And the fact that on the last day we were still supposedly after Naismith, Gayle or Walters highlights this. Mbokani is clearly not considered to be the answer we were looking/hoping for as reinforcements were being pursued right up until 18.00 hrs yesterday. Time will tell, of course, but if we've improved 5-10% that's it. The rest of the lower prem sides have improved by considerably more, so the perceived gulf in class is larger than it was two weeks ago
Honestly, if we had brought in Koulibaly or a central defender I'd heard of then I'd be happy with our survival chances. Don't want to be negative, but I think we'll be relying on team spirit and Alex Neil's character to keep us up because I don't think anybody can say our squad is comfortably good enough. I wouldn't go as far as to describe the window as a complete failure but rather a missed opportunity.
I've been away from a computer for a few days so haven't read all the previous posts and have only caught up on developments this morning. Here are my thoughts Sending players out on loan does not mean we are letting them go, equally players just because a player comes to us on loan does mean we're looking to buy them. Vadis & Andreu to a team like Rotherham makes perfect sense to me. As does sending out the Murphy's. Our midfield is by far our strongest area and although I would have wanted to keep Johnson I think AN will once Olsson is fit move Brady into midfield, leaving Johnson not even on the bench for many games. I also think AN sees potential in a Dorrans / Mulumbo partnership. Clearly Johnson (rightly) would not be happy with this and I'm glad he's gone to a championship team, rather than one of our competitors for relegation. I really don't understand why we didn't get rid of Gabban to Bournemouth. It makes no sense at all, unless Grabban said he wouldn't go there. My main concerns are the same as they've been all season in that we needed a CB who was better and younger than what we have, DVD would have been ideal (11.5m seems cheep) and a striker who is of a similar standard as Jerome. I get the feeling that both last season and this season there have been some issues in the dressing room that we are not aware of, which were papered over by the arrival of AN. I think the honeymoon period for AN is coming to an end and whilst I think his appointment was excellent business for us, I do think that the blind faith some supporters / posters have in him is misplaced. He is a young manager who has done incredibly well so far, but he is still very much developing his managerial skills and he has and will make mistakes I'm also now convinced that we need to take a good long look at our scouting and recruitment. I can see us not recruiting a CB / Striker and not getting rid of Grabban coming back to bite us on the a*se. I'm still hopeful that we won't go down, which I think is the best we can hope for at the moment. I fear that if we do go down we may well pass Johnson and Derby going the other way.
Hi canario - a fair post and that's true about loaning. VOO is only out for a month, so clearly we have a safety net there to hopefully get him up to speed. While you're right that Virgil van Dijk was arguably cheap at £11.5m, that's still a lot for us and it would be slightly concerning putting all our eggs in one basket. But that aside, I don't think we ever stood a chance of getting him - he was always going to choose somewhere like So'ton over us, unfortunately. I really do think we're in a limbo position on the CB front where no-one who would come to us represents a value and marked improvement. As for Grabban - I think if the press reports are to be believed (and the Bournemouth echo had a lot of detail that would be odd to make up) then we were going to sell him, but the Gayle deal fell through because Palace pulled out. So not entirely our fault there as clearly Neil feels we need four strikers (Lafferty excluded)
Morning all. Feelings after 7 hours or so of kip: Disappointed we didn't sign a CB. CB is now the only area of our squad that I'm worried about in terms of depth. It would have been preferable to get rid of Grabban. Hopefully he will go out on loan somewhere. It's a shame Bradley has gone, but I think we got a good price for him and believe that he won't be as big a loss as some have made out on here. Hopefully once Vadis has completed his short loan, he'll be up to speed and can offer something in terms of squad depth. Louis Thompson is someone a lot of people on here have forgotten about - AN seems to rate him highly, and he could play a useful role in the squad. Shame we couldn't have brought in Walters/Naismith/Gayle, but I think with the addition of Mbokani we have good (though not overly exciting, granted), solid options up front. I'm not that enthused by Matt Jarvis, but I doubt he'll be our starting left-midfielder. With Olsson coming back, Brady will no doubt be our first-choice left-sided midfielder. We needed a (left) winger, and we got one - not a great one, but still.
The sad thing about yesterday is that it masked the good signings City have made in this window. Dorrans and Mulumbu were an excellent start at a cost of around £3-4m. They had plenty of time to bed in during the pre-season and it's just a pity about Mulumbu's injury. The whole Brady saga took much away from what already looks to be a good signing, even if we ended up paying too much. Wisdom was also a good signing, even with the disadvantages of a loan player and Kean gives us safety of numbers at GK. Best of all though, IMO, is Mbokani signing and giving us another valuable option up front with competition rather than just cover for Jerome. The shambles yesterday masked all that in many people's minds. The desperate scrambling around for strikers all day - Walters, Naismith, Gayle and whoever else made the club look like total amateurs. Had we met Stoke's asking price of £3m for Walters a day before, none of that need to have happened. Then to top it off, the last minute news that our PotS had signed for Derby and Andreu and Odjidja-Ofoe were going out on loan. Suddenly our squad had dropped from 26 to 23 without any explanation whatsoever from the club. Of course people are going to be angry about that. The very late announcement of Matt Jarvis did little to improve things. Now I can better understand why BJ decided to move to Derby for a 4 year contract at the age of 28 and the prospect of diminishing game time at City, but the whole thing could have been handled better. The one thing I still can't accept though, is that we are now left with a paper thin defence. We have 5 strikers for the lone striker role but only 6 defenders for 4 positions. Why do we have 3 GKs and only 3 CBs? A couple of injuries could turn this season into a shambles.
