Transfer goss and rumours, Summer 2016.

I prefer aspirin as my analgesic

 

All these rumours are doing my head in. First thing every morning I check newsnow to see if City have signed anyone only to be disappointed every time. What the hell are the board doing? All and sundry around us are strengthening ahead of the new season and with three days to go before the big kick off all we've done is bring in a couple of kids. It's becoming pretty obvious to me now that our continual amateurish approach in the transfer market was never down to McNally at all, his hands were probably tied by the Stowmarket Two (Stowmarket Three now of course). In the end he'd probably thought enough is enough and walked. God help us if Ollsson does move on and Jerome picks up an injury before the weekend.
I'd lay even money that we'll end up bringing in a couple of loans from the PL now who really don't want to be here in the first place. This bloody club can't even manage to get a new CEO in place before we're a third of the way through the season, I just hope this Moxey fella has some real balls (pardon the pun), and stands up to the board.

Rant over, I'm now off to change my wet pants.

Dave, over to you

 

Can't really argue with any of your post KIO (apart from your last sentence). We do appear to be completely amateurish in our transfer dealings and as I said in post #2017, I'm sure that part of the reason is our location and players' WAGS not wanting to come and live here!!!

 

There was a clamour amongst many (I agreed) towards the end of last season to retain AN despite him clumsily overseeing our relegation. Largely on the proviso that he'll be "older, wiser and more experienced" for subsequent campaigns.
Well, as far as transfer windows go, this far - after over a month, we've got a back up keeper on a free and a cheap Spanish Redmond replacement. Period.
Extra experience my foot - that's an even more pitiful display than last summer's ill-fated transfer window and we all know how that panned out.
Is it naivety on his part (still ?) or are the makeshift board not backing him sufficiently ?
And the most laughable thing about it is, when he should be backing up his manager with 3 days before the season, our esteemed chairman is spending time sorting out boosting his own pocket money by arranging to go on a ****ing television dancing program in the autumn. Pathetic!
Laughing bloody stock this club of ours.

 

So those are the sort of calculations you arise before 6 in the morning to solve??
Funny boy

 

Allegedly bidding a club record fee to try to land McCormack doesn't sound like they're sitting on their hands exactly. Pulling the pin on it when either his demands or the asking price spiralled sounds like sense to me. That aside, I'm unhappy at the lack of further activity in the striker / CB dept and resigned to another season of "what if we had recruited properly". Anyone else feeling a bit of deja vu?

 

If he truely is fit again and can stay fit id really like us to push the boat out for Assombalonga now.

I genuinely think we need two strikers too! Perhaps the Bristol City chap who scored 19 in the Champ last season? Sakho is it?

 

Which ever way you look at it we are still a decent CB & 2 Strikers away from a promotion challenging team. My concern about AN is he hasn't learnt from last year and hasn't grasped the nettle and sorted out the bloody obvious. I suspect he will compound the defensive issues further by retaining Martin as Captain, which will only cause confusion at the back where Klose is the obvious organiser. I've no real problem with the tinkering that's been done around other positions, although I think if we'd recruited a CB we could have done without keeping Whittaker.

 

More or less exactly what I said in #2024, canario
Except I'm prone to dressing any salient points in copious amounts of waffle!

 

Unfortunately paying a club record fee means nothing to anyone other than Norwich supporters. If we want to get a player we have to pay the going rate. The thing that concerns me most about McCormack is not that we don't appear to have got him (15m was a lot for a player of his quality / age although it would have been cheap IF he'd got us the goals needed for promotion), but we've left it very late and don't appear to have the other irons in the fire that were suggested. For me the need to sign a couple of strikers has now overtaken our need for another CB, although ideally we need all 3. As the squad is at the moment I fear that significant injuries to Klose & Jerome will see us struggling to hold a place in the top half of the championship.

