Mediocre in what league? Mills is in the top 3 defenders in the championship. Konchesky is easily good enough for the championship. Nugent has a very good goalscoring record at championship level. Schmeichel is a promising young goalkeeper, agree he's got areas to work on but he's talented no doubt. Danns is rated very highly at this level. I don't rate St Ledger, fair enough. Peltier is highly rated at league 1 level and has age on his side. And again, we're not finished. And who would you have bought, within reason?
well i'd hope st ledgers a backup then. yeah in theory, need them signed quick though, late signings wont bed into the team quick, ala man city
You know it's funny, I was thinking that, then again the Hull fan who wrote this thread seemed to think he was a striker, and he plays for you so...
We've bought Dudgeon, Evans, Hobbs, Mckenna and adebola in for almost peanuts. All are good players in this league imo and all were a lot cheaper than the players you've played for. Add to the mix our existing players I'd say our squad is of similar strength to yours.
Not a lot more. Not under Sven anyway, Sousa (well, the owners) spent £2m+ on Waghorn. but Sven only signed Bamba, who was for less than a million, and Vassell, who was free. You can go on about wages if you like but when they're only being paid for a few months it doesn't add up to that much.
And loan fees. I cant imagine everton letting you loan him for nothing at all when they hardly have any strikers.
Dudgeon and Evans both played for Utd and were quite highly rated at old trafford. Both are also young. Hobbs is a good centre half at this level and is again young. So these three are only going to get better. Mckenna's one of those who can get stuck in and can rally the others round him to get more involved. Something we've lacked since Ashbee left and Adebola is there as a 4th choice striker. No way your squad is miles better than ours. They are of similar strenght, only ours only has a couple of overpaid numpties and not a fair few
Well that's just speculation tbf. You don't know if we paid money (though we probably did) and how much it was. Anyway, this is of course all a moot point, Sven joined us when we were in the bottom 3 with a **** squad playing shambolically. Sven had to patch up the squad with loan players, you can hardly expect us to go up after the start we had. This season is different though and if we don't go up there will be no excuses. Our squad will be vastly improved, it's not about how much money we spent last season or even this season, it's about having a squad capable of getting promoted, no matter what the costs are. These fees won't look so big if we go up.
You go where you know you're going to get games. And if you're still getting your full wage why wouldn't you drop down a league? Thats silly. When do you ever see a player pack in from player just because they'd have to drop down into the championship? Never, otherwise the likes of Bullard would have retired when we went down.
So what have these youngsters actually done then? I don't remember them playing much of a part in Man Utd season myself. They may very well turn out to be gems but i we'd signed them I doubt you'd be impressed, especially if you're not impressed with the players we have signed. Hobbs is a decen defender but is not better than Mills, Vitor (who I expect us to get on loan) or Bamba at the moment. Our 4th choice striker is probably going to be Waghorn, who is miles better than Adebola. And it's all very well having players who can rally but what else can he do? Nigel is a good manager but he's pretty one dimensional, he'll buy solid, slow players and get the best out of them.
My dream as a kid was to win the Premier League. A lot of footballers want to play in the best league in the world, believe it or not. I'm not saying that those older players won't drop down, but we don't want these rejects. We want young and hungry Championship proven talent.
We've bought Joe Dudgeon, a promising LB from Man Utd to replace an aging, weaklink in our very strong defense. Jack Hobbs as you well know, I think most would agree he's better than St. Ledger. Ayala is still a high possibilty, made Gerrard (our Player of the season last year) look pretty ordinary for the 16 games or so he played before his injury. Evans also from Man Utd is a very solid CM who I think doesn't get enough credit for what he does. Paul McKenna, erm not really seen or heard enough about him to really comment but might bring that extra lift and commitment to the team we have missed since Ashbee left. A fit Jimmy Bullard who Nigel Pearson and himself have wiped a clean slate is arguably the best player in the league and is like a new signing. Adebola, might not be the most gifted player but offers stregnth and should do the dirty work for Fryatt/Simpson to feed off. Also Peter Gulasci (GK) on loan from Liverpool is almost complete and should be when Liverpool come back from their Asia tour.
Speaking of overpaid primadonnas...he only went to you for the money. Who is not getting games in the premier league, will be willing to be paid less than 35k a week and drop down to the championship, and is better than Maynard? And if we were buying these kind of players you'd be saying we were just going for the easy options, the has beens, the names. As it is we're going for good players with something to prove.
