I'd be ringing Chelsea , Man City and Brighton on rotation every hour about a handful of loan signings tbh.
Akpom has had one good season in the last 10 years. Not sure he makes Birmingham much better upfront then they already are.
I should imagine that on paper, we have by far the best forward line in the league. We just have **** all creativity to assist them.
Reasons to be fearful: Akpom is an excellent operator at this level Birmingham have now strengthened in every position they needed to If Birmingham start well then they could be very dangerous. feels like a club high on confidence and ambition. They have a relative unknown manager who massively impressed last season Reasons to be OK about it all: A lot of their signings had their best form a good few seasons ago They are almost out of loan spots (used 4 if Akpom goes) They'd swap squads with us in a heartbeat If they start slow I can see it feeling like a slog for them
He’s defo still got some legs in him I reckon, will never forget that goal at Wembley that day in JPT! Would love to see him have a link up with Lallana for old times sake but he’s no doubt got Beverly Hills on the agenda ay
I remember looking at his highlight reel when he was signed and thinking that is the least physically coordinated player Ive ever seen. How he ever got signed is a dodgy mystery to me.
I just looked up his stats and couldn’t believe his returns. I don’t know much about him but in my ignorance I just thought he’d regularly scored a load, presumably all off the back of that season he had with Boro.
After last seasons fiasco I expected a serious improvement from SR but the overhaul that both the club and some of the players need hasn't materialised. Unfortunately we will go into the Wrexham match with mostly the same old faces. Our current best 11 with Fernandes in it possibly does enough in the championship (although we have to add more creativity into it) but the problem comes next summer where most of those here now are proven to not be good enough for the prem Talk of Dibling and (especially) Fernandes going is a killer. IF we go up they are the exact profile we need here now because we cannot simply buy a whole new team next summer; the parts have to be in place this summer which means identifying young and talented players with a high ceiling i.e. Fernandes
I’m not sticking up for SR and I’ve always said, for me, this summer is their last chance but we do still have nearly a month left of the window so I’m reserving judgement until then.
I agree that the ideal world is that we get promoted with a couple of players that we already know are PL level players (really hope we keep one of Dibling or Fernandes) and a couple that we hope can be, but then still need to throw caution to the wind/PSR and spend big upon promotion when you can attract a higher calibre of player. Any that we bring in now are likely to be loans that we hope to then buy (like Downes and THB last time), or young players that may or may not turn out to be good enough for the PL. We're not going to be able to attract or afford PL ready players now. This window has been incredibly frustrating so far, particularly because it's come off the back of such an awful season and we all want to see serious ambition to win the league and learn from past mistakes. SR are on the shortest of ropes with most fans, and we need to show a lot more in this window then we have so far, BUT... there are still 4 weeks left. And very few clubs have been really active in the window so far. Would have been nice to have more new blood in by now and shifted a few more too, but like with the Sheffield Wednesday on the opening game last time out in this league, hopefully Fernandes and Dibling can feature as JWP and Tella did then, and get us the points whilst they are still here and before we finally start throwing our weight around with transfers.
The single most important signing a club makes, is the manager. Not goalies and wingers etc. If Still is as good as suggested, then our squad is already strong enough. If he isn’t that good, then I don’t think it matters who we sign. We won’t get autos.
The squad is lacking a bit of X factor at the moment, last time out Stuart Armstrong & KWP had that extra quality, which gave us the edge in a lot of matches. Fernandes & Dibling look more like Ex Factors. Agree the manager is most important, but you do need quality good enough for the league above to stand a chance of winning the league you’re in.