Summer 2010 Transfer Thread: B*llsh*t, Rumours & Wishes

[MoetVillan]

Cole, 90k a week?  He may be a great player, but to break our wages structure on a lesser player than Young is crazy talk

[pauliewalnuts]

I thought Mcgeady looked okay against Arsenal in the Champions league last year. But do we need another winger? Young and Downing will do, we need a creative midfielder who is going to unlock defences with sublime passes for Gabby and Co to run onto. Someone mentioned earlier about Hleb against us a couple of seasons ago, he was awesome that day. Gutted. Also wish we had showed some intent and tried to match Liverpool for Cole. We need some star names  to attract others.

That's a good question, we don't really, do we?

[Darcy and the Curtains]

Buying Ireland, Flamini and Hleb with the the Milner money would
        be great business.                                                                  
        McGeady = moving to Brigend with Leonard Cohen and the Smiths
        on a loop tape, in a cut and shunt Camper, blindfold.

[saunders_heroes]

Sell to buy? I don't remember this being part of the great 5 year plan for Champions League football. It's all very disheartening to be honest.

[Greg N'Ash]

I thought Mcgeady looked okay against Arsenal in the Champions league last year. But do we need another winger? Young and Downing will do, we need a creative midfielder who is going to unlock defences with sublime passes for Gabby and Co to run onto. Someone mentioned earlier about Hleb against us a couple of seasons ago, he was awesome that day. Gutted. Also wish we had showed some intent and tried to match Liverpool for Cole. We need some star names  to attract others.

That's a good question, we don't really, do we?

Depends where Downing is

[Clampy]

Greg has beat me to it.

When Barry made it known he was his way, the one player i thought could replace him in the middle was Downing and i still deep down think he could do a job there.

I don't know what's happened to the player we saw in his first half dozen games, but he's either lacking confidence or having trouble adjusting to playing for a big club.

[codyvillan]

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IronDukeVillain wrote:
I thought Mcgeady looked okay against Arsenal in the Champions league last year. But do we need another winger? Young and Downing will do, we need a creative midfielder who is going to unlock defences with sublime passes for Gabby and Co to run onto. Someone mentioned earlier about Hleb against us a couple of seasons ago, he was awesome that day. Gutted. Also wish we had showed some intent and tried to match Liverpool for Cole. We need some star names to attract others.


That's a good question, we don't really, do we?

Surely we do need another winger. Ash and Downing need cover and competition, particularly Downing the latter! Plus it offers the manager tactical options eg Downing and Mcgeady on the wings and Ash playing off Gabby etc. The only other winger we have is Albrighton, and he's yet to prove himself at all.


Providing the price is right, Id rather take a promising name like McGeady and trust O Neilll than pay ridiculous money for the likes of Cole or SWP, who are huegely overpaid players whos career's are on a downward trajectory and would see Villa as a step down

[garyshawsknee]

Greg has beat me to it.

When Barry made it known he was his way, the one player i thought could replace him in the middle was Downing and i still deep down think he could do a job there.

I don't know what's happened to the player we saw in his first half dozen games, but he's either lacking confidence or having trouble adjusting to playing for a big club.

 Don't you think he's too much of a pussy to go the middle?

[Greg N'Ash]

Yep Mcgeady makes a hell of a lot more sense as a purchase, it he doesn't replace milner straight away. We know MON takes his time, and will not want to be held to ransom by the likes of West Ham. Can see it happening.

[Clampy]

Greg has beat me to it.

When Barry made it known he was his way, the one player i thought could replace him in the middle was Downing and i still deep down think he could do a job there.

I don't know what's happened to the player we saw in his first half dozen games, but he's either lacking confidence or having trouble adjusting to playing for a big club.

 Don't you think he's too much of a pussy to go the middle?

At the moment yes, but maybe just maybe if he got his confidence back, he might be ok. He played there for Boro and did well.

[ronshirt]

SSN have just interviewed Danny Wilson about signing for Liverpool.
Asked what he thought of the club he said

"Everything is wonderful, being here is heavenly."

Blessed is the one who shares.

[garyshawsknee]

Greg has beat me to it.

When Barry made it known he was his way, the one player i thought could replace him in the middle was Downing and i still deep down think he could do a job there.

I don't know what's happened to the player we saw in his first half dozen games, but he's either lacking confidence or having trouble adjusting to playing for a big club.

