Just wanted to see what people would like to see next season. Would you prefer that we buy young players like man u do. Or would you prefer we go for the big names like i.e....... The rumours of Del Piro etc etc. i would like to see mainly some younger exciting players even from abroad for example Diakite. Just feel thats the way we should be going and not looking for players looking for a final pay day.
Young, we can sell them on for a profit. Would you rather have Taarabt or Zamora? Taarabt has increased his value ten fold and we will struggle to give Zamora away for free (like Vine or agyemang) in a couple of years time. Younger players also have less wages while older player are usually in it for one last payday. The obvious exception is someone like Cisse who is fantastic whatever his age, not like Bothroyd, Zamora, DJ, SWP, Barton etc.
I agree but when your average squad age is about 30 then you have to buy young because we dont have any players with a future apart from Taarabt, Faurlin, Mackie, Onuoha and Traore.
It has to be a mixture. The older ones can provide the younger ones with the wealth of their experience, and the younger ones can progress and improve to be the older ones in a few years time. It would be good to get back to a position where the team only changes a handful of players each year. Stability does help.
Agree Eamon but I think we are close I really think 4 decent players is what we require now striker, M fielder, C back & Keeper anyone else added should be young cheap with potential.
Don't care, as long as they are good enough to keep us in the Premier League and hopefully wind up in a safer, higher position than this season.
I think we need a little bit more experience added to the squad, which may help us on the road and solving our poor away form and record is an important stepping stone to progress into an established Premier League side. I certainly wouldn't be against adopting the Burnley model and go for 14-15 players that possess the quality and experience that make up the core group of players expected to play regularly and then fill the rest of the squad with promising youngsters. If for whatever reason we run into trouble with injuries and suspensions, then re-assess in the January transfer window and add more depth if necessary. I certainly don't want to see us in a situation where we have professional's sitting around again and not being able to get a game because the squad's bloated and they couldn't make the 25 man squad. We probably had about eight of those over the course of the season at any one time and that's really eight too many for a club the size of ours.
More experience? Usually we have 8 or so player in a team thats 30 or over Kenny, Hill, Derry, Zamora, Cisse, SWP, Barton, Buz, Young etc. Then youve got the old fringe players, Bothroyd, DJ, Smith, HH and Cerny. We are the oldest team in the league out of the 92 teams. I agree we need a smaller better squad, just think of the forward we could have had instead of paying DJ and Bothroyd to do nothing, 40-50k a week down the drain.
Think it maybe a couple more that depending on whether Hughes decides to keep the likes of Barton, SWP, Boothroyd, DJ etc.
We've got a dangerous marsupial you could have on a free, as long as you let him tweet he'll be ok!...
I should clarify as I wasn't clear enough in my original post. I don't necessarily mean experience by age, more experience and know how in terms of Premier League football and what's required to be successful home and away. A young player can still have this kind of experience and mentality. A lot of the players you mentioned had very little or no experience of top-flight football in this country and some of the new signings (such as Taye Taiwo and Samba Diakité) had none at all. It's always a risk when you do that and having too many players without that experience can cause problems. Even the likes of Nedum Onuoha, Armand Traore and Anton Ferdinand were not really getting regular football at their respective clubs and you can apply that to Shaun Wright-Phillips (and to a degree, Luke Young) too, even though both are vastly experienced. We need players who already have their fingers on the pulse, not those who are struggling to get games as well or are other teams cast offs. It's just about finding the right balance and we're not quite there yet, though, after our experiences this season we are obviously in a better position than we were prior to this point. Adding a bit more knowhow and leadership in key areas on the pitch will certainly help stabilise us.
