Transfer Rumours Transfer Rumours - Summer 2018

Nah, he's here for the season. One of ours.

 

Our financial situation is surely good enough to afford a striker, despite our hefty wage bill. All purchases are risky, and not having a competent attack is riskier still.

We should still be making a real effort to offload some of the fringe players, however.

 

Welcome back from hibernation Vin, hope all is good.

Having trouble keeping up with all the transfer going ons as well.

I think it's more of a case of who we haven't signed. I think we just missed out on the undertaker, triple h, stone cold steve austen, the rock and John cena. Chilco knows all the details if you want more info.

 

The money side of the club has always baffled me a tad. As I’ve said before I wouldn’t want club to spend stupid money if they can’t afford to, but to spend next to nothing I just don’t get.
If you look at our spending since the start of the 13/14 season back in the premier league, where we had a net spend of approx £35.75 million that season, we have now gone to a net profit of approx £48 million at the end of 17/18 season. Add in the Tadic sale, we are now about even on sales / purchased as we enter our 6th consecutive season in The Premier League. Yes wages have risen but do has premier income. In our first season we ended with approx £77 million in pay out and that jumped massively at the end of 16/17 season to approx £122.5 million and down last season to approx £107.2 million.
Theses figures do not include any season ticket sales, commercial deals, sponsorship etc that the club have done in this period.
So what I’m saying is we really should be able to push the boat out a little for a new forward?

 

Mitrovic had an excellent half season in the championship, but he hasn’t proven himself to be better than Austin/Gabbiadini in the premier league.
Like Fran said, we need to give our current strikers better supply. I’d much prefer the money on a winger/creative midfielder

 

You’re a very bad man!

 

We' e been begging for a new striker since Pelle & Mane left, at the moment nothing has changed and we simply won't score enough goals with the present squad to survive
My meltdown is warming up as the transfer window closure gets closer and closer with nothing on the horizon from where I'm sitting

 

Elyounoussi scored 11 last season. Austin scored 18 last time he was actually fit for the entire season. Armstrong scored 15 last time he was fit for an entire season. IF we can keep them fit and create the chances there are goals in this squad. I want us to sign another attacker, but its not quite meltdown worthy if we don't. I'd sign somebody for the buildup play rather than a goalscorer though.

 

We're back to "if everything breaks right, and we squint a little, we might score boatloads", though. Generally everything doesn't go that well...Armstrong has exactly one season in a far less competitive league where he was a prolific goalscorer, Austin hasn't been fully fit for years, and so forth. We're going to be starved for goals with this lineup; if we don't add to it, the question is really whether we can eke out enough (and whether our defense is less of a horror show than a year ago).

 

For me you've just contradicted yourself there. Armstrong is a goal scorer who we've brought in to score goals. if we bring in another striker unless we spend a serious amount of money the exact same argument will apply. simply signing a striker does very little to improve our odds when we already have a fair number of goal scorers now. Austin, Gabbi, Carrillo: the Striker alone isn't the problem and adding a striker for the sake of adding a striker is just wasting money and does nothing to actually create a system to score goals. you'd think after several windows of new strikers since Koeman left all having the same problem under the same system people would have learned that.

For the first time since Koeman (and Pelle) left we've got a manager who plays with a different style. How the new system works with our players is going to be far more important than what striker we have. Even Long managed to score 10+ under a system that worked. in other words, we need to actually ensure it breaks right rather than just adding more and more people to hope it breaks right for and expecting a different result.

With this squad, my biggest worry is about making the ball stick up top and then creating the chance, not finding players to finish them.

 

At the moment I don't have high hopes for the season ahead. The backbone of the squad remained pretty much the same and although I'm ok with the incoming transfers so far, I think we needed a major reshuffle in the midfield and attack and so far we didn't do that. Adding Armstrong to the midfield mix and replacing Tadić with Mo is far from enough, imo. To be honest I think we're in for more of the same.

