I got the impression that Bednarek wanted to move on anyway, even as a first choice player here. Wouldn't have thought he'd be happy to be a squad player going forward. Personally I'd still like us to bring in another CB and to do that we'd need to move one of Bednarek, Stephens or Lyanco on. We only just signed Lyanco and he hasn't had much of a crack at it yet, Stephens is a low maintenance reliable-ish (for our level) back up so the obvious choice IMO would be to sell Bednarek. You'd think he would generate interest as he has been decent for us in the past and is a regular international, in theory he's one of the few players that I'd be happy for us to lose that would also generate a reasonable fee.
Why as a MOD would you goad someone. On paper it looks good, but we don't know that yet, it could turn out to be really poor. Your attitude as a MOD bewilders me
I'm not goading at all. Or at least the post wasn't intended to be goading. I was genuinely interested to see if he had changed his view or not.
I think it's too soon to be denigrating other teams. Ralph still has to deliver on the pitch and even though we have bought in some youthful talent, if we set out to play like the back end of last season we will be in a relegation battle.
I thought he was going to Goztepe for the season Mmm Turkey please log in to view this image Or Stoke please log in to view this image
Yes, it's the style of play that has to be better, fans won't accept the one paced passing in squares that we witnessed at the end of last season.
As long as it is within the rules of the board, I think the mods can be allowed a little bit of leg pulling. They're posters as well and it wasn't that bad.
Is this in addition to Mara? I think we need 2 strikers including him, unless we are planning on playing one up top for the majority of the season
Like I said, not intentional. Was meant to come across as jokey/banter. At the end of the day Lincoln said multiple times things would be no different under SR than Gao despite all evidence to the contrary. Yes, there's a risk with the signings we've made but the fact is we haven't sold any of our star players and signed 6 for a combined 50mill. Under Gao we had to sell Ings to balance the books whereas this summer it seems very unlikely we're going to sell anyone we want to keep. If @LincolnSaint was offended at my post or tone of it I apologise but he didn't seem to be. Reading it back, I can see how it could come across as goading but wasn't my intent. But life's too short to be serious 100% of the time. On a side note, I do LOVE how people misinterpret someone's post and then insist they're right rather than the person who actually wrote the post. Must be a lot of telepathy in the air.
Everton were bad before. They are bad now. They have a bad manager, sold their best player, are a financial disaster and have made zero improvements. The fans are demanding the removal of the board and ownership, their stadium and training ground plans are in trouble due to reliance on Russian investment and their bad manager is getting twitchy about them not being able to sign anyone. They just had a pretty much first choice team get hammered by Minnesota. They are, in fact, bad and I reject the idea that is too soon to say that they are bad. I’m less concerned about us because I think the players we’ve brought are going to prove better than the players we were over reliant on for most of last year and, regardless of coaching staff, if you have better players you will get better results.
Firstly our ability to act in the transfer market has changed notably under Sports Republic. Being able to buy before we sell is a huge advantage allowing us to get in players we would otherwise miss out on. In terms of who we are buying i fear for us this season because its basically last seasons squad minus our 2 centre forwards and GK with a few high potential youngsters added in. Longer term, providing we stay up i can see this being a decent approach reaping both financial and on pitch success potentially Very important we bring in some quality who can hit the ground running esp in the striker and supply line dept.
I don’t think it is unreasonable to assume that we would have lost out on Lavia and Mara under Gao whilst waiting for ways of balancing the funds. And probably ABK as well despite how quiet we kept it. We likely would have still signed Bazunu as that position was a priority and I don’t think many other PL clubs were offering a short at a starting position. But that still might not have happened as it could be down to the new team on the management / football side (although he was signed pre-Shields) I get what you are suggesting on our squad but you are overvaluing Shane Long in that discussion by grouping him with the other two. And even Forster only played half of the season. So we are missing out on Broja - who didn’t start the season and did pretty much nothing for the last 10 games. We still need to bring a striker in and are looking to but it’s doesn’t seem quite the same as the loss of Ings the season before
Makes me wonder whether this Mara should be considered closer to Adams than Broja? In a hypothetical where we got Broja back would / could they play together ? Those watching the videos have said Mara plays back to goal which is more like Adams But also if we still want Broja would that mean any alternative is similar ? Because the likes of Delap and the Austrian don’t seem to be Time will tell I guess