 

- don´t think I can really be bothered Donuts, anyway all this transfer inactivity suits me fine, I´d hate to see us back up there with the stinking rich, only to see us drop back down again one year later. McCormack, even if he had come off, would only have been a quick fix anyway. Even if it takes three, four or five years, bring in the kids and start to build for the future round them, better for our prospects of actually staying in the PL for longer than one season, and better generally for the long term prospects of the club.

Only problem with that is, fans haven´t got anywhere near enough patience for that process to begin, mature and finally prosper, and even if it did ultimately happen to fail, it certainly wouldn´t be any worse than this awful yo-yoing we´ve been used to lately. Everytime that happens, it seems to tear yet one more strip off the club.

 

Though I'm not happy and certainly not clapping, I do think we may be over reacting to this. I assume we had a top price beyond which we were not prepared to go, which seems to be £12m including add-ons. Some are saying we should match or exceed the £14m including add-ons that Villa are reportedly paying. Much as I hoped we'd get McCormack, I don't agree with the 'pay the going price' argument. If McCormack helps Villa achieve promotion then it will have been worth it, but if he doesn't? He has failed to do that with Fulham for the past two years and with Leeds the years before that. That was my concern about paying that much for a 30 year old who is already past his prime (usually considered 26-29) and won't have any sell on value. IMO, it's a desperate gamble by Villa and would have been the same for us, especially with so many older players already. The test will be what happens now with 4 weeks left in the window.

 

Jonathan Kodjia is the name you're looking for I think. I'd certainly be happy with that.

 

Putting McCormark aside I'm not sure what you mean by this if we are never willing to 'pay the going price' then surely we're always going to be out bid. It's not like we've got much else to offer i.e. playing in the PL over the championship.

I'm also not convinced anyone is overreacting, the season starts in 3 days, we're expect to be promotion contenders, we only have a couple of strikers, only one (Jerome) who is proven at this level, our midfield has hardly shown (since Johnson left) that they are capable of supporting the strikers by regularly banging in goals and with the exception of Klose we don't have a defender who doesn't have a mistake or 2 in them every game.

 

If it could work like that RBF I would be happy to do so, the reason it won't is that for every young player who develops to be PL or even just promotion standard, I will show you an ambitious/greedy young man who will get cherry picked by a PL club. The only way to not have this happen is to be in the PL and even then if they're that good they'll be pinched. Look at Fulham, 2 years out of the PL and 2 freshly relegated sides are trying to pinch their star player.

Bah!

 

Chip Inn in Long Stratton. Thank me later.

 

By that I meant the price Villa is paying, which is excessive IMO. We do need another striker and perhaps 2 for the same money, which I'd be happier with. How would we feel if we signed him and then failed to gain promotion? He and all of our players would be a year older and we'd have less reason for optimism about the future. I'd like to see us move on and use the £12m on other younger strikers, one established and another with potential for the future. We couldn't do that while we were still negotiating for McCormack. Whatever happened, Jerome would be starting against Blackburn and probably against SW as well. The proof for me will be where we are when the window closes.

 

I think the midfield issue is a key one and could be the difference between our last Championship campaign and this one - last time round Bradders was banging them in (ooe-err), Redmond scored regularly, Howson contributed and generally the midfield supported the goals from Jerome, Hooper and Grabban. This season there's no Bradders, no Hooper, no Grabban, no Redmond and no-one (currently) in the frame to replicate what they did.

Looking at it on a like for like basis we are have only Canos and Naismith in who we didn't have last time and can we see them replicating the goals from the dudes I have mentioned above ? Fingers crossed for Maddison and the Murphys !!!!

 

I would be very happy if we managed to go out and get Assombalonga and Kodija, seems unlikely though.

Will Grigg anyone?

 

Sorry I thought you were saying that you didn't agree that we need to pay the going price for players. If what you're saying is that McCormack is overpriced and that you're happy we didn't pay over the odds for him then I can understand that arguement. But what we can't do is say that we need a new striker, but we're not willing to pay the going rate for the type of player we need, so we won't buy anyone. All that will do is leave us with what we currently have, which is not a strong enough forward line up to challenge for promotion, particularly if Jerome breaks his leg at Blackburn