Was he? Link? If so, and it’s clear he knew, then that’s dreadful. I’m not a big fan of any owner so won’t be defending anything. And my second question?
Yeah we probably have. But we tried to throw money around last summer too but couldn't convince players to take our money until we got to deadline day and well down our list of targets, and in the case of a striker ended up running out of time altogether. So we are doing something better this summer.
No Just because you think I’m of a lower social class to you, and don’t appreciate culture, doesn’t mean I’ll do as you tell me to.
Gelhardt is a seriously fantastic signing. Kudos to the squad from last season for making him want to return.
Well we do agree there, he's a decent striker at this level but my point wasn't to disparage McBurnie, it was just to point out that if we were in a position to spend a decent amount of money then he wouldn't have been lauded as much.
Think the high likelihood the punishment will be mitigated means it isn't as clear cut as you're suggesting though. Pretty sure there will still be some sort of punishment, but we are clearly under a lesser restriction even now than we have been under the two complete embargoes - however short lived and the cap on additional liabilities that would appear to have been in place before a "phonecall between Dublin and the EFL" apparently lifted it ahead of Lundstram signing. As always. Time will tell.
@Chazz Rheinhold I saw this quote in Jakirovic's interview with Baz and it made me think of you and your love of double pivots: "We can train all day, all year in the first (defence) and second (midfield) zone, but in the last third, this is down to the quality of the players." Baz translating the lingo for the non-anoraks, lovely stuff.
I also think without an embargo (and with proper financial planning) we would have seen more areas of the squad improve. We've clearly concentrated on our striker and 10 options with McBurnie and Gelhardt, which is great. Ndala may prove to be a good addition but without the restriction I'm sure we'd have seen a better winger come in. I suspect we'd have signed a LB, Williams may prove to be a shrewd signing if it happens but I think we'd have probably set our heights higher if we could pay for someone. We may not yet have solved this problem - which has been an issue on the pitch for some time. Midfield if we were a well run club there's no way we'd be selling Puerta - we'd be investing in him for the future. I'm not sure we'd have flipped our central defence on its head either with two free signings off the back of injury hit seasons and letting two decent squad players go for money. As it stands now in both of these positions we don't yet know if we are stronger as a squad than last season or not. Its clear our attack is stronger than last season as it stands, but I'm not 100% sure the rest of the side is at the moment. That remains to be seen.
I'm not saying its definitely not, I'm just saying the proof will be in the pudding. I also think there are bits of the squad that would have had better reinforcements if we'd have been able to pay fees.
Baz has said quite definitively that we were about to sign Owen Beck if not for the embargo, so there's your left back. The embargo definitely set us back at one point, and at that time we were complaining on here that we didn't sign anyone for a month. It's only a week and a bit ago that that was the case. It's the recovery over the last 10 days or so that's been impressive.
