The so-called Beast is out until January. Did his knee....again. A wholehearted lad and an honest player but about as robust as bog roll in a hurricane. Cheers for doing us a favour on Sunday. You was the only team that did
Sorry to hear that Sandro's out again SH, but it probably gives some insight on why we were so keen to get rid of him. It's a real shame, as he's superb when he's fully fit and he comes across as a great character, too. Massive couple of home games coming up for you, either side of the trip to Wales. Need at least one win from them and someone needs to start chipping in with some goals, apart from Charlie Austin.
I think we need to win them both, Poll. We've lost every away game this season so if we don't beat the likes of Burnley and Leicester we're in big trouble. Do you think you might have turned the corner at Hull? Its a crazy Div in that despite your bad run you're still only two points off your target position!
We're not playing at all well at the moment, so I wouldn't like to say whether the Hull result is particularly relevant, SH. If Pochettino notice how much more space Eriksen had in the middle when Lennon and Chiriches were down the right, then it might be. If we revert to a very narrow system with no cover for our defence, then it won't.
I agree with PNP, one win wouldn't be bad. From the Liverpool match onward you've looked competitive in every game, I think that's enough to give you a chance of staying up. As for us, no we haven't turned a corner. We had the chance to turn it around after Villa(a lucky win) and wasted the chance against Stoke. Yesterday the second half was positive but all the same problems were on display. In the first half we defended like t**ts and made poor choices in attack, in the second half we didn't finish the easy chance and it took an excellent bit of play to win it at the end. It's been the same for most of the season, our general play is alright but we've missed a lot of sitters and we make it very difficult for ourselves in defence. On the plus side, the goals we do score tend to be very good. We're lucky with the way teams we want to be challenging have started and how open the league is from 4th down.
That's all worth diddly squat if you're not getting the results along with being competitive mate. We were toothless again at Newcastle on Saturday. Do you think Brendan Rodgers has committed a carbon copy of the mistake Villas Boas made, namely after selling a brilliant player, going out and squandering all the cash on a load of average to poor players? Do you regret not spending the Bale money on one or two top quality replacements and therefore keeping the team more or less the same, instead of what happened?
There's a slight difference: AVB's splurge seemed to be about having two or three player come in to replace the contribution of one (which makes as much sense in theory as it does in practice, as it means tearing up your existing team to do so) coupled with the sneaking suspicion that some of the players may have been foisted upon him - Rodgers on the other hand ignored the glaring need to sort out their defence and signed a bunch of attacking midfielders which, if anything, is remarkably similar to what Rafa Benitez did when he guided Liverpool to second place when he splurged the entire transfer budget on Glen Johnson.
It's worse. We can't go out and pay top money for a world class player, because we're not in the Champions League and even more importantly, we can't pay their wages. Liverpool had neither problem, yet they lacked ambition with their signings, for some reason.
Interesting replies lads. Wasn't there rumours at the time that it was Levy signing the players and not Villas-Boas? I will say one thing for Levy. He knows how to extract the cash from other Clubs when selling his players. Apparently we spunked £10m on the broken down Beast!
He certainly does. Though 10m for Sandro is only a good deal from The Spurs point of view if he keeps being injury-prone. I have no doubt that he'd be worth much nearer to 20m if he had no injury problems. Maybe it was the right decision at Spurs to let him go but I wasn't at all happy with it at the time and only his spending time on the sidelines through injury (again) will persuade me I was wrong.
Is this QPR watch? As much as 'Arry did a decent job at Spurs, he's spent a lot for very little at QPR. Some very questionable signings. I can't see them staying up.
I think it's more QPR chat or something. A very different tone to any other club specific watch threads that may exist on this board...
