I am hopeful of losing some weight this week but that would depend on me not replenishing and then eating the snack cupboard. So equally unlikely
Do you not realise these are connected? We can’t spend out the extra precisely because we wasted money in that window. You always offer lower on a first bid anyway
So it turns out the fee was a fair bit more than us being “5m” short. And arguably more than I’d want us to pay for someone with his level of experience. Especially in such a hit or miss position. Just look at Sulemana as an example. We can’t afford too many failed transfers like that
I get what you’re saying but at the same time you only need to look at fees players are going for and realise that if we are looking in the £15m market we aren’t going to be getting much on paper. Have to hope our scouting is on point to identify players who can help now, something we haven’t exactly been good at in recent times
I appreciate that - but Carvalho should be in the 15m market. He’s done basically nothing at Liverpool and as with all their sales they have added a Liverpool premium. Like they did consistently with Bournemouth a few years back. Albeit one of those (Solanke) has finally come up big for them. But what they paid for him at the time based on his record was crazy and it took years for it to finally come good. If we have the money then I’d like us to spend 27.5m on a player. But not a player like Fabio Carvalho. Especially as his best position looks to be number 10 - which we don’t play with.
Young and English premium too, Delap for £20m another example. If we are focusing on British players as Martin said earlier in the window then we have to expect to be asked for these prices. Your cheaper players tend to come from abroad
Tbf, if Saints are going to spend £27.5m on a player it would almost be weird to do it on anyone other than Matt O'Riley now, given the manager's clear desire for him as the #1 summer signing and the long-running reports
Despite what Blackmore said I still think it would’ve been Carvalho or O’Riley, as you say it would be odd to not buy O’Riley if we were willing to spend that much. We clearly thought Carvalho was going to be cheaper than it turned out. Again though if the Chelsea/Brighton stuff is true then I can’t see O’Riley wanting to come here regardless of his relationship with Martin
It depends if he wants a comfortable 8yr contract and has to fight every new player brought in January to get off the bench, or Brighton (or us if he really is in love with RM)
Ben Doak has not trained with Liverpool as from Friday. Expecting a loan move with Southampton and Leicester showing most interest.
I’m getting quite concerned that we’re not signing a striker. It was bad enough last time with Che and Armstrong, but no Che now.
It's Martin I feel sorry for. Come Oct when we haven't one a single game the fans (me included) will be calling for his head. SR were the worst thing to have happened to this club. Another shocking transfer window
Not done yet, but I worry you could be right. Maybe SR want to reap the benefits of being a yo-yo club?[/QUOTE]
We have BBD instead of Che. But we clearly don’t have the money for a striker. Now whether that is due to these financial rules or simply not having the funds in general - who knows. I didn’t think the financial rules kicked in immediately. So the concern is the cash simply isn’t there. And / or players we want don’t want to join us
I think we will add 4 more before the window shuts, they all need to be big successes to give us a chance at staying up. Don’t really blame SR for this window as it’s very hard as a promoted team, need a lot of things to fall into place to survive.
