According to SSN we've bid 800k and now waiting for reply. http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_6969239,00.html?
The bid has been on the table a while now....I'm still not convinced with Hobbs, he seemed a bit clumsy/uncertain at times last season? Maybe he just needs settling down and a good pre season?
Hobbs looked decent last season and would be ample replacement for Gerrard. Hopefully we can get Ayala as well and we would be well stocked for defenders.
Get both Hobbs and Ayala in quickly, then that's the Defence sorted. Can then concentrate on the other positions. Hope we have the others all lined up, especially with us only have one goalkeeper at the moment.
I thought we were short on money? Can't be if we're paying £800k more than we should be for a player. Daft move.
How are we short on money? We don't have silly money to throw around but we've already spent around £800,000 this summer so there is some money there. Where do you suggest we find a Championship centre half for free? I don't see many floating around. Hobbs is a good player and he'll get better. He's worth the money.
Don't mention Sonko. He's probably on TWF's list of people who were wonderful before Adam Pearson came along. I can't remember where we were in the PL when Pearson came back. Surely we must have been top 6 right? Definitely nowhere near the relegation zone, because that was all AP's fault and none of Phil Brown's.
Didn't see the problem with Gardner, Sonko I'll admit wasn't that good. We were 18th, but we still had Portsmouth and Burnley to play, two games we could've won, which would've been 6 points, which would've been enough to keep us up. If you really want to argue the merits of hiring Iain Dowie, do it on your own.
Hobbs did nothing to really impress me while he was here, but at the same time did nothing to make me think we shouldn't sign him. He looked steady at the back, and with Gerrard probably not coming back he could develop a partnership with Chester. 800k is a fair price, i wouldn't say we'd be paying over the odds for him. He's still young and hopefully under NP he'll keep developing as a player.
Dowie was ****. So was Phil Brown. There isn't an argument to be had. It was do nothing and go down or try something and still go down. You're the one who is blind to AP's qualities, no-one else is ignoring his few poor decisions. AP took us down, steadied the ship and found us new owners. Without him, we were going down, going bust and going down again. The man is a god.
Gardner earned the nickname 'sicknote' for a reason, i was impressed with him when he played in 2008/09 but he gradually declined as a player after that, he had a stinker at Millwall last season and like Zayatee didn't want to be here.
That's more or less as I see it with regards to Hobbs. I would prefer a centre back pairing of Chester & Ayala, who in my opinion are both quicker footballing type centre backs, which beggars the question how much Ayala would cost
Brown couldn't even manage us to a victory over Portsmouth at home when they were ****, how was he going to manage one away (which he hadn't done in about a year) when they'd improved their form?
All of them are/were deadwood from the previous regime, most of the current team look like they want to be here and are playing for the shirt.
I forgot about Ayala. Though with Dudgeon, Chester and potentially Hobbs and Ayala were crying out for an experienced head at the back in the Wayne Brown mold. We have Dawson but i don't think he has the commanding presence to get everyone organised in the defence.
