Winter transfer, gossip, speculation and usual butter ollocks thread

[Clark W Griswold]

Simply not good enough and the recruitment team have failed (Suso)
To leave us one CB injury away and one FW injury away from a crisis is as bad/if not worse than Bruce’s CB experiment days.

Anymore injuries and we are screwed. Squad weaker than it was before window opened. That’s some achievement

For me, they haven't surpassed Bruce's centre back fiasco, and the squad is weaker than when the window opened partly due to bad luck with injuries.

Overall though, their business that they're supposedly 'happy' with is certainly wank, they must be easily pleased is all i'd say.

[Risso]

We had Jack coming back from serious injury last year like the proverbial "new signing" and the addition of Tyrone Mings.  Surely then they can see the benefit that good new signings can bring to team spirit and momentum.  99% of people on here said that it was a mistake to go into this season with just Wesley as a recognised forward, and so it transpired.  I'd hate for us all to be right a second time.

[lukey27]

It's disappointing, but it has become pretty obvious that the January market is a very difficult time to sign quality. We would have obviously wanted a Premiership loan but that looks like a non starter and then it was the £25m - £30m mark beyond that.

The centre back thing is madness though, now that we've changed the formation. I imagine they would revert back to a flat back four if we did get two injuries. Oh joy.

But if you work on the basis of two players per position, we are now a couple short defensively and with Davis and Samatta the two for that central striker role there is massive inexperience.

Not a terminal blow though, because with Grealish I'd give us a chance in every game.

[AsTallAsLions]

By all accounts Deano has fallen out with Bjorn Engels who has been nowhere near the matchday squad or even training in a while now.

So he (or they, collectively) decide(s) to send out our only other back-up centre-half on loan for the rest of the season.

That's just absolutely mental to me.

[Goldie.7]

What happens to our defence if Mings gets injured or receives a red and misses 3 crucial games? We rarely win a game when Engels plays.

What happens if Samatta pulls a hamstring and misses 5,6,7 games? Davis is good but he doesn't score goals.

Imagine not learning anything from the summer debacle, incompetent fuckers.
 

[pauliewalnuts]

Pretty fucking unbelievable if that's us "happy" with our business.

Sell one striker, sign another (unproven) one and that's it?

Really?

[Pat Mustard]

I don't want to have a go at anyone, but there is some right knicker-twisting going on here.  Chester has been a great servant, but let's be honest - he hasn't played a proper game for us in over 12 months and is off the back of a potentially career-ending injury.  We do have cover at CB and we can change formation if needed (once McGinn is fit we might want to anyway if Nakamba and Luiz keep up their improvement).  A few weeks ago we were complaining because we didn't have a Plan B - now we have got one, people just want to stick to it and forget all about Plan A!

If we do go down it's not going to be because we let James Chester and Jota go without getting in replacements who are unlikely to play much of a part.  I agree we would ideally get another striker in, but it can't be someone for the sake of it (especially when Man City apart we've not actually done too badly without a centre forward) and who could upset the balance of a squad who finally seem to have found a bit of confidence.  I'd much rather go with what we have, and get a proper option in the summer.

[N'ZMAV]

What a boring day.

[dave.woodhall]

I don't want to have a go at anyone, but there is some right knicker-twisting going on here.  Chester has been a great servant, but let's be honest - he hasn't played a proper game for us in over 12 months and is off the back of a potentially career-ending injury.  We do have cover at CB and we can change formation if needed (once McGinn is fit we might want to anyway if Nakamba and Luiz keep up their improvement).  A few weeks ago we were complaining because we didn't have a Plan B - now we have got one, people just want to stick to it and forget all about Plan A!

If we do go down it's not going to be because we let James Chester and Jota go without getting in replacements who are unlikely to play much of a part.  I agree we would ideally get another striker in, but it can't be someone for the sake of it (especially when Man City apart we've not actually done too badly without a centre forward) and who could upset the balance of a squad who finally seem to have found a bit of confidence.  I'd much rather go with what we have, and get a proper option in the summer.

That's one strategy but it's incredibly risky.

