My Celtic office sidekick has just said to me, completely out of the blue, "How much are you paying for Commons?". His knowledge of the Hoops is not to be sniffed at.
I can confirm that there has only been an enquiry so far for Celtics' Commons. Not hear anything apart from rumours so far for Driver tho
Assuming that there are no problems with the work permit. Do you think we will actually be looking to bring in another striker? Most people have expressed a desire for us to get two strikers in this window but do you think that is a view shared with the NA and NC...I'm not so sure.
From a Guardian journalist's twitter: "Southampton interest in Kris Commons but no more than an inquiry so far. " https://twitter.com/#!/mrewanmurray/status/154913338126630912
Hmm, just looking at the first post gives an interesting insight into our transfer habits. I'm not going to paste it all here, go and look for yourself (for the record, RLGB, Tadanari is a forward ) but it gives off a revealing pattern. I know they're mostly only rumours but if we add in Driver and Commons to the list, why is it we seem to only be going for attacking players in forwards and a couple of attacking-based midfielders? Driver, Commons, Phillips, heard Kebe mentioned... but we're the league's highest scorers?! We're 11th on the conceded chart so that's not horrendous but I'm confused as to why we're packing our squad with attackers but leaving ourselves thin at the back with no established cover for CB. I know a lot of people rate Martin but he's one man who is far from established, a long term injury to Fonte or Hooiveld and we could find ourselves in a lot of trouble.
Surely Commons would cost us about £3-4million? He was Celtic's top player last season! Can't see them letting him go easily.
Agree, we should be looking at players like Clyne, Fontaine, Cathcart, Evatt, Savic (loan), Bassong (loan) etc etc.
Before he went to Leicester there were rumors or at least people expressing an interest in signing St Ledger. According to twitter: 'Sean St Ledger looks like he could be on his way out of Leicester, with Preston & Ipswich front runners for his signature #LCFC' I imagine he wants out of Leicester to get first team football though, and he would just be a back up here.
'Reports of a loan move to Southampton have been dismissed with Lennon planning his former team-mates return to first-team service.' - Not happening then
But as soon as you take Lambert, Chappers and AL out of the attack we suddenly look very thin and weak. In defence we only really need another CB and maybe a young GK.
It does, but i cant see us shelling out on a player coming back from injury. Also what are the chances that we would know about two transfers before they happen! I would worry that NC had lost his touch
I like SSL, but from reading the Leicester board it sounds like he's on about £20,000 per week (hardly surprising, as they are just the Championship version of Man City 2008 - 2010). No chance of us being willing to match that (and rightly so!). Moreover, he'd just be swapping sitting on Leicester's bench for our bench.
Cover for Fonte and Hooiveld would be nice (unless Seaborne happens to be close to be a return, which I presume is unlikely), but I completely agree that it should be forward-minded players that we're going for. We're top-scorers for a reason - we have fantastic players playing fantastic football. But unfortunately those players are few on the ground. We don't have the depth to cover them when they're missing. Morgan isn't a forward player, Forte and Holmes are not top-of-the-table quality, De Ridder is still settling in with the jury still out on him, and Barnard has basically been a write-off so far (and continues to be so). Lambert, Guly, Connolly, Chaplow and Lallana just aren't enough, especially given Connolly's injury record. Even when they're all fit and available, we're arguably still one person short as ideally you'd want four of them to be starting and a further two on the bench - but there's only five of them.
I wasn't suggesting we shouldn't be looking at attacking players, we've seen how the injury to Chaplow has hurt us and I'm worried how we're going to cope without Rickie now, we certainly need more depth up there (if not an improvement on current talent) - my issue was with the fact that we may be focusing so much on filling our squad with attacking depth that we're forgetting about the major need for defensive depth. Fonte has missed the last two games and we've lost them both, not purely because Fonte was out but it's a concern. Seaborne is likely out for a long time and having nobody after Aaron Martin for centre back cover is asking for problems. We need to fill our backline with depth as much as we do our attack, in my mind.
