Transfer Rumours JANUARY TRANSFER THREAD

It’s all about next season. Always has been since Ralph came in. Zero point getting in a stopgap that Ralph doesn’t want, as long as we survive this year.

 

But does anyone actually think we're going to spend heavily in the summer? I'd have no problem with that plan, I'm just exceptionally dubious that it's the actual plan.

 

Heavily? No. Correctly? One hopes so with his influence, yes.

 

Rather spend rightly than "heavily"

 

Getting more than a couple players in will require us to spend fairly heavily. If we're aiming to get the right players in at several positions and spend very little, it's extremely dubious that we're actually getting the right players.

Getting, I dunno, 4 players including a striker of any quality? That's 50m these days. Often substantially more.

 

Surely you have to get started to be done!?

 

People moan that the last transfer windows saints have bought poorly. They sack Reed and say they are changing how they handle stuff. Then set about getting rid of deadwood and people that don't want to be here. Yet people still moan....

I will wait to see if we stay up or not and how the summer is handled to see whether to not trust them again.

 

To be fair I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to make reinforcements given our proximity to the relegation zone and given our lack of depth and/or quality in certain areas. Further to that...considering our lack of signings and the deficiencies in our squad and proximity to the drop...I really don’t think there’s been a meltdown on here. Or even much moaning really. Just reasonable discussion.

Shows the trust that Ralph, his methods and the players that have bought into his methods have earned from the fans.

 

Nowhere did I say you can't be disappointed with Saints not adding players. I am saying we have been told by various journos now that Saints have changed how they go about buying players. Instead of settling for option c we now have been told we will wait to get Saints first target. I would much rather do that then end up like we have been for some time. Is it a risk? Yes. But I would still rather risk it then buy a 2nd or 3rd choice player that turns out poor.

 

Still, its a concern

 

We made the best signing about a month before the window opened that strengthened us more than anyone around us:


Ralph Hasenhüttl

 

Summer is going to be huge whether we go down or not. Still players here that won't be here by the end of the summer window

 

If you need a laugh check out Fulham’s twitter (they’ve just teased a new signing and it’s turned out to be Liverpool/Hull reject Markovic).

Seems mitrovic did their scouting. I’m not joking.

 

False choices to some degree though.

The problem is we bought ****ty players when we needed some good players. Not buying ****ty players and still not buying good players does not really address the issue.

We should have multiple players at varying costs, positions, ages,wages, etc. to target at all times. If your options are Player #1, who is the only player you think can help you, and then a bunch of crap then something is wrong with your scouting.

I’m willing to cut Saints a little slack because Hasenhuttl hasn’t been here that long and maybe needs more time to figure out what he needs. And it’s possible that the players we have might actually not be that ****ty under a new management.

But to bring in no one— not even a back up player on loan whose wages could be paid from the wages of those who went out on loan, not even a cheap young player who costs us little but has a long shot to be good— that’s worrying. It speaks to me more of management still not knowing what they are doing and/or us being broke.

Hasenhuttl has improved us, but it’s not like other teams are just standing still. We got a better manager, that gave us an edge... now we did nothing and teams that improved will take that edge right back.

I think we might still have enough to stay up, but it’ll be despite this transfer window and not because of it. We botched it, dude.

 

I find it odd that people still talk about us goinf down. Yes, we are in the dodgy places but look at how we have played umder Ralph and you will see that we will easily stay up.

 

Ever since Ralph arrived he has been wanting to slim the squad down to 22 players, so that he can play practice games of 11v11. He hasn’t got there yet, but the excess baggage we have shifted will make it easier for him to train the remaining squad in formations, tactics, playing different shapes at different times, and all sorts of clever stuff. When you consider that we have gained 14 points in the 9 games since Ralph took over, we have clearly improved by a significant amount compared to where we were. I am confident that we will continue to improve, with the current slimmed-down squad, plus the queue of highly-motivated Academy players.

Obviously I, like everyone else, would have wanted to see a proven striker and at least one experienced defender brought in in January but I would rather we brought no one in than see yet another Carillo-style makeweight signing. Ralph knows what he wants, and we will get them in the summer.

 

We don't need a squad player, or back up player though, that's why we are in the position we have been in for the past 18 months. We need First XI quality players, and not many of them will be available in January.

 

We could definitely use someone behind Ings. And of course there are players out there who can help us. We’re not Barca, we suck.

It’s not going to get any easier in the summer to move players out and thin the squad out, or to get more money. Did you see Hoedt’s debut? He was awful. Austin and Long are not getting any younger. Carrillo and Boufal will be back. We’re buying Danny Ings.

We’ve left ourselves a lot of work to do in the summer and if we’re going to pursue a policy of one out, one in, we’re in trouble. The players who will leave are going to be ones we need, like Hojbjerg. We should probably move Bertrand, but he’ll need to be replaced. Could see either JWP or Lemina wanting out.

 

But again, that’s a false dichotomy. We don’t have to either sign Messi or Carrillo, there are plenty of players in between. I think Ralph knows what he wants, I see no reason to believe we will get them in the summer. The administration needs quite a bit of fixing, too.

 

Nothings 'a given', yes we are much better under Ralph but we are not safe yet: we lack of quality, long term injuries to 2 or 3 key players and we can quickly lose that 4 point advantage we currently have.