I totally agree with you about our midfield and defence chipping in with goals. (I'm quietly optimistic that they will.) I think in time our defenders will get goals at set pieces as we work out and drill them. Culker has it in his locker as does Rio. It will also depend on who is taking the dead ball situations. Barton has been at the moment and the word inconsistent springs to mind. We also have a few that can hit a good direct free kick. By no means is it certain yet but as I have said, I'm quietly optimistic.
I think you can get too hung up on having a better window than everybody else, whatever floats your boat, but I'm not convinced that the apparent success of our window strategy or otherwise ultimately translates into extra points on the board, which is the primary motive. Last time we were in the Prem we were dancing on our village greens because we had had a great window capped by the signing of the mighty Samba. We were wrong. I'm not saying that the same situation prevails now - it clearly doesn't - but we need to get our acquisitions performing for us and when they do then we can slap ourselves on the back.
Totally valid point. The main difference this time is we have a much less poisonous atmosphere around the place and (IMO) a better squad. (hopefully) By better squad I mean less mercenary.
I agree about the squad, and we still have leaders in the dressing room such as Clint, Dunne, Ferdinand and Barton, which helps immensely
I hate to say it, but the scums business was pretty spectacular, their net spend is -.5 million. And when you think that include Diego Costa and remy, hmmmmmm I really do hate them!
We sold Shane Long before the season, we added him in January but made about £6M profit on him. Over the whole window (for the first team rather than development squad): In: Livermore (loan made permanent), Snodgrass, Ince, Robertson, Maguire, Dawson, Diame, Hernandez, Ramirez, Ben Arfa - total £36.5M (plus Tom Ince compo once it's decided) Out: Koren, Faye, Fryatt, Stewart, Proschwitz, Boyd, Long - total £15.5M You'd have to say our window has been pretty much perfect for us, and relative to size there's not really any club had a better window footballing wise. 6 of the outgoings did very little if anything for us last season (Fryatt was top scorer but with about 5 and mainly as part of the 2nd string side we played in the Cups). We could have done without losing Long at the time we lost him, but we've eventually replaced him with someone that should be just as good and for less than we got for Long. Obviously some of the deals might not work out for us, but we've tried to address every issue we had last season (creativity/goals and left back), improved in other areas (Dawson/Diame over Bruce/Meyler), and brought in good young players for the future (eg Maguire) as well as now (eg Robertson replacing Figueroa in the team).
Swansea, without a doubt. Followed up by (in order) Chelsea, West Ham and United. I think QPR would have probably been in that if you'd signed a striker.
I think we are building a great squad how ever like any group of players they have to gel together has a team, ive been impressed with all the promoted teams but it will be difficult to stay up. we are now in our second season and it will not be easy in fact i think it takes three seasons of staying in this league before you can be called an established premier league team. Hopefully we will build season on season like Stoke have done but over all everyone at our club must be happy with whom we have brought in. Good luck
