I agree that offloading those high wages players and hopefully recouping a little transfer fee has to be the priority and must inevitable free up decent funds
In terms of a clear-out, we obviously can't get rid of everyone we'd like to, but to completely guess at what we could free up: Turner: £500k fee, £20k p/w wages Bennett: £500k, £15k p/w Lafferty: £1.5m, £20k p/w Grabban: £4m, £20k p/w Andreu: £250k, £10k p/w Hooper: £3m, £30k p/w RvW: £2m, £30k p/w To give a total of £11.75m in fees, £145k p/w in wages. Maybe? Regardless, a clearout could certainly free up the money for a decent signing.
Looks good though I suspect the transfer fees may be a touch optimistic (especially payment immediately). What it really does show is how much space it would free up on the wage bill - even at a conservative estimate getting rid of all those players would enable us to pay wages for two or three players at the top of our pay scale
Wev look to be in the market for Naismith for £7m (don't know about wages) and the Sampdoria striker was up for £11m but that might be Euros. So that has taken account of the fees quite easily, though hopefully still have some pocket money left on the wages. It's an expensive game isn't it?
I don't think that's greedy, GM, and I'd love it to happen as long as we can still bring in a quality CB as well.
That would be some clear outand would free us up for a good bit of recruitment, Getting rid of RvW at £2M maybe a touch optomistic though! Bah!
A Wolves fan's take on our rumoured £12M bid for Afobe http://www.wolves.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=426847 "The Wolves should have norwich for poaching, once again they are doing their business through the media in a blatent attempt to unsettle the player, this is a gutter club, a club that will sink to any depths to get what they want. Come on Wolves show some balls and report them! " ~ johnwolf ....and this from a fan of a club who employed Kevin Muscat !
When we talk about bringing in a quality CB, are we talking about strong back-up, or a genuine top-notcher, walking straight into the team? If the latter, who should we pair him up with? Is Bassong, or indeed Bennett (or God help us Martin) a shoo-in for the other spot? We're lacking in pace but I also feel we need the Colossus type. It's tough to pick one affordable player who will make us that much stronger.
We need at least 1 (if not 2) quality CB who is better than what we currently have. If Bassong and / or Bennett get injured then I think as things stand we have no hope of staying in the PL. Nor will we stay up if AN continues with playing Martin at CB. Not that a quality CB will guarantee we stay up.
I think firstly we'd have to be looking for someone to walk into the team. One clean sheet at this stage in the season is poor, and individual performances have definitely been a factor in that. It feels like a better player could therefore make a difference. The question of who we're looking to "upgrade" on will likely be secondary to who is available. It'll probably be a case of signing the best CB we can, then seeing who they work best with in a partnership.
Good post, DH. A pretty pragmatic view of the situation I would imagine. Let's just hope the board back Neil to the hilt, so that we don't get lumbered with the dregs again. I think Neil is a pretty quick learner, and now that he's seen at first hand what the demands of the PL are, I'd back him to make a couple of astute signings.
I think Neil learnt in the Everton game that Bennett is far the better CB. He's fair but not shy about dropping players and giving others the chance. Look at Rudd/Ruddy. Martin for me is still a top quality right back though. Neil has seen some criticism recently and I'll admit he got the Watford game wrong and started the Everton game wrong but corrected. However our results against arsenal, Everton and Man U and our performances against City and Chelsea have been good. We did have a bad patch but I think that may be behind us. January will be really important for us. We need two things to improve: finishing and defencive errors. Both these can be improved by bringing in new first XI quality players. For that we may need to spend some money but it should have a massive effect.
The Watford result is starting to look like a good one based on their recent form! Joking aside though, the thing that I like about Neil is exactly as you say - he doesn't shy away from his mistakes, he understands where he's gone wrong and it's obvious he sets out to right it. He's learning fast.
Yeah, like when we spent £8.5m on Ricky, or £7m on Robbie, or £5.5m on Bassong, or £4.5m on Leroy - I wonder if Mother Teresa has been accreditted with any of those "miracles" yet? And anyway, why do people think spending large amounts of cash (that would be entirely risky for a club of our size regardless of how some people choose to ignore this fact) is the only way to do it? Two of those of those big money signings were flops, and three of our best signings of the past decade - Holt, Hoolahan and Martin - cost us not much more than £750k in total. Don't get this notion of spending money for the sake of it, I've got total faith we will make the right signings for the club in January, though I should know by now that some folk are just never satisfied.
