Just had a quick look through a bit of the transfer window thread from the summer of 2014 as I have nothing to do at work. It is pretty great. Some highlights include someone not wanting Harry Kane as we had Mayuka, saying no to Aubameyang because Billy Sharp was returning from loan and a meltdown when we had pursued Ings all summer and then went and signed Shane Long. Obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing but I do enjoy looking back at stuff from a few years ago and seeing just how wrong we all were
Southampton are leading the chase for Eibar striker Dani Garcia, 27, who has rejected a new deal with his current contract due to expire in the summer. Athletic Bilbao, Real Betis and Malaga are also keen but Garcia is believed to want to move to the Premier League. (Mirror)
Indeed. https://www.transfermarkt.com/dani-garcia/profil/spieler/178425 Based on our policy of filling the squad with defensive mids I could see this having some legs.
Yeah, that seems like the epitome of paper talk. He's a tackle-happy DM who contributes basically nothing going forward.
We need some serious work done in Jan or we will be relegated. Jan is hardly an ideal time for that though.
I don’t know, we bought Jose Fonte, Billy Sharp, Charlie Austin, Manolo Gabbiadini all in January. Sometimes I think the January is a bad time to buy theory a bit of a myth. What do you mean by “serious work?” Our squad is pretty good. We don’t need a lot and I still believe that it just needs the right attitude all round from top to bottom for things to be right, or at least better.
I think that simply not getting the best out of the squad imo,I think that certain people within the club really need to question the various appointments in recent years.
This is not a good group of players from an attacking standpoint. Coaching and mentality and attitude and whatnot likely plays a role, but we have 58 goals in our last 56 league games. That is not primarily on Puel or Pellegrino...our personnel is simply not very good at scoring goals.
Gabbiadini, Austin, Boufal, Redmond, Long should all be knocking on 10 goals a season at least. We know they're all capable of it. What we lack imo is anyone capable of controlling a game from midfield. And our passing and movement are not good enough collectively to boss games or to play more than a few moments in our opponent's half. We're lopsided, in other words
Been told we been watching Ben Godfrey of Norwich(currently on loan at Shrewsbury) lately with a possible move for him in the summer. Can’t say I know much about him.
It doesn't have to be one or the other. The players we have should be able to perform far better than they have... but even so, we don't have many goalscorers in our squad. I would argue that only Gabbi and Austin should be able to/are capable of scoring at least 10 goals each. Boufal, Redmond, Long and I'd add Tadic and JWP are not goalscorers. They should be adding more goals than they are, but not 10 each! I know Long had that one storming season for us a few years back, but that was the perfect storm, he's shown throughout his career that he's about a 6/7 goals a season man at best.
Might be stretching it to expect 10 goals from Long, but Gabbi and Austin should both be on more than 10 goals a season really. Boufal is certainly capable of 10, and this time last year Redmond certainly looked it. My point was that we have goalscorers. But we have consistently failed to either provide them with service, or get them into dangerous areas, because we can't control games - not in our opponents half anyway