 

Armstrong is a guy who scored a large number of goals in a single season, in a league that is nowhere near the quality of the Premier League. Nothing before or after suggests that he's the second coming of Matt Le Tissier. If we're relying on him to solve our goalscoring issues, we're likely going to still have goalscoring issues.

We don't have a fair number of good goalscorers. And yeah, Long scored double digits once. Flukes happen. Mame Biram Diouf scored 11 goals once under Hughes. He was never anywhere near that prolific again. That's not because Hughes changed something that made Diouf less effective...he just had one lucky year where the ball found the right places.

Hughes' Stoke teams really struggled to score, so I'm dubious that he's going to turn our players into worldbeaters.

I agree that we also need more creative players. I too would prioritize one over a striker, even, but the current squad lacks both creativity and people capable of putting the ball in the net.

 

Guy played right wing back most of his time in Stoke.

 

I'm of the opinion that the primary thing we have been missing has been chemistry. Don't get me wrong, MP2 was apallingly bad as a manager but there is a reason nobody had us picked for the drop last season until it was carved in stone. There's quality in the squad at every position, whats desperately needed is someone to get the best out of them and to make it all 'click'. Mane and VVD were massive talents but them aside I don't really think that we are much worse off now squad wise than we were with them. The difference was in the belief and spirit.

My point - without those things we could sign three more attacking players and still not score goals. Over to you MH.

 

For fun lets compare 2016 squad with 2018.


Forster----------------------------McCarthy
Steklenberg---------------------Gunn

Bertrand-----------------------------Bertrand
Targett-------------------------------Targett
----------------------------------------McQueen

Cedric------------------------ -------Cedric --------------------- We are def down a RB/RWB
Cuco

Fonte---------------------------------Hoedt
VVD----------------------------------Bednarek
Yoshida-------------------------------Yoshida
Gardos-------------------------------Vesterdaard
----------------------------------------Stephens

Romeu ---------------------------Romeu
Wanyama -------------------------- Lemina
Davis---------------------------------Davis
Clasie -------------------------------- Armstrong
JWP----------------------------------JWP
Reed---------------------------------Reed

Austin -------------------------------Austin
Gallagher---------------------------Gallagher
Long----------------------------------Long
Mane -------------------------------Redmond
Tadic ------------------------------- Mo El
Pelle---------------------------------Gabbiadini
JRod---------------------------------Simms
Seager-------------------------------Seager

I'd say we aren't short on numbers up front we are short on someone who can get the best out of the slightly lower quality. Chiefly getting Redmond and Gabbiadini scoring and creating chances.

 

Couple years ago he did. He has spent the majority of his time at striker, and he hasn't scored an awful lot of goals.

 

Who was the other member, Dusan’s mum?

 

Just looking on the bright side when the drop looked inevitable- and I haven’t ruled out having to do so again

 

C'mon bright side?

Just look at the number of clubs wallowing around in the lower leagues and whose dreams of "top flight football" are so, so distant now.

 

My view on your comparison:
Goalkeeper - we are stronger
LB - no change and pretty strong
RB - Valary in place of Cuco has got to be an improvement
CB - Hoedt no where near as good as Fonte, Bednarek no where near as good as VVD, Vesta got to be better than Gardos and no real change with Yoshie and Stephens
Midfield - Romeu appears to have gone backwards last season, Big Vic better than Lemina, Davis isn't the same player sadly, Clasie/Armstrong can't compare yet, JWP has greatly improved and Reed has improved with experience
Forwards - Austin no change, Gallagher has shown nothing to say he is EPL quality, Long just doesn't score, Mane in a different league to Redders, Tadic/Mo can't compare yet but if Mo puts a shift in for 90 minutes it will be more than Tadic is the last two seasons, Pelle/Gabbs are very different but see Pelle as better in both scoring and focal point, JRod better than Simms from what I have seen up to now and Seagars gone