[AsTallAsLions]

I don't want to have a go at anyone, but there is some right knicker-twisting going on here.  Chester has been a great servant, but let's be honest - he hasn't played a proper game for us in over 12 months and is off the back of a potentially career-ending injury.  We do have cover at CB and we can change formation if needed (once McGinn is fit we might want to anyway if Nakamba and Luiz keep up their improvement).  A few weeks ago we were complaining because we didn't have a Plan B - now we have got one, people just want to stick to it and forget all about Plan A!

If we do go down it's not going to be because we let James Chester and Jota go without getting in replacements who are unlikely to play much of a part.  I agree we would ideally get another striker in, but it can't be someone for the sake of it (especially when Man City apart we've not actually done too badly without a centre forward) and who could upset the balance of a squad who finally seem to have found a bit of confidence.  I'd much rather go with what we have, and get a proper option in the summer.

We switched to 'Plan B' because 'Plan A' was useless; it wasn't working, and we were going to be relegated playing the way we were playing. You want to go back to that now, yeah?

[hilts_coolerking]

It's not "getting a striker for the sake of it", it's getting a striker because we bloody well need one to help us stay up.

[Pat Mustard]

I don't want to have a go at anyone, but there is some right knicker-twisting going on here.  Chester has been a great servant, but let's be honest - he hasn't played a proper game for us in over 12 months and is off the back of a potentially career-ending injury.  We do have cover at CB and we can change formation if needed (once McGinn is fit we might want to anyway if Nakamba and Luiz keep up their improvement).  A few weeks ago we were complaining because we didn't have a Plan B - now we have got one, people just want to stick to it and forget all about Plan A!

If we do go down it's not going to be because we let James Chester and Jota go without getting in replacements who are unlikely to play much of a part.  I agree we would ideally get another striker in, but it can't be someone for the sake of it (especially when Man City apart we've not actually done too badly without a centre forward) and who could upset the balance of a squad who finally seem to have found a bit of confidence.  I'd much rather go with what we have, and get a proper option in the summer.

We switched to 'Plan B' because 'Plan A' was useless; it wasn't working, and we were going to be relegated playing the way we were playing. You want to go back to that now, yeah?

Plan A was not useless - we struggled recently with it, but it was not useless in the early part of the season.  We've potentially got 3 or 4 more League Games before McGinn is available, are you telling me the following line-up couldn't work?

Reina/Nyland

Targett
Mings
Konsa
Guilbert

Nakmba
Luiz
McGinn
Grealish
El Ghazi/Trezeguet

Samatta/Davis

We have still got Hause and Engels as CB cover.  3 CBs is working now, but that's no reason to abandon what was good about the squad earlier in the year.

[Pat Mustard]

It's not "getting a striker for the sake of it", it's getting a striker because we bloody well need one to help us stay up.

And I'm not arguing that we need a striker, but it's still got to be someone who is going to work - who is that going to be?  Giroud has about 9 goals in the last 2 seasons, Benteke is a busted flush, Bowen seems to be going elsewhere and the likes of Piatek and whoever else we're linked with from abroad bring the same problems as Samatta - we just don't know if they will work.

The error was not getting someone else in last summer, but let's not kid ourselves that getting in absolutely anybody now is going to solve the problem.

[Clark W Griswold]

For me, in the summer they were one forward short of an extremely good window. The forward that i would have liked was a Benrahma type (or Bowen) who plays wide but scores goals from there. They should have already had someone like that lined up as signing number 1 before the window even opened. Then, as the season progressed a centre forward should have been another essential signing as it was obvious that Wes was hit and miss, Kodjia was miss and Davis was permanently injured. Next, we lose Wes for the season and sell Kodjia, so make that a second centre forward signing required. We lose McGinn and Heaton, so 2 loan signings to fill in for them until the end of the season were required in addition. Next, we change to a system of 3 centre backs and sell one of the 5 that we have, we should have had a replacement lined up before agreeing to sell.
I don't know what the fuck is going on but we've only scratched the surface of what was required this window, i could have understood a couple of the areas not being sorted but not 4 of them. I'm obviously not counting Drinkwater.

[PaulWinch again]

It’s a bloody mental strategy. One injury at centre half or striker and were in massive trouble.