The beauty of Russ Whits, Bennett and Naughton is that all of them play more than one position, although after the disaster that was west ham id like to rarely see R Bennett at RB, as has been said else where E Bennett isn't bad at RB either. if we were only going to get one of Olsson or Naughton I'd want Naughton and i think we should put serious cash down to make it a permanent deal.
It is steep but when you think of have Rhodes or Jay Rodriguez went for it seems about par. Plus Hooper has played champions league
Carlton Cole is weighing up an offer from an unnamed premier league club. Fingers crossed its not us. Hopefully Hull or Crystal Palace.
Blackburn manager saying he's had no contact from us or anyone else for Martin Olsson. Either he's telling fibs, or Olssons agent is trying to drum up a move somewhere.
i think it's more likely that the manager simply doesn't know because he hasn't been told by the owners!
my (blackburn) mate reckons £2.5m will definitely get him. he's one of their highest earners and they need him off the wage bill
I was saying on Twitter yesterday, £3mil tops but there's supposedly this player included too so could be less. Depends on how much they value him. Last summer they supposedly wanted around £6mil for him.
If he's one of their top earners I'd be worried isn't Danny murphy on £50k a week... might need to take a bit of a cut
he's only one of their top earners - not THE top earner! not impossible he could be on £40k a week, no idea but he'd have to take a pay cut if he wants to come here if that is the case. with a world cup coming up we are in a decent position to negotiate with him. ps. i think the murphy thing was dismissed on five live by the man himself who basically said "i wish!". he also said he'd "never" been paid £50k a week in his whole career, so i doubt blackburn were stupid enough to pay him tha.... oh, hang on...
He'd be mad not to come because he wanted £40k. I don't really think anyone would offer him that either, most clubs who might be interested have similar budgets to us, and that amount of money for an average PL player won't appeal to many.
Agreed, but I think it is important to stop thinking in terms of a first choice eleven plus cover in all positions. If we aspire to more than just survival year after year, we have to have enough quality in the squad to rotate players without seriously damaging our chances of winning any given game. We simply didn't have that last season and in the end it showed (it also showed in the cup games). It is not just a matter of keeping players fresh, it is also giving them time on the pitch in competitive matches (in comparison to a proper reserve league, the development league IMO, while no doubt helping our young players, is detrimental to the seniors). "Squad player" shouldn't just mean "in reserve"; it should mean "a regular but not ever present first teamer".
only the top teams can do that imo robbie. that's the dream, but it's some way off! for the time being, players like bennett are a life saver for a club like ours
Can someone please explain why Olsson would be a good buy for us? What does he offer, replace, provide? Don't know much about him, but interested nonetheless...