Bucks Saint

Definitely. They did not want to sell at all (he is too important to them, plus his wages are quite modest). Offer would have needed to be £10m plus to even get them to talk I think

We wanted Hooper as our number 1 choice. I believe Nigel saw him as a good future premiership player, as well as to secure promotion. When Celtic played hard ball (as they are entitled to), we put away the £7-8m intended for Hooper and bought Sharp at a much lower price instead. The riches of promotion mean it was money well spent. But it was never intended as a signing to bolster the campaign this season IMO. Lee was in that category, Sharp was not

This. Plus Lee may have the potential too

I dont recall being asked, or it being proposed by you. I was happy we got there; I was very certain we needed at least one new striker (Hooper or JRod seemed the most likely).

Or, club bought the right player but manager not using him to full potential / where he wants to play / where he was told he would play when signing. I am not saying I know the answer to what has happened so far, but clearly he would play best for us up front. Yoshida looked very shaky at right back but no one is blaming him for that, clearly that is not his best position

Only if you think he was awful last weekend, in his first start there. I dont. This thread is about how long it takes to settle. Playing someone out of position, or out of the team, does not help speed this up. As eurosaint has said, compare to Davis playing regularly in his favoured position

Also playing a new formation this year, so even established players are taking time "to gel" e.g Lallana

Getting a little tiring that some people still need reminding JRod is a striker, who has earned his move by playing up front. Pre-season he started there. Arsenal away he came on late in the game and looked better than SRL did, who he replaced. League cup he played there. Last weekend he started his first game there. That's it

Ok thanks. Wow that's deep insight from this article - never would have guessed

Exec summary?

If thats what you had said, I would not have taken much issue with you, but: "We scored more goals than any other team last season, which tends to suggest there isn't too much wrong with our strike force"

Oh so just becauze we top scored in the Championship we did not need to improve the attack? Silly Saints, no other promoted teams ever sign strikers

Agree and some of this applies to JRod too.

Lucky you are not in charge. I might agree we should have kept Sharp but we don't know yet how good Mayuka might be. Equally though, to say JRod is a complete waste of money is idiotic. How do you know Sharp would have been better in our new formation - never struck me as suited to being on the wing. JRod is not either, so lay off and wait to see before making snap dumb judgments

I knew this would happen

I will go for the sell out capacity, less the average difference of all guesses on the Fulham attendance thread v the actual attendance, plus the number of people who learned anything useful from that thread.

You are moving the goalposts. You said Redknapp has done so well at Spurs, and so much better than all the previous incumbents. I said you can't ignore the likely huge wage escalation, a luxury previous managers have not had. Levy may well have been happy for a while, but not at the end of this season he wasn't. But still, Redknapp runs up major wage bills wherever he goes, except with us. Quite often it ends in tears.

This thread is about the merits,or otherwise, of Sharp. Are you saying that he would be the person you are referring to?

I dont know the wage figures and am happy to be corrected, but based on the squad growth in numbers and quality, its fair to assume, IMO, that the bill leapt up hugely under Redknapp, which is his basic approach to every club. Yes of course some of the names I mentioned were there already, but they were decent earners and were kept as almost permanent reserves while Harry added more expensive names. Let's also be clear that Modric has been sold, as has van der Vaart. Still reasonable spending, but two of their best players who were a massive part of the success have jumped ship because they have not pushed on and/ or Levy, being a sensible business man, has decided enough is enough on the costs spiral. Hence Harry out

Spot on except last line should read: 3rd seven weeks - Premier League

You can't ignore the wage bill but then say how he did better than previous Spurs managers. No previous manager was allowed to bloat the squad with expensive reserves (Kranjcar, Jenas, Bentley, Pavlyuchenko and plenty of others) while also signing Modric, Bale, Adebayor, and Van der Vaart. Even Spurs got rid of him so they got wise

I accept the point on expectations based on the price tag But you still think Sharp was better based on total goals scored (4 more) even though 9 were in our top of the table side, against the 15 Jrod got for Burnley. If you don't know what else to base a striker decision on, then how about: age, career development so far, potential for further rate of improvement, height, weight, attitude to training, willingness to learn, movement, positoning, pace, ability with either foot, ability in the air, off the pitch character, dressing room "fit"', level headedness, reports from coaches who have worked with a player before, potential resale value. I repeat that I really liked Sharp last year. On many of these counts Sharp rates well, thats why we bought him. But i do think he was a signing to make sure we got promoted and not much more. I don't think he is what we need now, and Forest dont seem to think they really need him in the NPC

Fair enough but we have seen his managerial ability with a squad of players better than we have now, when he had to get the best out of them and could not just spend a bucket load. Also saw him leave replacing Crouch and Phillips way way too late the next season, when it obvious to anyone else that we were going to need new strikers. How did the Spurs wage bill go up under him by the way?

yeah I put as much faith in that as his stated lack of knowledge about his slush fund named after his dog. Never once has he been on a % of the transfer deals