Its time for the friskiness to start, but first..... Aiden White is the only doubt against Watford tomorrow. If he can't play, should it be Webber or Pugh??? How much would Bates have to spend in the Summer, both if we stayed in the Championship, or if the unbewlievable happened, and can you see it happening? Does anyone know how the LUST meeting went last night? New caption competition please log in to view this image Now..... Let the friskiness start..
please log in to view this image TC's wife was grateful for her airbags when a cat suddenly ran into the road
Morning Elland Dont know where to start on that one! That post you put on the mods board about cross threads. Cant believe that Dan (watford mod) had a cheeky dig about our fans needing to be moderated & then bit on the match day thread straight away! Quite glad the threads arent going to cross over if there coming into the match with that attitude already.
Bucks, we need to educate them about what a grear bunch we actually are on here. Think they had a bad experience with Leeds once. I know what you mean, I did have to bite my tongue...
nice pic, may need to think about a caption for a bit first though If we stay in championship I can't see us needing to spend too much money, a CB, a RB and a CM are priority for the first 11 with maybe a couple of other tweaks to the squad. But then you need to be looking at quality so I'd say around 2m-3m (max. 1m on each player) with a push will get us up from where we are in truth but only if colin spends it well If we somehow manage to get up then the whole team apart from a few needs changing and a decent amount will need to be spent but its hard to put a figure on
I agree. Warnock was backed at QPR and look what he did. He didnt spend loads either & I think Bates will know this & throw some money at him. Hes not a naive manager who will waste the funds & knows the league very well. I honestly think Warnock will get to spend around 2-3 mill next season and he will spend it wisely. Either that or he will walk
Morning all, yes £2-4m absolute max if we stayed in the championship. Probably not more than about £10m to £15m to keep us in the PL first season back. Stoke, Norwich & Swansea are examples of how to play this game. Assume you're not going to win the PL first time around, & just concentrate on building solid foundations to help push you up the league for a few years until you're fully established & can start competing with the big boys, or at least, those whose owners have more money then sense. As to the caption competition - Anything to do with airbags or the quantity of melons to the pund one can get these days... inflation jokes I think. So what of tomorrow? No O'Dea. Possibly no White. A win is essential to keep up hopes of u no what. I'll settle for a scratchy 1-0 to us.
Morning all, if we somehow found ourselves in the PL next season we'd need to sign 7 players who would be thrust straight into the starting XI, as I reckon only Lonnergan, Clayton, Snodgrass and McCormack have the sufficient quality for top flight football. Players like Lees, Brown, Somma and Robinson if we sign him would be ok as squad players, but there's at least 13 players currently on our books who are nowhere near good enough for the PL: Connolly, Bromby, AOB, Bruce, O'Dea, White, Pugh, Sam, Parker, Mika, Payner, Forssel, Becchio. Some of them aren't even good enough for the Championship, some we'd struggle to offload. So 7 first teamers required plus a further 7 quality squad players. Got to be looking at £20m ish expenditure, virtually a whole new squad which would need half a season to gel, leaving us bottom by Xmas. We wouldn't be like Norwich and Swansea, who were quite clearly ready for promotion and just needed one or two tweaks here and there. We'd need a complete overhaul, and I can't see Bates sanctioning a £20m transfer budget. More like £2m. All in all it would just be embarrassing and humiliating- we're just not ready, but having said that.....I'd still take promotion this season! You never know, it might encourage more serious investors to come in for us with serious money for transfers, and we'd see the back of Bates for good.
LiE, I disagree about Becchio not being PL class, & I think Bruce might be in time. Remember Pugh also came to us from a PL club. So he has possibilities. But on the others, you may have more than a point.
I think people forget how old Bruce is, he's already 27! Still relatively young for a centre half, but he's too inconsistant at championship level, let alone premiership.
Fair point Kiwi. Maybe he's a late developer. Regarding the picture above, someone should be looking at that with a bubble saying "that reminds me, I must find somewhere to park my bike!!!
Boggers, there's a reason Pugh's with us in the Championship- he wasn't good enough for the PL. Same goes for Bruce, at 27 you'd have thought by now he'd be playing PL by now if he was good enough. As for Becchio, he's never played higher than 2nd tier so we don't know about him, but he's not of the same quality of players who perform a similar role to him. For example Kevin Davies.
You think everyone and his grandmother are better than Becchio. Holt showed nothing last season to suggest he was significantly better than Becchio and he's scored 14 goals in the PL.
thats not true, I have been critical of him but its more because everyone is always saying how good he is when he isn't in my eyes anything special. Holt wasn't significantly better last season but I do think he was better
I think Becchio, like Holt, is the kind of player who, with his work rate, will do well at any level. His ability to put himself in the right place at the right time won't disappear either.
If our current team was in League 1, I think it would struggle to get promoted. We don't have a way of playing that works. If yoou look at successful teams, they build a team where all the parts are aimed at achieving the one strategy. We just have a hodge-podge of players thrown togetehr without an idea of the best way that they play. Wholesale change needed, but any of them could be the right leevel of player needed for specific certain ways of playign as a team. They just don't work togetehr.
