Transfer goss and rumours, Summer 2016.

Yes Rich, I hold my hand up as having been one of those guilty of writing Wes off and I remember GH having a torrid start to the season, but gave him the benefit of the doubt because of what he'd achieved previously - Naismith however ...... I'm not one of those always looking for a scapegoat and to be fair, the entire team had a bad day at St Andrews and IMO a lot of that was due to AN's team selection and I said so at the time.

 

If the season is an hour long, we are 6'29"into it. Luckily the season is a tad longer than one hour, but I get Richs point.

 

Me too, I wasn't being critical, but 5 games out of 46 is a decent chunkette of the season.

 

Some interesting points made in the MFW column today.
For example:

Sell a Redmond, bring in a Canos and a Pritchard – that’s good business. Sell a Brady, bring in an Assombalonga. It almost worked but that’s the problem – that sale never materialised, so budgets were altered and targets downgraded as a result. And that’s sensible business.
I think perhaps it’s a little unfortunate that we were relegated alongside Newcastle and Villa. They have muddied the waters with their big spending.

But when Villa blow us out of the water on wages, we can’t get too frustrated as we did precisely the same to Brighton over Pritchard. It’s swings and roundabouts.
We’ve spent well over £30million in 2016 on transfer fees alone. The club financially is very stable, debt-free, asset-heavy but cash-poor – something I think many fans have trouble to comprehend.

Full article below, including some hypothesis and a degree of waffle.
http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter...at-unfolds-when-football-and-twitter-collide/

 

Nail on the head, Cromer. We spent big (for us) in the January window, when shopping was most expensive. People seem to think that because we offered £10m for McCormack and didn't get him, the money was still there to spend, but £8m of that went on Pritchard and more would have gone on sign on fees for McGovern and Jones. Paying circa £5m on Oliveira probably took most of what we had left, given that we need to keep some in reserve for January. Had we got a big fee for Brady (as I thought we would), we could have spent more. Instead, we should look at the advantages of keeping both Brady and Klose, which hopefully will prove much more important than the signings we might have made to replace them.

 

Much as I agree with you Rick, especially the comment highlighted, neither have been a patch on last season's edition so far, despite dropping down a division?
You'd have thought they'd rip this league to shreds, but we've not seen any of that yet?

 

Overall a fair article and really until all our injured players return and AN has a full squad to select from we're going to struggle, but I just hope he doesn't try to play Naismith as a lone striker again. I'd also like to see a fairly settled starting 11 regardless of who the opposition is, but I'm not convinced that that is likely to happen anytime soon!!!!

 

Perhaps I should have said 'potential advantages' Cromer, but I suppose it's a bit of an adjustment for both of them. I doubt that AN will need to play Naismith as a striker again now that Oliveira has arrived, Braveheart.

Though not really transfer related, I see that Martin played the whole match for Scotland, as did McGovern for N.I., while Lafferty played 59 minutes. Tettey played the whole game for Norway and Mulumbu played 83 minutes for DRC.

 

As I have said on the MFW comment section, buying Pritchard ahead of what should have been our priority i.e. a goal scorer was plain silly. We have so many attacking midfielders and so few strikers that AN is willing to play, if our budget was fixed barring sales, we had to get a striker in first even if it meant missing out on Pritchard.

Bah!

 

Murphy bossed Klose in the Ipswich game and Brady has just come back from injury. I've seen enough from them to think that it's a one off but conceding 3 to Birmingham was really poor.

 

So we have managed to balls up the Chamakh signing too ?.

 

The Baggies are supposed to be interested apparently so this is by no means certain (if it ever was).

 

Of course!

You didn't actually think we would get a second Striker did ya!?

 

Does he count as a striker? He makes Robert Rosario look prolific!

 

I did say when we were first linked, that I was shocked we were looking at him to solve a goal-scoring problem.

 

No transfer fee involved FML - just have to stump up his wages - enables us to "break even" on our summer dealings I guess. He's not here yet though so it might not happen anyway.

 

I don't care if the lad paid us to play him. I'd still have to really think about whether I'd want him.

 

Well as usual, if a bigger club was interested then Chamakh won't come to us, but, as was said above, that's what happened when we took Pritchard off Brighton. GM questioned the logic of signing Pritchard rather than a striker, which I can see, but if we wanted Pritchard we had to act fast and we did. Was that at the expense of a another striker? Possibly so, but Pritchard has PL potential and another striker after Oliveira most probably wouldn't. If we do sign Chamakh or another expereinced striker, however, we will have achieved both, though that would be unlikely to satisfy those like FML who want a 20 goal a season striker. You don't get those on Free transfers (unless you're ManUtd, that is).

 

I agree we're wasting Naismith, he should be sweeping the terraces...on second thoughts that would give him more opportunitys to fall over! That's what he's best at!!

 

Yawn.