Upgrade but not exactly inspiring. Another year with Owens record intact. I’m convinced Ashley has a personal agenda to deliberately never break that record, I honestly think he sees it as a badge of honour. Being tight is something to be proud of in his world. Hence Sports Direct, I suppose.
On this day 22 years ago we broke the world transfer record to sign Alan Shearer. 22 years later, with far more money in the bank, we're scraping and scratching around to try and find a way to afford to bring in the mighty Rondon...
A juicy extract on Rondon from a Chronicle interview: "His record of 28 goals in 119 matches, across all competitions, is hardly world-beating. Yet most West Brom fans would probably be surprised he was so close to a one-in-four ratio given the chances he missed."
Rumours circulating that Gayle has agreed terms with West Brom. Overall deal is Gayle plus 3 million for Rondon. Ironically, we're doing pretty good business (£12 milllion for Muto and Rondon, Gayle and Mitro off the wage bill and £22 million for Mitro). Now we have to use that to bring a cb in, 1/2 to challenge rb/lb and someone to provide competition to Perez/Shelvey.
You'll get burnt at the stake on these boards for such comments. Where is your negativity and general malaise regarding the club?
Well, I'm abroad at the minute so maybe that's it. I'm sure that the general negativity will return when I'm back home!
Right... Because that's just what he said in his initial post. Julio is right - the business that we have done does look decent in as far as it goes. Problem is we need to do more of it. He acknowledges that quite clearly. Remember, we can't all display such clear and accurate judgement as yourself when it comes to transfer business... Such prescience. "Allegedly we've agreed the loan signing of this journeyman nobody, Martin Dubravka. ****ing hell, I'd rather we did nothing than pick up someone who's clearly worse than Sels. ****ing unreal this club. Rated at £900k by Transfermarkt. Moved to Prague for free last Summer. **** HATE ****ING NEWCASTLE UNITED ****ING ARSING BARREL SCRAPING INCOMPETENT ****ING PILE OF ****ING ****. That's better." Lord Jonjomort, Jan 31, 2018
To be fair that's ****ing epic... I wonder how many retrospective clangers I've made in my 12 years posting ****e hahaha
There's no surprise Rafa has done well wheeling and dealing. The problem is that he's not been backed financially despite the money being there. Unless there is some serious money spent in the remaining days of the transfer window this shows a clear change in strategy from Ashley and he is back to stockpiling money, presumably to pay off loans/subsidise the sale of the club.
Epic fail, I’ve made more than one....as have you. I won’t trawl the board looking for examples though. Congrats on your 20/20 hindsight. The context of that rant was in the date. Needing a striker we went out and loaned a goalkeeper, an injured forward and Kenedy. If you think I was alone in being frustrated then even your hindsight doesn’t work very well. As you say we need to do more, much more, and it’s really hard to say it’s good business unless we have a functioning crystal ball, time machine or wait 6 months and we can all use hindsight.
Probably a bit cruel to repeat your daftness back to you, I agree. Didn't like to see you twisting the words of a newbie for another of your sour posts though. And never fear - no board trawling required, just type 'Dubravka' and 'Journeyman' into the search. Your comment stuck in my mind at the time for it's comic level dumb-arsery. Oh, and if you stop to look you will see that I wrote "the business that we have done does look decent". This is what you would call a qualified a statement - thus no crystal ball is needed. That it LOOKS decent doesn't equate to it will certainly turn out to be so. Qualifying a statement - It's what I tend to do rather than present my opinion as irrefutable fact. You ought to try it - might save you from a few of those epic fails.
I don't know why everyone is obsessed with what players cost. Yes generally you get what you pay for. However there is nothing wrong with making smart moves in the market. Particularly when you have had a rocky period financially. Time will tell but lets at least give the players a chance.
I think there is still some interesting players out there which could be done. I think Joe Bryan at 7m would be a bargain, I can't imagine Kyle Naughton of Swansea would break the bank but he'd be good competition for Yedlin. Then you have Chadli. If we are doing the Rondon deal and got Chadli into the bargain we'd look a whole better. Perhaps try to get Chadli on loan to compete with Perez. I think he'd be a great addition as he is very versatile. Dubravka, Elliott, Woodman Yedlin, Naughton Dummett, Bryan Lejeune, Lascelles, Schar, Clark plus a loaned centre back to cover Lejeune injury Shelvey, Ki, Diame, Maia Atsu, Kenedy, Ritchie, Murphy Chadli, Perez Rondon, Muto, Armstrong, AN Other Out: Hayden, Lazaar, Manquillo, Darlow, Saivet, Gayle, Joselu That should be doable and our squad would be much much stronger.
I thInk we are having a half decent window to be fair. The big thing for me is that we are trimming away a lot of the dead wood who would not have played much for Rafa anyway... and replacing them with his picks.
