down, and deserve to do so. We need to improve at least five positions and I am not sure we will have the funds for it.

I think peoples' perceptions of Burke are based far to squarely on a couple of games in which he was coming back from injury. I suspect he's on similar wages to what he was on at Luton, and he was able to sign with us after all. The concern with him shouldn't be quality, it should be availability. He showed his quality in flashes, and came highly regarded. He is just never fit. I doubt he'll go anywhere as Jones knows him and trusts him and will probably feel he can get more out of him. If it doesn't work out, then I'd expect a L1 loan in Jan. 

Knibbs didn't have a pre-season and then got a major injury. In between he scored a couple of massive goals (well, one was, the other should have been...). I know he was bad on the last day, but I wouldn't write him off just yet. Only 26 as well I believe, so should be coming into his prime.

Ahadme, yes. Tants I think we'll see go on loan to L1 again. I don't think he's entirely unaffordable, and Cawley said in Jan when we looked to loan him that a lot of League One clubs were interested, so even with his poor run with Stockport, I suspect we'll still find a way to loan him out and offload some of his wages. 

JRC and Doc are interesting ones. I think JRC had something this season which we lacked, which is ability on the ball and the ability to pick a pass. He also scored a couple from midfield in very limited cameos which is pretty impressive. I know he's not the quickest, but I think he showed enough to be a squad player next season. I hope, and think, our midfield will look a lot different next season, and that might mean there's a bigger role for him to play. With better physical players in there, he could be the tidy ball playing midfielder, a role I think he'd do well at.

Doc has that dog in him, to borrow a phrase. What he doesn't have in him is that first touch. But, he has a time and a place. We need to upgrade on him, desperately, this summer. But I'm not opposed to keeping him around as a squad player who gets into passing lanes, gets stuck in, and generally helps shut things down when we're winning/are backs against the walls. That being said, if we move him on, I'll thank him for his service but won't be heartbroken about it.

Oggy Red said:

2121 said:

CafcSteve said:

Disappointed that we’re still in talks with Dykes, as don’t think that he’s someone we should be after if looking to change our style of play.

Will jones ever change?!
all fans of ex clubs he has managed have come to the valley and sung ‘your football is sh!t’ and, it still is! 

He just needs to get the quality in to make his shit football effective 

Getting inside NJ's head, he'll be wanting to recreate the gameplay and style of the secondhalf of last season, which won us promotion.

Just a welfare check Oggy. Hopefully you are out of there now and recovering well after your ordeal.

RonnieMoore said:

Of the “squad “ 

 Gassan Ahadme, Loan 
Karoo Anderson, Loan 
Rob Apter Stay 
Nathan Asiimwe, loan 
Amari’i Bell, stay 
Tiernan Brooks, stay possible loan 
Reece Burke, Leaving
Sonny Carey, stay
Conor Coventry,Stay
 Kaheim Dixon, loan
Greg Docherty, stay
Josh Edwards, stay
Ibrahim Fullah, loan
Macaulay Gillesphey, leaving
Keenan Gough loan 
Lloyd Jones, stay

Thomas Kaminski, stay
Daniel Kanu, loan
Charlie Kelman, stay
Harvey Knibbs, stay
Miles Leaburn, loan
Will Mannion, stay
Micah Mbick, loan
Alex Mitchell, leaving
Zach Mitchell, leaving
Tanto Olaofe, loan
Kayne Ramsay, stay
Joe Rankin-Costello, stay
Collins Sichenje stay 

can see 12 of these leaving one way or another 

One missing from the “stay” list Ronnie…🤔

And ….. thank god harry clark and coady have returned 😂😂