For a club at our level to have one of the premier league's all-time leading scorers in the form of his life? I'd say that's pretty damn privileged personally! http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/jermain-defoe/verletzungen/spieler/3875 He's missed a grand total of ~50 games through injury in his entire career, zero in the last three and a half years. The chances of him suddenly turning into a Jack Rodwell are slim. I'm not saying he's indestructible, but we have to play the percentages, a club of our stature is never going to have a perfect squad to cover all eventualities. Even if Jermain is victim of a horror challenge, we would have several options: a) try chucking the "foreign gamble" lad in and see how he copes. b) Watmore? It's his favoured position c) Borini? Again, he wants to play up front d) spend in January I know people will scoff at options b and c, but both those players had similar strike rates in the prem to Sakho last season, and both were playing on the wing whereas Sakho was in his favoured position. I just don't see why we're being lured into paying over the odds for average prem plodders AGAIN. Sam gambled on foreign imports in January and 3/4 turned out to be better than anything we could have got for anywhere near that price in England - the only one who was no good was the "prem experienced" lad. So why are we going back to our old, tried and tested, and proven to fail, ways? This whole thing is becoming a lot like the Steven Fletcher saga.
i chucked in the "if he gets injured" part as anyone can break a leg etc. naturally fingers crossed he has the next 3 years or so injury free, im sure we would all like that.
There's no evidence we're doing that what so ever. Sam is trying to turn us from a predictable, limited one dimensional team into a midtable outfit with good options going onto the pitch and from the bench. It's a squad game after all. Sam knows the player, Sam has his own vision for developing the squad. Why not back the manager who knows his onions on the player instead of writing it off as proven to fail. Seems a bit hasty and unsupportive of our Manager. It's one thing to say it not for you fair dos, but to write the signing off completely before it even happens like you have is asking for a serving of humble pie. Just because we've had some bad signings in the domestic market under different managers in the past doesn't mean it's a blueprint for every domestic signing in the future. Because if that were the case, we wouldn't sign anybody ever because prior to January we'd signed very few quality permanent deals for any player home or abroad, prior to January we could only find a decent player in the loan market, does that mean we should just loan all our players? Of course not, that would be as daft refusing to buy from the domestic market because 25 managers ago somebody bought a dud call Fletcher. Trying to learn form our mistakes by hiding from them is not for me, it just means while we're shying away with an empty ball sack somebody else is getting in on it. If Sam thinks a player is right he should go for him, regardless of where he plays imo. We've no Striker for Defoe to play off, that's a lack of option in the squad that should be there for a player like Defoe. Sam is addressing that. That's fine with me and I'll give the player he chooses a fair crack of the whip. I'll give Sam's Judgement in the transfer market a fair carck of the whip too, because he hasn't done anything form me not to trust him yet.
The two signings WHU have made so far are freebies but neither are strikers. Maybe they do really want to hand on to Sakho.
According to today's Mirror (I know) West Brom are offering Berrahino to the Hammers witn Sakho as part of a swop deal, just another spoke in the wheel of a Sunderland transfer.
Tap ins is what we badly need and he is well known by BSA - we should leave it to the experts in this case imv
Tap ins mean right place, right time. Shows a good strikers' brain. They can go in off his ar*e or the back of his nut for all I care, as long as they go in, x