So wrong on this, he bought 2 fullbacks (Moreno and Manquillo), another centrehalf (Lovren after buying Sakho last year), a defensive midfielder (Can), an attacking midfielder (Lallana), a winger (Markovich) and 3 strikers to replace the 1 player they lost (Lambert, Balotelli and Origi). Basically they bought players to fill/suppliment every position except keeper and somehow made the team a **** lot worse
Everyone says Spurs’ signings are crap, so it must be so. Chadli has six goals in the PL, Eriksen has four and may just be warming up, Lamela has seven assists in all comps. Granted, Soldado lost his scoring boots and looks like a waste of money, though he remains a good player, Capoue and Chiriches look disturbingly erratic and Paulinho looks like a loss, too, but is that really such a bad outcome for seven players? (The answer is, if there turns out to be one big star or two medium sized ones, no. Otherwise, yes.) It is early to judge Liverpool’s players, but the only one I’ve been impressed with is Lallana, though I’m not sure I’d take him over Eriksen, Chadli or Lamela. Balotelli looks like a big waste of money, Lambert and Origi were never going to make an impact, Can can’t s̱top them from leaking goals, and neither can the other three defenders. So, given again that it’s early to judge even Spurs buys, Liverpool’s may be worse. It wouldn’t be a shock for one or more of three Spurs’ signings to turn into top players, but I don’t see who could get there for Liverpool except Lallana. It was funny how Rodgers took him off last week the moment after the announcer said he’d completed all 25 of his passes in the first half.
"I will say one thing for Levy. He knows how to extract the cash from other Clubs when selling his players. Apparently we spunked £10m on the broken down Beast!" My understanding is that you paid 6m for him. And it will rise to 10m if he plays loadsa games, helps QPR win stuff etc.
Just a minor correction: Manquillo's on a rather strange two-year loan deal from Atletico and wasn't actually transferred. No idea if they've got an option to buy him, but you'd have thought so.
I just meant that if you stay competitive the rest of the season there's a good chance you'll start picking up more points. Like us you're still only one result off where you want to be(or where you need to be in your case), no one gets relegated in November. I don't think that's what either club did. The trouble is that neither us or Liverpool can got out and thosew one or two star players. There's a reason Arsenal's wage spend is actually rumoured to overtaking Chelsea's this year and that's because they're prepared to pay those real top bracket wages which filters down to the rest of the squad(hence Wilshere might be getting £150k a week. The same would happen to us so it's not a case of saying "we've got £100mill to spend so lets buy 2 £40mill players and spend the rest in wages for these big new signings". Did we waste money? Of course, Soldado and Paulinho are quite clearly good players that aren't suited to our league. Lamela's having trouble with consistency too but what young player doesn't? Much like Liverpool's Markovic, they were bought for a value that expects significant improvement over time, not to come in and be the finished article. Ultimately I think this whole £100mill spend tag seems to blinker people into dismissing them as flops. It happened all last year yet Arsenal spent £40mill on Ozil and no one's calling him a flop and no one's calling Eriksen a £40mill player either despite him outperforming Ozil since they both arrived. Same with Chadli, he was part of the flops, yet has more combined goals and assists than Welbeck and Ozil put together this season and they cost 6/7 times what he did. Most of it's about perception, both us and Liverpool didn't just lose a great player, we lost the best player in the league and missed out on targets whilst trying to replace him, that's very difficult. Southampton are obviously showing us both up at the moment but we'll see where they are at the end of the season. How many times have we seen newly promoted teams have a great opening few months of the season? How many times have Arsenal looked to be in the title race come January? The likes of Villa and Newcastle have challenged seriously for 4th before only to disappear the following season. It's a long way to go for Southampton yet, despite of how well they're doing.
Bought: one centre back (Lovren), one left back (Moreno) Loaned in: one right back (Manquilo) Sold: one centre back (Agger), one right back (Kelly) one left back (Robinson) Loaned out: three centre backs (Coates, Wisdom, Ilori) Having less defenders than last season, despite an increased number of games due to European commitments, is not improving last season's suspect defence - it's making the problem worse. As for supplementing every position, spending £10m on Origi and then loaning him back to Lille for the season is not supplementing any positions at all.
I know, neither are Arsenal. I was giving examples of teams that start well, getting a lot of hype and then fade. It doesn't always happen but you're battling against the odds to achieve form that's more than a flash in the pan for a few months in the PL. Southampton did similarly last season, until they went on a horrible run of games against the best sides in the league and lost their way.
