Dyche won't rush Branthwaite back to first-team action

It appears to me that Tarkowski and Mykolenko have been playing through minor injury but they don't have so much transfer value, so it doesn't matter so much.

I'd replace "might also be" with "is definitely connected". It's about wanting Jarrad at the £70M fitness level.

Still, I hope he's fit soon so we can have him playing a few more months.

These men are gladiators going into a pit against lions, when one is torn up we drag him out for another poor soul to step up next. I'm baying for blood so don't give me the “long term welfare” jargon!

If it wasn't about getting £70M for him, then he would be given a pain-killing injection and sent out to battle. It's clearly about keeping him in good enough shape to get big money for the lad.

But I suppose in these modern times of “player welfare”, the fitness coaches have the last say.

Maybe I'm just not following the storyline… lol.

I assume we have O'Brien because he shows promise but, as you might expect for someone who was playing fourth-tier football in England recently, he's still pretty raw. Yes, he's had a breakout season in France, but the standard is lower.

These days, £16M is a pretty low fee for a Premier League player – equivalent to, say, the £4M we paid for Oviedo. I expect the plan is to develop him over the course of the season – but it's not a huge surprise that it's a bit too soon for him to get a run of first team appearances.

"But why didn't we buy players for now?" – I hear people cry!

We quite possibly did. The reason we have the players we have is because they didn't have better offers – and because we could afford the fee and the terms.

O'Brien may yet prove to be a good signing – but it can take some patience.

Get into the arena and sort your debate out like gladiators!!

Is he actually suggesting people have been saying that? Because they haven't been at all, have they? If a player is injured, he's injured. Nobody has been pointing a finger at Dyche and questioning why he's been playing Keane and not Branthwaite… because Branthwaite has been injured.

I can't tell with Dyche lately. Is he just speaking hypothetically, or is it another example of him being unable to answer a simple question without needlessly injecting some fictitious ‘noise' (like ‘the story' about his contract that wasn't a story until he brought it up himself, or the claim that all the chatter amongst fans at Goodison last season was about Everton getting into Europe this year) to paint himself as a sole voice of down-to-earth realism amongst a veritable sea of fickle fans?

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Off screen voice: “What do you want for your dinner, Sean? Frey Bentos and mash mountains, Frey Bentos and jacket potato, or Frey Bentos and roasties?”

Dyche: “Think I'll have mash please love, but patted down and flicked up slightly with a fork so it kind of resembles waves rather than mountains.

"Fair enough, I may have gone for mash again but there's no need for people to say “you can't just live off potatoes, Sean”, when it's clear as day that I don't. I don't do that. Potatoes is just a side dish. Potatoes is the secondary accompaniment supplementing the main part of the meal… the meat and potatoes of the meal, if you will… that is doing the majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to maintaining my appetite levels and my ability to cling to life. I don't see where the confusion comes from.

"Even then, it's not like it's just potatoes I put with stuff, you know what I mean. It's not like I can't see beyond a spud. Imagine how bland your diet would be? Sometimes, when I'm not in the mood for potatoes, I might crack open a tin of Peppa Pig spaghetti and sometimes I have chips”.