Transfer Rumours The Summer Transfer Rumour Thread 2016

Yep. We would all like to keep these players for longer .but maybe we would not attract the same calibre of players if they didint see us as a stepping stone

 

Typical puzzled look of people confronted with technology...Les looking for pensioners special.

 

He's trying to work out how to get two tickets for the way there but three for the journey back.

 

I thought the girl was looking over thinking "Hold on.That's...thats not Les Reed is it!?" But she's about to help out.

 

Indeed, I feel we most certainly wouldn't.

Way I see it there's 3 main rough categories for us to target when looking for 'top 4 quality'/'Top 6 quality'/Top level/World Class/Whatever metric you want to measure by: a) players that are either true needles in the haystack that we get to first, or are prospects too rough around the edges for bigger teams to take on; b) players of near-enough proven quality, but in lesser competitions, and at a level just below that required for big teams to pay their moderate transfer fees; c) players of proven quality, looking for the kind of wages clubs pay that are where we want to get to, not where we are right now. I'd say our main recruitment falls under the second category and it has done us well, but those players are often players who have been flirted with by bigger clubs before, linked, scouted, enquired about and so on, but the move just hasn't quite come about. Once they can't make that jump in one go, we come along and provide great mutual benefit, but their goals remain the same and the best case scenario for them is for us to bridge the gap. Players from the third category may have the same or greater abilities and we could satisfy their goals and probably keep them longer, but I think players like that lack the same drive as those looking to make that jump. And if we give them what they want, we could see the mutual benefit turn into more of a one-way benefit, which eventually can affect things on and off the pitch. At least that's what it seems like to me happens with these kinds of players, and we've seen plenty of clubs who've taken that approach to bringing in top quality implode in spectacular fashion or completely stagnate whilst those players receive their payday.

And if we were to somehow tilt that mutual benefit to be more in our favour, even if the result of that was an impairment as minor as players being 'forced' to stay here longer (Oh, the horror... Those poor pumpkins), suddenly I think the pool from which we could select players would become much smaller.

Transfer fees don't even come into it for me, I still don't get the incredulity that we're not plucking 20-goal-a-season strikers or £30m playmakers out of thin air, that we're not reinvesting with the same kinds of fees we're receiving. Those might be the big numbers splashed across tabloids and paraded on Sky Sports News, it might be the easiest eye catcher for a transfer, the basic measure of players and they definitely and justifiably create excitement, but they barely scratch the surface of all the factors actually involved. We can't just select an off-the-rack £20m forward at random. Players carry those price tags for many reasons, and teams higher in the food chain will or will not pay those price tags for many reasons, right or wrong. But it would be arrogant of us to expect to figure out where they are wrong and we are right. Our scouting and recruitment may punch well above our weight and can compete with the best, but that's what we're doing, competing, there's nothing we see about these players that 20 or 30 teams across Europe that are bigger in stature and wage bills than us don't also see. There's a reason we got players with the pure footballing ability of Ramirez and Osvaldo, and that's 'cos we were willing to see past the things that caused those higher in the food chain to let them pass down the pecking order. Those might be controversial examples and of course there were different circumstances, but any players of that stature, or that fee or higher, will have been passed down that same pecking order. Sure, others can get things wrong, we can work to do things others don't, create a different environment where the flaws those bigger teams saw are removed, but you're almost always playing against the odds. Whereas players from that second bracket, the Mane's, Wanyama's, Van Dijk's, Tadic's, Hojberg's, Redmond's and so on, might still be looking to move up that pecking order, but at least they bring us up with them, with whatever small or temporary increments that may actually be.

Sorry for the tangential rambling, been a while since I submit you all to one of those. Back into my hole!

 

If we are signing a player who is happy to be on a British Train for hours on end, then a bus, then probably another bus... then I doubt whoever they bring back is anything more than League 2 standard.

 

Maybe he's just going to visit his mum. Leave him alone.

 

Good point. I've heard Ross Wilson loves tagging along when Les visits his mother.

 

She must be hot.

 

Well it is supposed to be 29 degrees today....

 

Who can blame him? Mrs. Reed makes a lovely little bread 'n' butter pudding when she's in the mood.

 

What happened to Cedric signing did I miss it?

 

Have no idea. I only post what I am told.

 

Newcastle fans seem to think Janmaat is off somewhere today. It couldn't be could it?

 

Cedric, Pied, Martina - I wouldn't have thought so.

 

And while I'm unenthusiastic about our RB options, I'm not sure that Janmaat would be an upgrade on any of thehm.

 

Janmaat is ****e.

 

I ****ing hope not.