This is a logical position to take, but our persistence leads me to believe Adkins knows something we don't. Although on the face of it it looks unlikely he will join us, I wouldn't like to bet against NA and NC's judgement.
I sincerely hope NC and NA have a few back up ideas if we don't get hooper, personally if we end up with jay rod, sordell or maynard i will be happy but if we still end up paying 4-6 million for one of these i will seriously wonder why they just didn't sort this deal out at the begining of the window so that every thing was in place and come the start of feb and they would be settled in and scoring 6 goals every game.
You're right, my completely uninformed feeling is it's probably 50/50. There's always the possibility that they are getting in there early with an eye on bringing him in in the summer. Or it's all a smokescreen and they are in advanced talks with someone else.
Remember all that fuss about Gorkss and we went and got Jos..we never saw that one coming. Adkins has not denied an interest in Hooper and we presumably have made an offer, but there is no evidence that we are being proactive about another offer. The press are keeping this boiling, so either we will go in with a big offer that we hope they can't refuse or Cortese is looking at other pots on the back burner.
could be the latter as Fran also says above. If we went in after promotion, we could expect to pay another £2-3m. welcome by the ways. Nice name... I like that philosophy.
Thanks, I considered "we've got a good bunch of honest professionals who endeavour to pass the football and play the game in the right way" but it was a bit long.
We have a good chance of being promoted, but feel we need a couple of experienced players (why we have shown interest in Hooper). However, if we can't get these players I would rather get a lad in with promise for the future than buy someone who may end up scarcely playing for us. A lot of teams in our position would try to buy a fringe PL player in his thirties for his experience, but Nigel and Nicola have shown no interest in going down this route which may be another reason why we have only brought in 2 players.
Guess we can end the speculation on Hooper - no deal is coming, lets move on http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/16643271.stm
