Summer Transfer Thread and Gustavo Cisneros Type Rumours.

[sickbeggar]

Can only see 1 player coming in, maybe. Think you're kidding yourselves thinking two will come in. Doesn't really matter about the whole FFP thing, you either run a club as a viable concern or you go the whole ManCity hog and maybe it blows up in your face like Lerner. I've not seen any indication NSWE are going to run us like  that.  The vast majority of the spend was getting us in the PL and keeping us there.

How much did we spend to get promoted?

Doesn't matter. Overall we're about 200m down including this summer I think. If someone has the grand total i'd be interested but it's not small change by any measure.

Well, you specified that we spent the vast majority getting us to the PL ans keeping us there. I couldn’t remember us spending a lot to get there as you said but cool then, it doesn’t matter.

Wasn't that due to financial circumstances rather than them not wanting to spend? When we got up with a load of loans, old men and deadwood they put their hand in their pocket to give a chance of staying up, which is all you can ask really. There's not a promoted team who've ever had that backing since City.

Whatever the circumstances, we seem to have established that the vast majority of spend wasn’t on getting us to the PL. Keeping us there, about half. And nothing spent yet on improving us from 11th.

Whatever way you look at it it's about 65m net per season since they arrived by my admittedly rough calculations. Seeing they haven't got CL revenue, have sold basically 1 player worth anything since they arrived, and don't look likely to spend 300m or be able to attract the players that could overtake Chelsea, City, Liverpool, ManU, what do you want them to do that makes them ambitious enough for you. Another 60m this summer?

They said Champions League. I want them to do what it takes. Having a couple of top midfielders would help massively. How much they’d cost I don’t know but yeah, I should think they could improve on the present first team era for £50/60m.

That's fair enough I guess. I'm not sure if that's realistic but who knows? For what its worth I think you could get a very good DM in the 20m bracket from abroad which you'd hope they'd stretch too if the deal presented itself

[SoccerHQ]

Defensive midfielder AND attacking midfielder, please. Even if we sign one or the other we have still had a poor transfer window.

Why would it have been a poor transfer window if we sign another midfielder?

Because the whole universe for some fans resolves around J*** G***LISH.

Found the last few weeks a bit embarrasing personally. Yes he meant a lot to us but it's not like we're left with Lambert standard squad (although performances like first half last week don't help).

One thing I'm certain of though....we will never achieve our full potential as a club again while we constantly hero worship one player constantly. Was same when Milner and Benteke left and we couldn't recover.

[SoccerHQ]

No-one is ungrateful to NSWE, Christ knows where we'd be without them. The question now is simply about the team and the aims. I don't think you need to follow the example of the yabba-dabba-downer in thinking of relegation without further investment, but as things stand the team does look quite imbalanced, albeit certainly deeper than last season. If we do want to progress up the table, either more players are needed through the door or the ones already here will have to show some qualities we haven't seen yet (of these Doug seems to me the most likely) - or the manager will have to get more out of them, via coaching, tactics or both. I think that's all we're saying.

It's simply up to the manager to work it out.

If we count you know who as a pure left winger then we had an excellent start to last season and indeed were pretty good up to Jan with the exact central midfield options we have now.

Said it the other day but you don't even need to put a Tuchel or Guardiola in charge to get results with this squad.

If Brendan Rodgers was in charge he'd probably be playing a midfield diamond to get in Ollie and Ings like he did at Leicester second half of last season. With Nuno and Benitez we wouldn't be as good to watch but we'd be solid and hard to break down. With our present squad 3-5-2 wouldn't be a bit fit either and Nuno managed to beat Man. City last week with that despite Spurs key player bascially being on strike and them being unbalanced like us in some areas.

Does Dean really have it in him to think outside the box a bit more this season? Or will it be 4-3-3 and crossing fingers tactics? I think deep down that's what's unnerving us a bit, he's done very well for us but won't quite be good enough to step up and replicate some of those managers who've won cups or get their teams deep into european competition.

[Percy McCarthy]

Defensive midfielder AND attacking midfielder, please. Even if we sign one or the other we have still had a poor transfer window.

Why would it have been a poor transfer window if we sign another midfielder?

Because the whole universe for some fans resolves around J*** G***LISH.

Found the last few weeks a bit embarrasing personally. Yes he meant a lot to us but it's not like we're left with Lambert standard squad (although performances like first half last week don't help).

One thing I'm certain of though....we will never achieve our full potential as a club again while we constantly hero worship one player constantly. Was same when Milner and Benteke left and we couldn't recover.

Don’t see that having any effect whatsoever. If we had a squad of top players, what would it matter if we worship one of them a bit more than the others?

Did we think a lot more of Milner than Carew or, for some, Gabby, Barry, Young, Lauraen?

[Proposition Joe]

Whoever in training is dishing out "knocks" to our players that keeps them out for weeks, maybe they are the DM we need.

