Transfer thread for 2016-17 season

That does look spookily like a scale model.

 

Leicester are apparently finalising Silmani for £34m and are to return for his team mate Silva with an improved bid of £35m.

With a net spend this window already at £7m, I have one question:

Where the flying f*** did they get that kind of money from?!

 

It was never like this in Harry Redknapp's reign <run>.

 

I don't think zero net spend is a badge of honour but I do think it is a sensible policy. I'm completely sure that 75% of transfers are unsuccessful so if you sign four players a season you should be selling three soon after. Our own youngsters are probably also about a one in four chance. We've got four or five of those coming through and it makes more sense to blood those than to spend money on players with no more chance of performing

 

You must be deluded if you think Messi is a better signing than any English
player who is a triffic family man.

 

I'm not sure 2x £35m is the right way to go for Leicester who are built on an amazing team spirit. How much are these guys gonna be on for wages too? Could start domino effect.

 

How is this summer going compared to 12 months ago ??
More handbags on here ?? Less ?? About the same ??

 

But at least Harry was always clean shaven and wore a suit.

 

I'm a bit more antsy. Last summer i basically didn't expect much, but we since had a good season, qualified for the CL, played some decent stuff and had our best PL finish.
Last time we got CL it was my opinion we wasted the opportunity with our transfer dealings. We have CL to offer players now and we should be making use of that. It seems like history is repeating

 

Arry had a <Spurcat> rating of 10 on PL manager Top Trumps.
Cannot beat that.

 

2010 or 2011 ?? And how ??

 

We actually show net spends under ENIC every single season until the year Harry took over, at which point the pattern came to an abrupt halt with the exception of the £17m net spend in 2010-11's 'VDV Window'.

The cynics on here will argue that Levy trusted Harry as far as he could throw him. The realists on here will do a bit of rummaging around and reveal that the fundraising drive for the new stadium began in earnest in 2009 when 30 million new shares were floated on the stock exchange. The contrast between the first 7 years under ENIC and the subsequent 7 is astounding. Almost like the biblical 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine...

In numbers:

Net transfer spend 2001-2008 = £135,150,000

Net transfer spend 2009-2016 = - £37,200,000 (this will be a round -£40,000,000 if we don't sign anyone other than N'Koudou).

 

See there was some shocking waste of transfer fees in the first half of the ENIC reign,
for which the managers were not really to blame. Since then, Levy has been brutal
in controlling the transfer/wage bill.

 

Huh? Did we qualify for the CL twice before this season?

We screwed it up with our transfer dealings. We should have spent to stay in the CL, we had extra revenue and the lure of the CL and we signed people like Ryan Nelsen and Saha.

 

What money should we have spent ??


"and the lure of the CL and we signed people like Ryan Nelsen and Saha."

We were not in the CL in 2011-12.

 

He's got the wrong window but the point still stands. We failed to qualify for 2011-12 because the extent of our ambition the previous season, when we could offer CL football for the first time, was basically VDV on a wing and a prayer. The 2010 summer window was the birth of the NEW STRIKER fascination that was eventually, ironically, solved by an academy product 5 years later. I didn't know a single fan at the time (I hadn't met Powerspurs yet ) who was optimistic of our chances to compete respectably in the CL and retain a place in the top 4 with Crouch, Pav and Defoe leading the line. The fact that VDV - a midfielder - was top scorer that season with a paltry 13 goals tells its own story. CL clubs across the globe can boast one or even multiple 20-goals a season strikers. We couldn't. Because we wouldn't.

 

Again, what money should we have spent ??

What money was available in the club coffers in addition to the 17m that
transferleague says we did spend on signings in 2010-11 ??

 

I'm gonna say my unpopular opinion here:

I thought Saha was a very decent signing and was pretty disappointed we didn't keep him beyond those 6 months. For a free transfer in January, he got like three or four goals plus an assist in ten league games, not a bad return at all in my opinion, scored in one of the domestic cup games too if I remember rightly. To come in half way through a season and do that is something some clubs would probably pay £10m-£15m for these days.

I've grabbed my popcorn in anticipation for the abuse that'll come my way

 

No idea. But I struggle to believe that the 12th (at the time; now 10th) wealthiest club in the world would've failed to come up with £15-20m to sign a top striker when push came to shove. The fact that VDV was 20 minutes away from not happening due to the lateness of it all is frankly an appalling indictment of our happy-go-lucky chin-up-lets-hope-for-the-best transfer policy over the past 7 years. If he hadn't suddenly magically become availabl in the last hours of that window, forgive me for saying it like this but we would have been utterly ****ed.