Right then, here’s my take on our current squad and what I see happening. Feel free to rubbish, change, agree and discuss. Goalkeepers. Get rid of Steele and Mika. Keep Ruiter for back up. Get a decent goalie in. Defenders. LB. Oviedo is our only reasonable defender we may be able to keep unless we drop into div 1 or if anybody offers any cash for him. Galloway. Either get rid or try him at LW. Defenders. RB. Jones, Love and Matthews. Get rid and get one decent RB in. If we keep one then Matthews for back up. Defenders. Central. Kone. I wonder if CC can make anything out of him as he’s the best defender we have but he will almost certainly be sold if anyone offers any money for him. Browning. He will be going back to Everton in 5 months a better player. No long term gain for us and unless we get a deal with Kone for him we will lose him. JOS. We can’t expect him to go on forever and he’s showing his age now. Good organiser and if he can still stand up next season I expect Short will want to keep him. Wilson. Done nothing much since he’s been here. Midfield. Honeyman and Gooch. Both started well but have faded. Keep until end of season and decide whether to keep. Cattermole. Not the player he used to be since his successful operation. N’Dong. Will be sold. Would keep him but any cash offer and he’ll be sold. Gibson. Out of contract in 5 months. CC seems to like him. Rodwell. We couldn’t give him away. McGeady and Macmanaman. Our 2 flair players. Unless they start producing, get rid. Forwards. Grabban. He’ll be off. Vaughan. Not producing much in spite of working hard. Get rid. Asoro and Maja. Keep if we can but I suspect will be sold if anyone offers anything. Watmore. Great lad but I think he’s had it. I doubt he’ll come back as he was. Either try again in a year when he’s back or get rid now. The ones on loan. I doubt if we’ll see Lens, Kharzi and Borini (is he still ours?) back and any money we get may cover the Alvarez debt. So, out of the lot, I think the ones worth keeping are: Oviedo. Kone. N’Dong. We may keep Oviedo if we stay up. Ones to keep on probation: Asoro. Maja. Honeyman. Gooch. McGeady. Macmanaman. Ruiter. There are some I don’t know much about such as Embleton who may be good. All the rest can go but that would leave us with only a handful of players so we’re stuck with them. A lot depends on if we can stay up. All in all, we have a very poor squad mainly due to lack of investment and poor decisions. Over to you Chris. Work your magic. We need to stick with CC and give him 4 or 5 years to rebuild.
So in the January transfer window you'd have us sell the majority of the squad - makes perfect sense. We haven't got a pot to piss in so any money will be needed from selling Kone who we'll be lucky to get £5m for.
Yeh that’s it when kone s gone Ellis short will pocket the money However we may get some scraps to spend
Bag of marbles, nothing has changed. Get rid of some expensive marbles and borrow some new, fresh ones which are cheaper to run. Maybe a couple of tough ball bearings. Stick it out til Short loses his marbles, and sells up. Hopefully in the summer
A decent assessment, but for me Kone is a loose cannon attitude wise, he caused similar problems before we signed him. Yes he's got talent but too lazy with a big emotional issue. Not got the whole mindset package of a professional footballer. I think we should persevere with the promising youngsters at the club. I think Gooch and Honeyman were simply out muscled by a more physical midfield at Sheffield. It was the same earlier at the SOL, the physicality of Sheffield play was the difference. They basically intimidate opponents on the pitch. Rodwell is now at last chance saloon with CC - he has the talent but not the match fitness. Beadling should be given his opportunity. Where is Ledger who was well rated when out on loan? We need to introduce more of academy talent - if they are good enough they are old enough imo (Owen, Rooney, Beckham Giggs Scholes) all given a chance when young)
****ing hell mate. .....he's bad, really bad but she was and will always remain the biggest **** of them all.
I would get in the likes of Rodwell and fringe players for the Forest match, give them a chance see what happens or flog. Why McGeady is not doing it though is beyond me, start Asaro and Maja, then sub for Vaughn and Grabban (if fit). I hope by the Boro cup game we have about 6 new players in.
Need happening when? We won't move that many players out in Jan. Completely unrealistic imo. We're on our bare arse on numbers. The only players we can afford to lose are players who'll generate funds and wage space to replace them and add to the squad. Otherwise we're just replacing worthless players with worthless players which is pointless imo. Kone, Oviado, Ndong, Asoro and Maja. The only players which would be worth selling in order to improve. Of them Maja and Asoro are needed as is Oviado. Creating more holes isn't the answer. Kone and Ndong could bring 3 or 4 players who will improve the squad. They'd be my only sales at this time in addition to trying to ship a couple of the keepers out on loan. We don't have a squad of player sin demand, most the players you mention we won't find clubs for as our wage average is well above the league average wage. Shortage of numbers with many games. I think it would be dangerous to let too many go if indeed we could even shift them.
Ellis wouldn't stump up for for him. Another massive profit lost with that idiot not having a ****ing clue what he's doing. As I've always said, it's not about how much you put in, it's knowing the right time spend and a right players to spend it on. Short misses these opportunities everytime.
Things can only get better, I keep thinking that but the lads just come back with a new low. The reasons have been well described, just have not got enough decent players
In a results related business everyone associated with running Sunderland Football Club needs f*cking apart from Coleman. The guy at the top especially....2017 has been horrendous and to be honest could have been avoided with a bit of thought and finance. Once Short lost interest everything came tumbling down and Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together again....
A couple of you seem to have misunderstood a part of the post, or I was unclear While I said we have about 6-8 players we should keep I didn’t mean we should sell everyone else. I said we were stuck with the rest. We obviously wouldn’t sell all the players even if anyone wanted them (although I wonder if Short would just sell everyone if he had the chance, and the AOL) I just attempted to put down who is worth keeping (I know we will be losing Kone and a couple of others) but why have 3 poor right backs instead of one decent right back. All in all I have little faith that CC will get a good sum for January and we will end up with a few more poor players and will let any of our few reasonable players go. Now, players like Danny Graham are out of reach for us, too good for us. Rhodes? .... will we pay several million for him? I don’t think so. Maybe a loan. I think he will be just like Jon Stead if he comes here but as he can’t get a game for Wednesday (or couldn’t for Boro) we may get him. It’s pitiful what’s happening to our club. CC needs about 4 miracle signings to keep us up.