I am not picking on anybody when I say this but it is naive to believe that all you have to do is offer a reasonable price for a player on the 1st August and the Club and player say ' thank you very much ' and he becomes your player. Clubs wait for bigger offers and the player hopes for a bigger Club/wage packet. The reason so many deals are done at the end is quite simple. Until that time Clubs do not know exactly who they have got and who they can release. 2 obvious examples. West Ham would not have released Jarvis on Aug 1st or on Aug 31st. Yesterday they bought a few players including Antonio - who Forest clung on to until the end to get the best price - and suddenly Jarvis is available. Neither West Ham or Norwich would have known that until yesterday. Somebody mentioned the Celtic defender. If we had offered £11.5m for him on 1st Aug we wouldn't have got him as Celtic were still in the Champions League. As soon as they came out of that Southampton made their interest known and we would never have won a bidding war with Southampton on either fee or wages. Walters is another example. Stoke wouldn't sell until they got a replacement. They couldn't find one so they they wouldn't sell. Even if they had we wouldn't have got him as soon as Leicester and WBA expressed an interest. How many times City ran into this sort of brick wall we will never know and as we don't know it is unfair to lash out at the Club because we didn't end up with the players we wanted. In fact I think they should be praised for their ability in getting the Jarvis deal tied up in time. As far as Johnson is concerned I have to repeat that with Redmond, Jarvis, Bennett, Brady, Dorrans, Mulumbu, Tettey, Howson, O'Neill, the Belgian lad and a couple of youngsters fully fit he was going to be way down the pecking order and to get £6.5m for such a player is brilliant business.
If we got circa £6m, rising to possibly £7m based on add-ons for Bradley, how can spending the same on an upgrade (Brady) be 'too much'? Surely it's all relative?
I just keep thinking it looks like we don't 'Get' the premier League and all that it entails. Judging by this window We don't Know how to negotiate properly Know how to find scout and convince bargains abroad Know to hold our nerve about paying medium (not even big) numbers for players Know how to look convincing to our own fans Know how to hold our nerve in the last few hours of a deadline ( this potentially explains the sham oilc hunt for a striker, the failure to shift Grabban and even possibly the transfer of BJ) Know where we need strengthening and to make this a priority. And lastly Know how to transcend our yo yo club mentality. At some point in the past some visionary people at Swansea must have said 'There is a point now where a little ambition and greater professionalism will see us to a bright future AND a healthier bank balance' until someone shows an element of vision for us .......
The last thing I want is to open up the Brady saga again, Cromer. It's my opinion and I expressed it as such. Your opinion differs, fine.
*Sanity prevails* alert! In this article by Duncan Edwards https://duncanedwards8.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/some-windows-should-be-bricked-up-ncfc/
A nice balanced summary - thanks for the dose of reality, 1950. I guess a few of the contributors are stinging a bit after hoping for more, based upon press hyper-speculation whipping up a frenzy of unrealistic expectation. Having said that, I'm gobsmacked that we didn't get another CB from somewhere!
I didn't 'open anything up'? I merely pointed out that Brady was technically an upgrade on Johnson - for almost exactly the same money? How can that be inflammatory? Makes perfect sense to me.
Brady only had a year left on his contract, whereas Bradders was freshly signed. Also, I appreciate that it's a matter of opinion, but I don't think Brady is all that much better than Bradders (somewhat comparing apples and pears, obviously, but I believe most people would accept that Brady is more of a PL player than Bradders, but it's a close one at this stage). On those two points above, I think you would expect a difference in how much they cost. Ultimately, though, it's clear Hull didn't feel they had to sell Brady, so we paid over the odds to convince them, whereas we were willing to let Johnson go and so Derby could pay less for that
Tweet from Bradley J please log in to view this image Bradley Johnson@BradJohnson_15 I had a great time at Norwich & Hove Albion but waking up this morning as a Derby City player is a great feeling. Can't wait to get started. Needless to say, some Derby fans are incandescent with rage Methinks it's a fake account, but they haven't yet cottoned on
It's based on a sky interview where he apparently called the Derby city haven't heard it funny if so.
Palace chief explains that with Murray leaving, there was no way they could let Gayle go as well. Makes sense from their viewpoint. http://www.london24.com/sport/footb...tuations_after_deadline_day_rumours_1_4217111
Just to bore you all, I've updated the depth chart I did a while ago for the players that are currently available to us (I haven't included the fringe youth players like Loza and McGrandles etc though): Green = player can naturally play there Yellow = player could cover that position if required (some are more suited than others obviously) The main thing it does I suppose is reaffirm the lack of depth we have at CB. Otherwise, I think it shows we still have a number of decent options at each position.
I wasn't accusing you of anything 'inflammatory', Cromer, but simply referring back to the opinion that I had expressed. Your opinion differs and that is fine by me.
