West Ham want £25mill for Nayef Aguerd cant see us paying that for a 29yo and he's on 50k a week at West Ham
There’s no ‘most important position’ really. We need to improve everywhere. Having a top keeper in the PL can be worth a bunch of points. Strikes me that ‘the plan’ for this season is to stay up, not to look at ‘prepare for going down and coming back stronger’. All for it.
Probably. Maybe. A lot of the money we've spent over the last few years hasn't necessarily found its way onto the pitch with regularity though. They're definitely good, but they aren't infallible. The big impact from the club has been in player development IMO. Now if we can improve the quality of players we bring in, while maintaining our ability to develop players once they're in the door, then we're on for something really special. But they haven't served up infallibility.
None whatsoever mate. We can be a massive club, or a yo-yo. I know which KLD will want. I was/am pretty comfortable with Patto, but a top end keeper at prime age, forget comfortable I’d be absolutely SERENE with that. Bulka is 6’6, lean as ****. He isn’t getting bullied on corners. I’ve like Lauriente since seeing him running rings around 2 men for Lorient I was shocked when he went to a mid club like Sassuolo. If these are the first 2 in I’ll be cock-a-hoop. Aguerd, again seems really smart. A tall, left sided CB who is decent on ball. The links are exactly what we need and it’s ****ing exciting.
You wouldn't say there's a little bit of a hierarchy of importance for each position considering the current squad? Like if we signed 3 right backs, it would confuse me considering the consensus around Hume is that he is one of the ones who could make the step up. EDIT: This doesn't mean I'm against signing a RB, it means I would be concerned we don't use our finite resources to cover more vulnerable areas of the team.
We're likely to only be able to lose around £60m this season. And in truth we want to keep ourselves to less than that to ensure we've got a chance to stay inside PSR in 26/27
100%, we are having a proper good go, it seems. We can't sit and be precious just because we liked a few of the lads that have played for us imo, the PL is a monstrous challenge and you need to properly strengthen, I would hate for us to be naive
Sentiment can't be factored in when trying to kick the team and club on When we got promoted from L1 we upgraded the team rather than sticking with the lads that got us promoted, we replaced Wright with Ballard for example. Then in the championship we let Embleton leave on loan despite him being a local lad and a big reason why we got promoted to the championship but got replaced by the likes of Rigg and Jobe. Gooch eventually got replaced by Hume We always need to look at ways in which we can improve and Butka def improves our GK unit
... In a PSR sense you can include the Clarke sale in this too I believe (assume you were coming from a cashflow point of view though).
I always quote Brian Clough who when he signed Peter Shilton for what was BIG money at the time and when questioned stated that Shilton would save them between 12 to 15 points a season which he duly did and old big head was proved correct with Forest winning championships and European cups .
It is from what ive been told, as the deal was technically done in January it goes towards last seasons budget