 Don't you think he's too much of a pussy to go the middle?

At the moment yes, but maybe just maybe if he got his confidence back, he might be ok. He played there for Boro and did well.

 There is a good player in there,maybe he needs a bit of time to settle in like Milner aka Hodge did.

[curiousorange]

Okay, you lucky people. I've had nowt better to do so I've compiled a little list of net spend per MON transfer window and then taken all the players that Villa could have potentially bought in the same period that were bought by other Premier League clubs. Obviously, this is both subjective and subject to hindsight, so for example Blackburn paying £3.5mil for Santa Cruz seems like the bargain of the year but was it seen like that at the time etc? The only rules were that they couldn't be more expensive than the net total spent, they had to be transfers and not loans, they had to be a possible signing the club could have made (so no Diarras and Anelkas, since they were only interested in huge clubs) and they had to potentially improve the first team squad. Here's what I found:

August 2006 - net spend £5.8million.

Could have bought from the following: Niko Kranjcar, Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tevez.

Jan 2007 - net spend £10.3 million

Could have bought from the following: Stephen Warnock, David Dunn, Clint Dempsey, Luis Boa Morte.

Summer 2007 - net spend £8 million

Could have bought from the following: Joey Barton, Mark Viduka, Kevin Prince-Boateng, Roque Santa Cruz, Luke Young, Bacary Sagna, Craig Bellamy, Phil Jagielka, Habib Beye, Leighton Baines.

January 2008 - net spend minus £5million

Summer 2008 - net spend £37.8 million

Could have bought from the following: John Arne Riise, Aaron Ramsey, Lee Cattermole, Robbie Keane, Sulley Muntari, Paul Robinson, Scott Carson, Dave Kitson, Alexander Hleb, Peter Crouch, Samir Nasri, Kevin Phillips, Geovanni,  Graham Dorrans, Steven Pienaar.

January 2009 - net spend £2.9 million

Summer 2009 - net spend £22.6m

Could have bought from the following: Kevin Doyle, Steven N’Nonzi, Glen Johnson, Roque Santa Cruz, Thomas Vermaelen, Kolo Toure, Peter Crouch, Sam Ricketts, Kyle Naughton & Kyle Walker, Frazier Campbell, Kevin Prince-Boateng, Sylvain Distin, Tuncay, Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, Damian Duff, Lee Cattermole, Nikola Kalinic., Alberto Aquilani, Darren Bent.

January 2010 - net spend minus £3.5m

Tevez, Mascherano, Toure, Bellamy, Pienaar, Sagna, Nasri, Santa Cruz (last summer anyway), Glen Johnson and Muntari strictly speaking don't belong in the list since they had long agreed to moves to other clubs. I include them because had Villa put the legwork in, they might have agreed moves to us instead.

I do this not to illustrate MON's transfer genius but because I wanted to see if our squad would have been improved in major ways if we had bought differently over those periods. Like I said at first, hindsight is great and some players look overpriced and others real bargains but overall, compared to who we did buy during those periods, I don't think we've lost out in any significant ways. Off the top of my head I can see Darren Bent, Santa Cruz, Dempsey and Jagielka who would still be regular first teamers at VP.

But I leant mostly that over four years the average spend over the two transfer windows (Summer and January) was less than £20 million based solely on transfer fees. I guess we all knew that but looking into it also showed me that there are not as many exciting transfers that happen as you remember. I had to recheck the two windows where we actually made a profit because I spent the whole of them glued to the transfer news and couldn't believe now that nobody arrived!

[VinnieChase84]

I've been thinking about changes to the transfer rules would make everything more equal;
1st: January transfer window is no more
2nd: teams can only sign x3 players per year from other clubs and sell only x3

This would place more emphasis on managing a team and also would stop all these oil barrans just buying everyone who plays well for 6montjs from their rivals!

[eastie]

If downing can gEt back to his early form when he got in the team I would be more than happy- he looked a class act but then seemed to decline after a few games, I think a lot depends on whether we get Ireland or Barry or both as part of the milner deal.

If we got Ireland , Barry and keane in exchange for the milner cash then I'd be happy enough, although I hear greggy spluttering as I type, I'm surprised we haven't made a move on clyne as for £2m he would be a decent punt and looked classy against us in the cup.