Well, after an early leap into the transfer market, we seem to have hit a bit of an impasse whilst you lot look to add another couple of bodies to the ranks and as much as it pains me to say it, they're pretty good signings! Gardner, as you'll know if you ever venture across to our side of the forum-tracks, is admired by a lot of our fans and someone I think can do a quality job for you next year. Nothing too flashy, but a good steady influence in a midfield that too often last year seemed to get caught up in the heat of the moment *cough*Cattermole*cough* Whickam is very young and still very inexperienced. You are going to HAVE to treat him with care in order to see him achieve his potential! What I would say to the doubters, is compare him to any of your current U18 squad - his physical attributes and footballing brain far outweigh his years! You paid/are paying for his potential, not his current ability so be patient and you could have yourselves a gem! I still expect us to make plenty more moves ourselves and obviously come out the window with a sense of smug self-satisfaction. But as things stand, both clubs are looking pretty well poised to be finishing within the same 1 point gap of each other, only this time, higher up the table!
Decent and fair comments mate...There seems to be a lot of apprehension from both of our sets of fans regarding the transfer targets, but I feel that we are both going to be stronger than last season once the new players bed in...Exciting times ahead...
Cheers Jesus, I'm glad the N'gog rumours have died because you guys were having a field day with those haha Your signings (except Ba) may be relatively unprooven but they are still quality signings non the less and you still havnt really touched the Carroll money, which is either good or worrying knowing Mike Ashley and we are just using the Henderson money and so far we looked to have picked up Larrson, Gardner, Westwood, Dong Won & Whickham with only half of it spent so not too shaby so far. Both teams will have a few suprises up their sleeves so I would expect some bigger signings in the next month.
Very fair and well considered comments mate, always welcome on this board! Have to say I agree with basically most of ur points and hope to see how both our midfields match up against each other on the 20th, out of interest (as to be honest ive only heard of ur signings whilst playing on FIFA!) whats the general feeling following ur French signings? Personally im always a bit apprehensive in general when it comes from buying from France (excluding Sess of course!), they tend to be skillful but quite lightweight and find it hard to adapt. Have they been lured by the offer of higher wages or u reckon uz have stolen a march and got urselves a few gems?
First things first, I think we signed Marveaux because he was free, yes we wanted him a for a while and yes I think he'll do a job for us, but if he had a few years left on his contract, we wouldn't have been as interested (hence the links to Barnetta when we thought Marveaux had gone to the bin dippers) Cabaye I think will be great. I've just got a good feeling about him. Sitting next Tiote in midfield will mean he won't have to be too much of a combative player, however, from what I've seen, he likes putting himself about. He isn't a Ben Arfa style flair player, instead, choosing to sit back and play metronomic passes towards the forward players with good judgement and great accuracy (82% pass success rate at an average of 60 something passes a game) Only Tiote had better in our current squad! With those 2 in the center, I think they'll allow us to have a patient controlled build up approach and pick out the right pass when we need to, without leaving back 4 exposed. He is, so far, the transfer I'm most excited by! Ba was brought in to score goals and his goals to games ratio speaks for itself! The fact we got him on a free is an absolute coup and even if he only manages 8-10 next season, he'll have been a good acquisition! The 'French Revolution' thats going on at our club could certainly end up backfiring, and we know players like Ben Arfa have had discipline issues in the past. But we've got the 3 amigos, why not add the 4 musketeers while we're on?!?!
