saint_ed

I'm not sure why people are finding this concept so hard to grasp. Its how every single team in professional sport evolves.

Not following any fashion, and he hasn't just become whipping boy. Its been apparent from the moment we came up that he is well out of his depth. Nice guy, and great for squad morale but not a viable option for us.

And one calamitous 4th choice. Don't forget Yoshida was injured for a prolonged spell last season. Our biggest problem was having no strength in depth last season, and in my eyes we have 3 centre backs available with untested youngsters who haven't been near the first team to date as the alternative.

No its because 95% of those rumoured in the press are bo!!ocks, as is the Caulker one. We have are targets and are getting on with it. They are probably more ambitious which is why we need to fly under the radar and things take a lot more time, not to mention players want to assess all their options.

Agree completely with this.

Generally we do. Or have been until this summer.....

Exactly.

As I said, natural evolution of the squad. Always buy better than what you have.

I agree about Yoshida, he is an adequate 3rd/4th choice for now. The biggest problem we have is Jos, who needs to be replaced regardless of Lovren leaving. Once Lovren leaves we will need another, so in total 2 high quality CB's for natural evolution of the squad.

I agree but that wasn't the point I was trying to make. More that it suggests we aren't prioritising a CB unless Lovren leaves, in which case we will need two.

West Brom have signed Andre Wisdom on loan. They started well with Lescott but have since signed Chris Baird and now Wisdom. I think they are definitely in for a long season! There were reports of Lescott already being unhappy due to broken promises on transfer targets and the lack of progress they are making in signing high profile names. Another case of a club telling prospective signings whatever they want to hear to get them to sign on the dotted line?

My mistake, turns out it was from the Sky interview. "I know [Vlaar] from when he was playing at Feyenoord. It depends on the [Lovren] situation but we will decide who we bring in. There are a lot of rumours in football and I can do nothing about that." To me that suggests we will only move to sign a CB if/when Lovren leaves.

My concern is I read somewhere Ronald suggesting we would only need to look to buy a CB if Lovren leaves. Even if he was happy and stayed we would still need another top CB. I do hope this isn't an oversight for the second summer running (we needed another one last summer).

I'm hoping he's looked at it as a way to cut out the number of own goals he scores. He might have seen the progress Adam was making and thought it was worth a shot.

Because as soon as they get knocked out he'll realise he has to play Scottish football for the rest of the season. Marshall is not a 'prospect', he is 3 years old that Forster so the latter would represent better value for money IMO.

I would argue that Lallana got better with more facial hair.

What's having facial hair got to do with finding form again?

As I've now repeated 3 times, we have not activated his release clause, so all those getting depressed about QPR 'beating' us to sign Caulker are completely misguided.

People have said the same about Steven Davis but he was one of our best players last season (although admittedly not playing in a central position for much of it). He has built a pretty successful career as a CM.

Sorry, people seem to keep recycling this. Where has there been any mention of us only signing four players? Even the other day Koeman stated we still needed another 4 or 5 new signings, that's on top of Pelle and Tadic.

Perhaps not relevant to this thread but I have it on good authority that Luke Shaw is actually on £50k pw, not the £100k that the press would have us believe.

Not at all, I know a lot of agents so was curious who it might have been. Sounds like SEM so probably someone like Jerome Anderson. They have just parted ways on a JV with a company who represent Callum Chambers and Sam McQueen so hoping he wasn't referring to the former.

I only heard him say Spurs are bigger once. In fact, the thing I noticed is he was far from convincing when answering the question on how he has settled in. Kept saying 'ok for now'. Admittedly that could be down to his very poor grasp of English.

I would like to know the answer to Nolan's first two questions though (without the attitude and sarcasm)?

I disagree. He is every bit good enough for us.