[SoccerHQ]

I've read some posters quoting Leicester as an example of how it should be done - but they were a completely anomaly.  An utterly one-off event in the modern game.  Trying to 'do a Leicester' isn't a plan when you have mega bucks owners who keep saying that our ambition is CL football. 

We need to spend.  Massively. More than the money we've spent already. 

I don’t think people are using their league win as an example, more how they sign players often ahead of when they’re needed.  They’ve sold Maguire, Kante, Mahrez, Chillwell over the years and arguably still grown as a club.  They’re about to expand their stadium whilst still winning trophies too.  It’s impressive what they’ve done.

They’ve bought phenomenally well, which is another thing people underestimate the difficulty of. Otherwise there’d be many more clubs following that ‘model’ and getting into Europe.

Of course it’s a bit chicken and egg in terms of them buying well because they have European football to attract players with.

Not saying we can’t emulate it - it is the ideal, sustainable model. Just bloody difficult to pull off.

Not always. They signed Youri Tielemans on loan in Jan 2019 when they had Claude Puel as manager and were about 13th in the league.

That's why my favourite signing so far is Leon Bailey. Someone proven in a top league and european competition and to get close to top 6 in coming seasons we're going to need another 2-3 of that standard starting with the DM.

Bit worrying though if Lange really really pushed the management for that signing while DS would've instead liked Dwight McNeill but that's all speculation.

[SoccerHQ]

Defensive midfielder AND attacking midfielder, please. Even if we sign one or the other we have still had a poor transfer window.

Why would it have been a poor transfer window if we sign another midfielder?

Because the whole universe for some fans resolves around J*** G***LISH.

Found the last few weeks a bit embarrasing personally. Yes he meant a lot to us but it's not like we're left with Lambert standard squad (although performances like first half last week don't help).

One thing I'm certain of though....we will never achieve our full potential as a club again while we constantly hero worship one player constantly. Was same when Milner and Benteke left and we couldn't recover.

Don’t see that having any effect whatsoever. If we had a squad of top players, what would it matter if we worship one of them a bit more than the others?

Did we think a lot more of Milner than Carew or, for some, Gabby, Barry, Young, Lauraen?

We'll see today won't we?

Early goal and no problem, lots of positive chants (and a few Anti Grealish ones).

However 0-0 for long periods or even 1-0 down and I think they'll be lots of frustration coming from the stands particularly as it will be first game for many in 18 months and no Grealish on the pitch will be a very odd sight for many particularly if we're struggling to dominate.

I'm just saying we have many other good players in our squad who are proven for us or at international level for good countries so we need to get behind them and we can still achieve things this season.

[Proposition Joe]

Bit worrying though if Lange really really pushed the management for that signing while DS would've instead liked Dwight McNeill but that's all speculation.

Oof, I was hoping that Smith was not so "meat and two veg", but this does couple with the story that he was also the one that went for Drinkwater. Keep him away from the scouting/recruiting team in that case.

[ASHTONVILLA]

Latest link is to Abdou Harroui from Sparta Rotterdam acording to some Italian news site that I had never heard of called Tutto Mercato.

Midfielder nearly out of contract available for £3-4M apparently. Anyone here watch any Dutch footy that knows if he is any good?

[paul_e]

Latest link is to Abdou Harroui from Sparta Rotterdam acording to some Italian news site that I had never heard of called Tutto Mercato.

Midfielder nearly out of contract available for £3-4M apparently. Anyone here watch any Dutch footy that knows if he is any good?

Never seen him but his youtube highlights make him look like the sort of player we need, wins the ball and then either drives forward himself or looks to get it to the forwards quickly, good age, very good price if the numbers you've given are correct and from a small enough club/league that he wouldn't come in wanting to start every game, I'd be ok with this. Has a decent record of goals and assists as well for a fairly defensive player.

[OCD]

Suggestion is that it's a done deal. Tuanzebe coming on to play DM for the last few minutes highlights the need for someone to come in.

[paul_e]

Suggestion is that it's a done deal. Tuanzebe coming on to play DM for the last few minutes highlights the need for someone to come in.

Yep, there's a few tweets about saying it's done.

[Villan82]

Never heard of him but at that price, it could be a no-brainer compared to the £30-£40m you would pay for an established player in that role.

[Toronto Villa]

23 years old, 5’11” driving midfield player. Nice touch and loves to take a pop at goal. Played 6 times for the Dutch U23 side

[tomd2103]

Never heard of him but at that price, it could be a no-brainer compared to the £30-£40m you would pay for an established player in that role.

Think we do need to start bringing in £30m - £40m players in positions we need if we are going to progress.  Obviously if you can get that kind of quality for a fraction of that price then that would be ideal, but that kind of money in the past has got us the likes of Carlos Sanchez and Karim El Ahmadi.  I think that if we could get a quality defensive midfielder in, the squad will be OK for this season.