January 2023 Transfer Rumours, Discussions and Done Deals Thread

[ChicagoLion]

Not much action on the transfers and loans coming in, is there?

no we are arguing about Steve Bruce.

[Legion]

Not much action on the transfers and loans coming in, is there?

no we are arguing about Steve Bruce.

Is he coming back?

[VILLA MOLE]

Tomorrow some shirt stretching please 🙏

[Clampy]

Not much action on the transfers and loans coming in, is there?

I blame Bruce or Di Matteo.

[Malandro]

Not much action on the transfers and loans coming in, is there?

I blame Bruce or Di Matteo.

You deserve to watch a Bruce team for eternity!

[not3bad]

We were a bigger mess at the time he left than when he arrived.

I think you might find that was Dr Tony's fault.

Besides when he left the current owners had taken over so we were in pretty good shape.

[Toronto Villa]

Like everyone I hope we are getting 2 or 3 in before the deadline. Because we absolutely cannot afford not to. We will fucking to royally if we don’t add some proper quality with European football spots within touching distance.

[Clampy]

That's probably the one Wilma post I agree with (some still get through sadly, despite the block).  I wouldnt say he did a fantastic job though, he was just the right kind of manager when it was needed. We were a mess.

We had every advantage as a huge club. He was the opposite of what we needed.

What did we need? Someone to experiment?

I think opposite is unfair but someone looking to develop players alongside the first team and wanting to setup tactical and technical excellence through the club, something a little like Kompany is doing at Burnley.

You could argue we didnt have time for that and how many times has that happened anyway?

Does it take long with the sort of resources we had that season?

I'll ask again, how many other teams have done that?

I honestly don't care if none havem it's still what I believe should've been done because the alternative was us having to spend £150m building an entirely new squad just to stay up once we got promoted and, might well not have managed it without a 3month break in the season due to covid.

Well, that was a convenient response.

[Risso]

Like everyone I hope we are getting 2 or 3 in before the deadline. Because we absolutely cannot afford not to. We will fucking to royally if we don’t add some proper quality with European football spots within touching distance.

I think it'll be one max but really, I wouldn't be surprised at all now if it's nobody, which would be a crying shame.

[Sexual Ealing]

While we wait for some actual transfer news, here are my most controversial opinions of those early Championship years that, thankfully, feel like a very long time ago now:

I'd have given Di Matteo more time. Until Preston, where I think he'd just lost his mind because he knew he was toast, we weren't actually playing that badly, just conceding a lot of last-minute goals. We had started to play some better stuff, but there was something not quite clicking. I think he could have turned it around. Fat Ross and the keeper were two huge errors of judgement, but I think what he had was salvageable - our owner didn't have any patience because he was gambling on us getting promoted immediately.

Bruce underachieved with the squad he had, particularly in that second season. He took over a squad that could have played Kodjia, Grealish and Ayew up front. There were plenty of problems, but there was a lot of quality there too, that had been massively underperforming. He was much more concerned with getting new players in than working with what he had, and we had a chairman desperate enough to write the cheques.

(Probably the most controversial one): John Terry was a pathetic vanity signing that didn't actually improve our first team very much at all. We needed a quick, powerful CB to play next to Chester (look at the impact Mings had when he came in - that's what we were crying out for). By signing Terry to play next to him, we had the exact same weaknesses as we'd had the previous year. When Terry was out injured, Elphick filled in and we weren't any worse off.

We neglected the youth during this period and potentially ruined a few careers. Players like McKirdy, Mitch Clark, Callum O'Hare all could have been utilised, but instead we bought in players like Bree and that guy from Bury that never actually played for us. We never tried to bring through any youth players and it was a wasted opportunity.

Snodgrass wasn't that good for us. As soon as Jack was back in that season, nobody else did anything. Jack carried us to the playoffs that year far more than he did the following year.

None of that matters, of course, we're better off now than we probably could have imagined. If Bruce had got us up first time of asking, we'd probably have gone straight back down and into administration. So everything turned out for the best, so just to get us back on track, here is my ill-thought prediction for the next few days: We're going to announce Thuram and Guendouzi before the end of the window. And probably another teenage prodigy that can play on the wing.

This, this and this again.

Bruce was a shite appointment. A shite manager, and not the 'good bloke to have a pint with' (unless he was paying, I guess). He was terrible. He needed to realise that there was a difference between 'there' and 'thereabouts'. He delivered the latter, which amounted to fuck all.

[Risso]

Well said Pads.

[VILLA MOLE]

Gosh this reminiscing under Dr Tone is making me feel

quite queezy 😳

[paul_e]

I honestly don't care if none havem it's still what I believe should've been done because the alternative was us having to spend £150m building an entirely new squad just to stay up once we got promoted and, might well not have managed it without a 3month break in the season due to covid.

Well, that was a convenient response.

Well yeah, what else do you want, do you really need me to go through years of championship promotions and point out all of the times teams were relegated and came back as better teams? Do you honestly think pretending that has never happened is a killer argument? Do you deny that teams have been promoted without playing eye-bleedingly shit football and forming a squad that literally had to be dismantled and completely rebuilt?

I assume you understand that neither of us can categorically be proven correct without breaking the laws of physics so this is one opinion against another. Given that, why do I need to provide evidence to prove that a manager with as many relegations as promotions and who had a record of leaving squads in a fucking mess wasn't the best man for the job? Why don't you prove that I'm wrong and show that every single team ever promoted did it with a 'specialist' who "doesn't do tactics"? Oh right, it's because I didn't try to shut you down by demanding something so fucking ridiculous.

[Toronto Villa]

Like everyone I hope we are getting 2 or 3 in before the deadline. Because we absolutely cannot afford not to. We will fucking to royally if we don’t add some proper quality with European football spots within touching distance.

I think it'll be one max but really, I wouldn't be surprised at all now if it's nobody, which would be a crying shame.

Not going to lie. I’m getting a squeaky bum with a few days to go that this won’t be as good as all want it to be. And Wolves just signed yet another player so they’re loading up. I’m all for Emery having full control over transfers but I hope those responsible for getting it done get it fucking done. I don’t want to waste this season. If we fall short that’s fine as long as we gave it a proper go.

[Clampy]

Blimey Paul, calm down. Its not me who wanted tactical and technical awareness after we'd just been relegated winning three games the season before. And you still haven't given a team as an example.