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Transfer thread

One thing that rarely gets mentioned is that younger players, no matter how talented, often benefit from working alongside elite players. I don't know whether that's true or not (I'm not young, I'm not very talented and I'm not even a football player), but you read that a lot in interviews. If that is the case, then that's definitely something our squad is missing too (apart from the obvious).

One way around that is to bring in recently retired elite players as coaches, but that's not something we seem very interested in doing either. I'm not having a go at the club, but I'm wondering if it isn't something worth looking into... or maybe it's just one of those things you hear all the time with nothing behind it (like 'refereeing mistakes even out over the course of the season').
 
Lilbaz said:
I don't know what people think is a good season. Some might think top half some might think we have to be challenging for the league. Some might think we have to win a trophy.
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I think this is the cause of disconnect in the debate. I actually think most people are broadly in the same place but some choose to come at it from a negative point of view, others positive.

For instance, ‘squad is not good enough’, ‘we’re average’. Ask where we’ll finish they say 8/9th. On the opposite side they say the squad is decent. Ask where we’ll finish, they say 7-9 which is were teams challenging might finish.

We finished 17th last year. The table doesn’t lie. We can talk about mitigating circumstances but the truth was that the squad wasn’t strong enough to deal with injuries and multiple competitions. To go from there to Top 4 is highly unlikely in one window.

As for me I think we’ve got a decent squad (with a couple of gaps), some exciting young players with potential that add should be competing for a European place. To me that’s good progress from last year.
 
Mr Gogolak said:
One thing that rarely gets mentioned is that younger players, no matter how talented, often benefit from working alongside elite players. I don't know whether that's true or not (I'm not young, I'm not very talented and I'm not even a football player), but you read that a lot in interviews. If that is the case, then that's definitely something our squad is missing too (apart from the obvious).

One way around that is to bring in recently retired elite players as coaches, but that's not something we seem very interested in doing either. I'm not having a go at the club, but I'm wondering if it isn't something worth looking into... or maybe it's just one of those things you hear all the time with nothing behind it (like 'refereeing mistakes even out over the course of the season').
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It's a good point. I'd imagine there would have been some great upside if say Modric had came back here for a year, with Archie Gray watching him in training, playing alongside him and picking up tips etc. I know he's gone to Milan and he's past his best, but just as an example having that level of player surely is going to only help the youngsters....
 
glorygloryeze said:
If the window closes in a month and we make no more additions would that still be a good window overall in your opinion?
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It’s an ok one
People need to look at who we’re missing in the squad IMO too
As I said the team would have looked different yesterday when we were missing 4 starters
I’d like 2 more in and i think we will get them in (not sure who)
But I do think improving the team 20% in one window is significant
And we have been improving the squad every window
We just beat Arsenal, and we’re quite comfortable and they have spent a fortune to really improve how much… we will see (hard to gauge) so far.
Others have brought a lot in too but we will see at Christmas who has really done the right business (not saying we have)
One team I think has done good business is Sunderland but obviously they aren’t on our radar
 
Bedfordspurs said:
It’s an ok one
People need to look at who we’re missing in the squad IMO too
As I said the team would have looked different yesterday when we were missing 4 starters
I’d like 2 more in and i think we will get them in (not sure who)
But I do think improving the team 20% in one window is significant
And we have been improving the squad every window
We just beat Arsenal, and we’re quite comfortable and they have spent a fortune to really improve how much… we will see (hard to gauge) so far.
Others have brought a lot in too but we will see at Christmas who has really done the right business (not saying we have)
One team I think has done good business is Sunderland but obviously they aren’t on our radar
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Fair enough.

Personally, for me, if no-one else comes in it will be as hollow/negligent as last summer's window
 
djp82 said:
So highly rated Bayern sold him to us.

It’s an opinion . If he’s proves to be a good signing then happy days I will say I’m wrong and will happily wear I told you so.

I don’t think that will be the case.
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It's an opinion. My assumption is that it's the opinion of the people inside the club who work with such things, including Frank.

He has good pace and good athleticism, seems to have really good ball striking technique and good close control, can dribble a bit. I really like his profile and I kind of struggle to see what's not to like about him. But there will always be uncertainty of course.
 
djp82 said:
So highly rated Bayern sold him to us.

It’s an opinion . If he’s proves to be a good signing then happy days I will say I’m wrong and will happily wear I told you so.

I don’t think that will be the case.
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Who's he competing with a place at byern?
 
harr1984 said:
There is no meltdown, just people stating the obvious. Just as they have in previous pre season games, just has been said by many last season - our squad isn't that good.

It's funny that what is happening exactly as I predicted last season when Ange was getting blamed for everything - that with a new manager, people would now come to realise a lot of our players aren't good enough. Was easy to blame Ange because people didn't like his tactics, but with Frank in his honeymoon period and not going to take any blame for a while already more are shifting to question the quality of the squad.

Whilst ENIC are in charge our investment strategy is never going to change, and I'm at peace with that - it's wasting energy to be asking ENIC to loosen the purse strings, they won't. But I have to question when people make excuses like the squad is good enough to compete, we just need a better manager blah blah and Frank's magic sauce is going to really take us places - it won't. Whoever the manager is we won't be going anywhere consistently until they are given better tools to compete with the ever increasing number of clubs who are willing to be ambitious in their transfer strategy....
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We were promised that injuries would clear up and the defence would tighten up as soon as ange left.
Apparently it's not that easy, who would have thunk it.
 
glasgowspur said:
We were promised that injuries would clear up and the defence would tighten up as soon as ange left.
Apparently it's not that easy, who would have thunk it.
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No doubts we'll tighten up defensively.

Question being if and how much our attacking play will suffer from that. I think that depends quite a bit on what we do in the transfer market from now until the end of the window.
 
Lilbaz said:
None of us can predict the future. It's just our opinions.

Your opinion is the squad isn't good enough.

Mine is that the squad is decent (would be better if maddison and kulu were fit) and just needs a couple of players to have a good season.
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There's truth in both of those IMHO.
The squad is good enough with correct manager, especially if he is given a chance to implement his ideas
With the wrong man or not showing patience then the squad is doomed.
 
braineclipse said:
No doubts we'll tighten up defensively.

Question being if and how much our attacking play will suffer from that. I think that depends quite a bit on what we do in the transfer market from now until the end of the window.
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We already look more solid (yesterday aside)
But it’s hard to gauge how the attacking will look when we’re only starting one senior creative player (kudus)
 
braineclipse said:
It's an opinion. My assumption is that it's the opinion of the people inside the club who work with such things, including Frank.

He has good pace and good athleticism, seems to have really good ball striking technique and good close control, can dribble a bit. I really like his profile and I kind of struggle to see what's not to like about him. But there will always be uncertainty of course.
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That’s all fair . Yes it can go either way. Same with Odebert.

My wider point is as a club we watched him play from January. He looked ok at times and not very good at others. We must of known Son was off we have all watched his decline . So why spend a chunk of our budget on him. We have Odebert as the young hopefully come good player.

I just think maybe we should have spent it better. We seem to have a lot of let’s hope they come good players.

In my view that’s not good enough. As I say I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
 
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