That Tammy Abraham's a great player in that league if Chelsea are prepared to loan him out again to the Championship. Even in that league you're looking at big money to guarantee you goals, probably £15m+ to get you a 20 goal striker. Can't see who Moyes would look at, perhaps Everton's Arouna Kone, I think he's a free agent this summer.
I quite like Gayle, I think he's a tidy mover and will get goals if given the service, the trouble is like you say the service is going to be harder to provide at this level. Shelvey won't be able to cut teams open with 40 yard raker's every 10 mins, so Benitez will have to look at the system a lot more. I think they should use the Leicester blueprint and go for muscle at the back and pace going forward.
You are right. I'm thoroughly unconvinced but I guess he deserves a go. I'd love us to sign a proven PL striker but I'm not sure we can attract a decent one. The one I'd love to sign will never join us.....
It's peanuts if you've got the luxuary to over spend on a promotion. We need better value than 1m per goal.
Gayle is ok as a back up striker I think. Bit Johnny on the spot in terms of getting goals, could be useful from the bench. Pretty injury prone though. I'm probably in disagreement with most from our lot about Shelvey, I think he's very average. He's a lazy ****, and very petulant. He'd be ok as back up or to get us through our first season, but if you want to progress out of a relegation battle you'll need someone better. I'd hate to be in the trenches with ****er hoying his toys everywhere. Murphy was peanuts for what we required. 4m is nothing in the grand scheme of things really. Its obviously over priced for him and his age, but his goals against Brentford and Huddersfield were important goals. His general effect when coming off the bench always seemed positive. As I say get a 1m back, lose 3m, who gives a ****. I think we need to just invest heavily in an experienced spine (centre half, holding midfielder, No10, Striker). I'd prefer to see young hungry players after that. I think this 100m talk is pie in the sky. I'd be surprised if we spend more than half that net. Long season ahead. You mentioned Abraham, I'd love us to try and get him on loan. He looked excellent. Tall, rangy and knew where the goal was. Had a bit of Kluivert about him (style not talent wise!)
I had a look at this as my impression of watching him week in, week out is that's he's fairly clinical in front of goal. His shots on target ratio is way above anyone else in the league: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/championship/top-scorers He'll obviously do worse against a higher level of opposition but not so bad that you couldn't start him and expect goals along the way. For me (and I suspect Rafa) he'll serve as back up to a new signing, especially since he has a questionable injury record and can't be relied on to make it through a whole season.
Thing is - Borini took a free kick against Southampton this season which was classed as a shot on target. My 6 year old daughter would've saved it.. All about perspective as numbers can only tell you so much. I watched him this season when he played and he got chances but failed to score a lot more than he actually scored - defoe, up until the England game, was lucky if he got 3 chances in a game and he had 14 goals - that's what you need in the PL - someone who scores - not gets shots on target But the rest of what you say is right - he'll be a back up - but he probably won't want to be a back up. We'll have him for £5m
Come on though, its Ashley. It takes a fool to think he will change. What I took from his statement was "he can every penny generated by the club". Quite open ended that in terms of how it can be interpreted. I suppose he did give a moron 70m to relegate us but that was paid for by years of austerity. I took his comment as the same as always, you can have what is generated but I'm not putting a penny in. Relegation cost a fortune despite a 30m profit in transfers. He put 30m odd in himself for running costs. No doubt that has to come off the generated figure. We could be in a relegation battle even if we spent 100m looking at our squad, so I'm sure he thinks "**** it I'll do it on as little as possible", I could be wrong of course. Again I'm different to a large portion of our support too, I think Benitez has done just an ok job. Not sure how he'll get on, but his conservative approach might be handy. If we keep him in place for 5 yrs I'm sure he'll do a hell of a lot for the club.
Whether he does or not is differant matter, important to you i know. I was just looking at this season and reckon you'd have needed around 100m for this season. Everybody is going to strengthen again too. The scariest thing is everybody is taking their chances. You can stay tight for 60-70 minutes and look solid as **** but that quality is such across the league is that give teams a chance and they put your lights out. Some of the midfields are formidable to. It's an expensive do promotion. Can see a culture off yo yo promotions coming about. So long as the the gap in money remains it's going to get harder and harder for promoted clubs to stay up. After all, you'll be going up against mid table teams with nearly 400m of tv money invested in their playing squads, it's starting to reflect. If we come back up anytime soon it will be harder again for us. I think it's quick going to come to a point where demands are made for the Premier league to subsidise lower league prize money to try and close the gap.
Yeah, I'm not suggesting you sign him dude, just that for what they needed... a full squad, he was an option. Not sure if he earned them many points with his goals, but if he did, the money spent probably becomes negligible. If you've only got limited funds for next season, then somebody like him wouldn't be far up the list I agree.
Gayle's only had around 3 chances a game too. Try a different stat: 93 mins per goal - he scores alright, and that's without taking penalties (Defoe scored 5 pens out of those 14 goals). He is clinical mate or at least he has been this season and if you look at his mins per goal when he played for Palace it's better than most.
I think it'll be interesting to see what Rafa does with your squad. I can see him using the loan market which you lot seemed to avoid in the recent past. I can't see many players arriving that you would preempt at this point, maybe the odd one from the PL, but I'd imagine most will come from abroad.
He averaged closer to 4 a game by the way. Try creating Gayle 3 clear cut chances a game in the Premier League though.
One thing is certain with Gayle, Rafa Benitez has had him working on strength since he went to Newcastle. Kid's a ****ing tank nowadays.
That's a different matter to whether Dwight Gayle can score goals though and we'll have that problem with whoever we are playing up front to be fair. The main worry I would have with Gayle is his size and being physical enough in Prem, since he certainly has the pace and the natural goalscoring ability. I could see him getting bullied off the ball a bit more, despite what people say about the Championship being more physical. (He's had a shot every 30 mins going off those BBC stats, so 3 in 90 mins)
He probably has, yes. Hadn't really given that much thought. He still looks small next to some of those CBs though.
I've never bought the small player thing, so long as they put the beef of only hight becomes an issue and that's no big handicap(Unless you play long ball to him like we have with Defoe Mind you Moyes nipped that in the bud) I wouldn't go by anything the BBC says ever they only source it and end up transferring the date incorrectly. Squawka via the Opta comparison matrix says Gayle 3.67 chances a game, Defoe 2.72 chance a game. That's per 90 metric, the only way stats should be calculated.
