Thing with Parish is, we could do a lot worse. But, we could also do better - it's the devil you know right?

Thing is, Parish has been making mistakes which as a club, we think are avoidable, yet it happens. I think other clubs have had similar mistakes too, but we don't dissect it like we do our own.

I see Parish now leaning toward listening to people in the business, rather than doing what he thinks is right.

Let's be honest, we don't need a big name signing each year; when you look at the likes of Andros, Cabaye, Tomkins, Milo, McArthur - imagine getting a striker or two of that quality - would be ideal.

We have a huge chance of finishing tenth in the prem, with out a recognized 'star' striker for most of the season with only 3 goals to his name. It's about finding what fits, rather than buying what we think will fit.

With Sorloth, Wickham, Benteke i would love to see another striker added that is reminiscent of AJ, dougie, even clinton.

I agree with most of this except the opening statement.

I am sure there are better out there but who? Coates at Stoke, long lauded now after selling out a target of abuse. jenkins at Swansea, the saviour of the club took them from the bottom league to Europe sold out now a pariah. Same for Peace at West Brom.

Parish makes mistakes, some avoidable some only apparent with the benefitof hindsight. As long as he learns from them, which when you look at FdB going it looks like he has, then we will be fine.

SP should be criticised at times, but there does sometimes seem that a vocal minority don't expect him to make any mistakes at all.

I'm not aware that Peter Coates has sold out at Stoke !

He and the Coates family are always spoken of in glowing terms by managers/pundits,including Pulis, but I suspect that with the recruitment in the summer and their subsequent relegation some supporters might not see him and the family in the same light.

Expect big changes at Stoke and I am not convinced that Lambert will be around next season.

Edited by Willo (11 May 2018 9.48am)

Why? Coates doesn't interfere with the running of the football side leaving that to the footballing staff and it's not his fault if his management team bought expensive duds

The spanner in the works this summer will be the World Cup, making it near impossible to sign quality players early in the summer. Agents will all be hoping that their players will have decent performances in the WC to bump up their value. A lot of World Cup players will have a couple of week's holiday afterwards so they'll be hard to pin down for contracts. So it'll still all end up being business done very late July/early August so us fans will need to have patience but hopefully it's not because it's CPFC dicking about, rather the agents.