This guy was on loan at PNE and Sheff Utd Last season as well as Portsmouth. Is he really the sort of quality we are looking for. Afterall PNE and Sheff Ut were relegated! We need some proven premier league quality.
The guy is young, this was part of his development. One player is not responsible for a teams relegation?
Can't say too much about De Laet, as I've really not seen that much of him. I do think we mustn't get too bogged down in thinking about proven Prem players, though. If we think back to our last Premier League campaign, we brought in experience of the Prem in Charlton and Doc, as well as Internationals in Johnson and Helveg, and a promising player from a top flight club in Bentley. For my money, the most impressive players for us that season were Huckerby, Green, Safri, Ashton, McKenzie, and Francis. Of those only Hucks had any Prem experience at all. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see proven top flight players here too, because you pretty much know what you're getting from the off. I just don't think it's as important as we sometimes think.
I'm not sure if either we can't afford "premier league quality", or we are going down the hungry unproven route or a combo of both even a team like wolves will prob have double our wage and transfer budget
Perhaps what a lot of people may not realize is that the £42 million transfer pot also has to cover wages, so a prem. player on £50 grand a week takes over £2 and a half million out of the pot, with inflated buying price or signing on fee, the pot would empty very quickly
Think it's probably a combo of both, mate. We can add to that the certainty that proven top flight players won't be very keen on joining a newly promoted club. Also, the only thing we can say for sure with proven players is that they'll increase the wage bill. When you consider the experience in West Ham's and Birmingham's squads, it didn't do them a lot of good, and they both had levels of experience that we simply couldn't afford. On Dave's point, we've got to remember the increase in wages for the exsisting squad also comes out of the £42 million. If there are a few on the sort of increase reported for Steven Smith this week, that's going to be a big increase in total wages.
The 42 mil is not to whole cover the exsiting squads wages, cause they would have been coverd anyway, just the extra for them comes from that which i couldnt imagine being a huge drop of the budget! So far weve already seen £10 mil atleast go on the fees and wages of the players weve brought in, puts into context how far £42 mil would actually go, especially if we were to get "prem experianced players" in...
Could well be wrong, but as I understand it, the £42 million was set aside for the playing budget for the season. So that would be all transfers and wages. The 'old' contracts would have been covered as you say, but that would have been from Championship income which we're no longer going to have. That income has been replaced by Premier League income, so the wages still come out of this years budget.
Wouldn't some exhisting players have clauses in their contracts that promotion would trigger a pay rise? I don't know but you'd have thought that might happen (eg in the case of holt who recently signed a new contract)
Yes, exactly that. That was the sugestion this week with Smith, apparently doubling his wage packet due to promotion. That's why I say if it's the same accross most of the squad, it could be a bigger rise than we might think.
I guess we will never know exile unless you have access to the clubs books! In that instance I expect we are trying to sell him
Yes, I'm sure the club are trying to sort something out with Smith. If we believe what Craig Brown led us to believe, they want to sign him, he wants to leave, we want to sell him, but they can't match his wages now the increase has kicked in. To be fair to Smith, I wouldn't be too keen on taking a drop in wages either.
add to this the fact that signing ONE such player will do very little to ensure no relegation. i believe there are 10 other players on the pitch at the same time.
Not wumming but if your transfer policy carries on as it is you are pretty much going to be relegation fodder next season. Hope I'm wrong.
Based on what exactly? We aren't finished in the market and we have bought in more players than most teams have at this point...... It just so happens that we started in attack. I am pleased with Vaughan and Morison and Bennett has very good delivery to feed the strikers. Many people laughed at Blackpool and said they'd be relegation fodder, but they gave it a really good go. I personally feel we have a better manager than them, and a better squad overall (Adam being the exception). I think Swansea, ourselves and Q.P.R will be a lot bigger task than many people expect. I'm not saying we're going to set the PL on fire or anything, just that we will fight til the last minute and if the PL teams don't respect us - we will steal points from them...only takes a little lack in concentration heading to the 90th minute for us to pop up and steal points. We will be fitter, stronger and more determined than we were this season come Wigan away - I'm sure of that.
Kent, you may just be spot on with that As for being relegation fodder, we're an almost totally unknown quantity at the moment. We just can't know how last years players will adapt to the top flight until we start. What I'm sure of though, is the spirit in the team, and the total commitment of the players. My genuine feeling is that there are a number of players here who will do a really good job for us in the Prem. It needn't be about signing 'names'. If we'd started our last Prem season by spending £3 million on a league one striker, people would've said we were doomed. As it turned out, had we bought him at the start of the season instead of in January, we may well have stayed up, as that league one striker was Dean Ashton.
He also won the Man Utd reserve player of the year in 09/10, when I believe Utd won the reserve play-offs. That means he was better than players like Macheda and M.B. Diouf that year which seems pretty impressive. The Portsmouth fans were very much hoping he would go back to them, and they saw more of him last year than anyone. It all sounds good to me. That said, I hope he has been brought in as a utility option in defence rather than as a first choice CB. I would still like one more signing in that position!
