Young City Goalkeeper Remi Matthews is to join Burton Albion on loan until January 2nd 2016 http://www.canaries.co.uk/news/article/norwich-city-burton-albion-remi-matthews-2527725.aspx Wonder if we'll bring in a keeper as cover for Ruddy & Rudd now Bunn has gone and Matthews has gone away on loan
I don't imagine Lafferty is on small wages though, and if we loaned him out last year in the Championship, I'm not sure what improvement to the squad he'll offer this year.
Agreed. If we can get in a decent player who is going to challenge Jerome then we should go for it, however, as I've expressed before I think Lafferty would be a great option up front. I imagine Rudd is number 2 now, don't know if I'd like another keeper who would be above him and can't see the point in getting someone just to be behind Rudd.
Good for Remi to get a decent length loan, although he never made an appearance for them last season. Despite being a league higher, you'd feel he has to try to force himself into contention if he's going to be a good long term prospect. The Brady price being quoted at £7m is quite a chance from the initial £15m, and makes me think there's a deal to be done there. Like Mbokani, our offer isn't so far from their valuation now, so a compromise seems possible. That said, I'd have thought we could find a versatile backup left back (to be fairly unfair to Brady admittedly) for less than £7m. If RvW is on £40k, then even clearing his wages is £2m back a year, or £4m over the remainder of his contract. To get that freed up plus a not insignificant transfer fee seems like acceptable business. No doubt he'll score twenty a season for them, and leave us wondering what he'd be like under a different manager, but never mind. If Neil really wanted him we'd not be selling, and you can't throw money away hoping for a fairytale. Whilst Lafferty has done well recently internationally, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greece and Hungary don't quite have the same calibre of defence as we'll soon be facing.
I think he wanted to play as a striker not a winger, so asked to be loaned out. Would love him back personally.
We were talking about the GK position up the Pub tonight and one of our number suggested that the rules ' encouraged ' Clubs to name 3 keepers in their squad although 1 or more could be under 21 so not to affect the 25 man squad provision. With the caveat regarding the truth of all information heard in a Pub, it was suggested that if you had 3 keepers in your squad you could apply for an emergency loan if 2 of them were injured meaning that they would have one in the team and one on the bench. If you only had 2 keepers in your squad then both had to be injured before you could use the emergency loan procedure meaning you had no keeper sub on the bench. Obviously in both cases you cannot say a GK is injured, get an emergency loan and then include the 'injured' keeper in your match day squad. I have not searched for the rule so cannot confirm whether that is correct.
Nail on the head there, DH Not knocking Lafferty during his time with us, but out wide-ish on the left flank, he was about as effective as Wes Hoolahan
Just seen on sky sports website one player who we were linked with earlier on (James McArthur) has signed a 3 year deal with Palace. Hope the club don't leave it too long to add a couple more quality signings to the squad. Would like see at least two more signings before the the friendlies kick off in different positions (eg defender/forward) If not at least 3"or 4 more signings before the season kicks off
Noticed this morning that The Mirror (yeah, I know, The Mirror) have linked us and several other clubs with Ryan Taylor from Toon. He's always been a talented player IMO, not to mention versatile, but he'd be a massive risk because of his injury issues. Overall, a no from me. If he wasn't so injury-prone I'd be more keen.
The £15m price tag should never have been taken literally, it's just Bruce's way of saying 'hands-off', he always slings out that figure on a player he wants to keep. In reality, the figure was always going to be around the £7-8m mark(though it's gone back up to £9m in today's local rag. ).
Now that City have agreed a valuation of £3.8m with Sporting Lisbon for RvW, I wonder if the completion of that deal might move other transfers on. As DH says, the gap in valuations for Mbokani is narrow, and that for Brady is narrowing, though it has a further way to go. With an additional £3.8m in the transfer budget, those gaps would be easier to close. With RvW leaving, we'd have two squad places available without anyone else leaving. If another CB like van Dijk were to be signed, he could take Turner's place in the squad and we'd have a 25 man squad ready for the new season. That would be 5 new players and any others coming in (like Yedlin perhaps) might be covered by Miquel going out on loan or possibly O'Neil going out on loan or leaving. Beyond that it'd be a current player leaving for any new one coming in.
Agree did we can get those deals done were looking good for the season. We're going to have to up our offers but I assume McNally is just negotiating hard.
Celtic are close to signing a striker from Dundee according to BBC so don't know how much if at all or affects the Hooper switch which was rumoured.
McNally negotiating hard? And I thought he was a softy. RVW leaving does open up a striker berth, though Lafferty may fill that. The van Dijk story is still around, and no other clubs seem to be ahead of us in this, but that would, I assume, mean the departure of Hooper. Of the two I would prefer vD playing for us, given what we know of AN' s preference style. But this would definitely result in the need for a new striker.
Was just thinking further about the Ryan Taylor rumour. If we were interested, it would likely merely be as cover. Therefore, maybe a 'pay per play' contract could be an option. Might limit the risk a bit.
Pay as you play contracts have become less popular since the 25 man squad limit came in. We'd still be giving up a squad place for that, whereas if we signed Brady we'd get competition and cover in two or three positions.
Fair point I guess. Although, Taylor could arguably still cover at least as many positions as Brady (if not more).
That's true, JK, but there's still the risk that he could be injured when he's needed to cover for an injury.
