Summer transfer madness thread

[olaftab]

Who is Steph Kelly?

[RussellC]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Kelly_(footballer)

[Rudy Can't Fail]

The answer to all our prayers. He's a right back.

[RussellC]

The answer to all our prayers. He's a right back.

A 34 year-old free contract (having been released by Rotherham) one, no less.  Had it not been for Chris Samba, I'd be happy to believe that it's just a case of us helping out a player that the Manager knows, but now I'm not too sure! Bristol City are probably readying a bid for James Bree as we talk...!

[Tom_Mc9?]

Well, he's a right back and we don't have enough right-sided players.

In all seriousness he's probably just training with us to keep up fitness.

[Mister E]

We have Kodjia and Hogan, with a very promising Davis.

We have Grealish, Snoddy (Snoddy), Adomah, Elmo, Green, Hourihane, Lansbury.

Strikers and attacking midfield options coming out our ears. There's enough fire power there to out gun anybody in this league if deployed correctly.

Well, there the rub. We have the players but do we have the tactician and the motivator to exploit the talent available?

[Mister E]

Onouha, Snodgrass and Terry's combined transfer values would be well over £10m were they in contract. Having them on-loan/short-term deals makes it easy for Bruce to say we haven't spent much. They were all players coveted by him and presumably other managers and he now has them at his disposal for the/his foreseeable future. He managed to sign them largely thanks to our ''name'' and ability to pay decent wages.

And for once, I'm glad we've got a glut of players on short-term/loan deals such as the above and Whelan/Johnstone. It means we're less financially exposed if we don't get promoted this season. If we do go up we'll have the money to be in a higher class of market to sign better players.

Onouha is still at QPR, I think.

[RussellC]

Don't know if this has been mentioned previously but we're also being linked to a move for Thomas Vermaelen today. Would be absolutely ideal in that he can play centre-back and left-back, but I've no idea how fit he is and how much he'd cost us in terms of wages. That's without even considering the prospect of whether he'd willingly swap Barcelona for B6...

[Richard E]

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/explained-ex-birmingham-city-defender-13550995

[eamonn]

Vermaelen? He turned us down for Arsenal years ago.

[Richard]

The madness is that we have a ridiculously big squad. If everyone was fit the likes of Hutton, Samba, Lansbury, BB, Adomah and Gabby would not even be in my match day 18. I don't want any more arrivals to be honest.

[Des Little]

There surely won't be any more coming in.  The squad is top heavy as it is.

[ozzjim]

If Elphick goes we have Samba Terry and Chester at centre half. We need a centre half.

[Mister E]

We simply have to offload some of the members of our bloated squad! There's far too much deadwood in there and the wasters are blocking out opportunities for the kids to come through.
This is, I think, the test of how effective Round and Wyness are: get rid of those that we don't need, now!

[Gareth]

Personally I've wanted to see a target man added all summer, the couple of games with Davis has given us the chance to get midfield players up with the forwards so would like a plan b to alternate with Davis.

My fear is Davis gets a knock like Kodjia has had and we are back to hoping Kodjia can conjure up a goal as our only weapon.

Had written Hull off top 6 but they look like they are getting act together so those top 6 places are getting harder and harder to achieve.  Seeing Elphick & McCormack linked with loans to Sunderland we need to be 100% convinced we aren't gifting them players who will make them strong enough to get in the mix too - if it is just loans with no obligation to buy the £'s we'll save will be chicken feed if we finish 7th behind Sunderland.