Patches O Houlihan

A look around at other fans opinions of their transfer window Newcastle fans having secured the services of Paul Mitchell were hoping for big things. But they secured next to f**k all 😁 I can’t quite believe we’ve shit the bed as much as we have tbh. It started badly with the Anderson and Minteh PSR debacle and got worse from there. I understand what they’re saying about only wanting players who can bring us forward but the idea that, in the whole of European football, the only defender who can do that is Marc Guehi is frankly laughable. The longer we go, the more I think that we are genuinely snookered by PSR and we need to brace for losing Isak, Gordon or Bruno before long otherwise we can’t spend. Trying to get rid of some of the shite in this squad is near impossible since they’re all nothing players on big money who won’t move or they’re permacrocks who nobody will take a chance on. Wolves fans views are summed up by this quote, they seem worried about their defence: "Some great players signed but I feel like some have been signed just for profit rather than targeting what we need. Not signing a CB after letting Kilman go 2 months ago is ridiculous. Still 7 out of 10, but eyes are definitely more on future profit than squad need." Leicester fans: "Pretty good window. We could've gone out and got 15 freebies in for the sake of it and got ourselves in more of a mess Looks like the club are learning(apart from janniks 3 Yr contract) from their mistakes and I think there will be a couple more years of these windows, most likely yoyoing between epl and championship until we get ourselves rebalanced It's one of those, it's as good as it could be because of what's happened in previous years .. but we're here now with a newish squad" Brentford fans seem reasonably happy "Strakosha > Valdimarsson* Goode > Kim Ji Soo (promoted) Zanka > Van Den Berg Stevens > Meghoma Onyeka > Konak* Ghoddos > Carvalho Baptiste > Trevitt + Maghoma (ret. from loan) Maupay > Nunes Toney > Thiago *Technically January signings The players that left, almost none of them were starters, so we’ve lost very little by way of contribution on the pitch from any of those players walking out of the door. So what have we gained? From the looks of it we’ve really reduced the average age of the squad; which gives us more long term squad stability, more resale value in the squad and more of a genuine succession plan if the current mainstays ever move on, get injured or lose form (what I mean by that, is that - for example - VDB could eventually replace Pinnock in our first XI - whereas neither Goode nor Zanka were ever going to do that). The exception is of course Toney, who obviously would have been a starter had he stayed. And with minimum of fuss we smashed our transfer record 6 months before the window even opened to sign a like-for-like replacement for £30m+. It’s a shame he’s injured for the first half of the season, but we kind of already have enough up top based on the evidence of last season whilst Ivan was banned. I think at the start of the summer, most would have said a good window would have been: Sell Toney Sign a quality midfielder New, younger, quality CB Understudy to Rico Mission accomplished really, plus we got a Brazilian wonderkid. Can anyone argue? I think generally you need to refresh around the edges of a squad every so often anyway to keep the motivation, intensity and enthusiam up around the camp. But in the process we’ve spent some very good money bringing up the quality in depth (Thiago, VDB, Carvahlo) and also bringing in some real potential (Nunes, Meghoma)." Ipswich fans seem to be frustrated with the lack of an out and out striker, but reasonably happy: "Even after the above disappointment, if Liam Delap fulfils his potential with Omari Hutchinson, Sammy Szmodics and Jack Clarke sitting fight behind him we should have enough goals in this attacking group to keep us up. If this attacking unit was offered to us at the start of the window we’d have all thought wow, what a fantastic transfer window this has been. On top of this we have the classy Jem’s Cajuste to play alongside Morsy, O’Shea and Greaves in central defence and new keeper Muric albeit yet to convince us plus another handful of players to strengthen the squad eg, Townsend, Johnson and Ogbene this week from Luton. Of course I’ve not even mentioned Kalvin Phillips who could well be the shrewdest signing of all. Come on guys and girls let’s take the positives out of this. At the start of this thread most of us were thinking we’d sign half a dozen players and not spend more than £10m on any player. We’ve way surpassed this annd spent more than £100m and are in a much stronger place than we were when we won promotion. Furthermore the average age of our signings is only 24 with plenty of upside on the valuations of at least half of them. Let’s not allow the lack of a late striker acquisition distract us from the fact this has been a fantastic transfer window for us, probably the best in the history of our football club Let’s just get behind them and focus on the positives because in truth we should all still be in dreamland." Everton fans are not full of the joys of spring:

You can't train speed and size very much. You definitely can train end product - although the player does have to be willing to learn. The PL is littered with physical specimens - that's one of the key differences in the gap between the leagues.

Remember how Ralph's team used to give away goals endlessly in the last 10 minutes because they had been chasing the ball all game? Yes - that. Maybe not against the top teams, but against the bottom ten who are realistically who we need to beat, it is definitely a thing

Fair enough. I haven't seen him play live. But he looks big on the tele and he is definitely carrying some momentum when up to speed. 😁

I had to reload it to try to get it to play Club have pretty much ditched YouTube, which blows goats because the only thing more frustrating and buggy than the videos on the club website are the videos on the hopeless app!

Those rightly concerned about a 9 can console themselves with two thoughts: 1) There is a chance Stewart will still come good for us 2) In Baylee Dieppa we have signed a huge 17yo target man with the potential to be that player for us at some point (go watch the videos on his thread) Bearing in mind the player we would all want is £30m+, and the state of our finances, and the signing of Ramsdale I think that is realistically as good as we could have expected.

Sulemana might be frustrating, but he is still a man mountain solidly built average height man who was clocked as the fastest player at the World Cup 18 months ago. Plenty of teams will watch the two goals he scored against Liverpool, see his injuries and appearances. Deduce that it hasn't worked out for him and he is worth a punt. £10m all day (we paid £22m I think)

His 2 min interview on the app/club website is worth a watch; a huge, mature kid who speaks well and seems to have his head screwed on I voted it a 7/10 window earlier, but seeing this lad I might be tempted to upgrade that to an 8 Southampton Academy is so back 😁 COYR

That goal above was scored against Bristol Rovers at the end of March Club announcement: https://www.southamptonfc.com/en/news/article/academy-seal-four-deadline-day-signings?utm_source=twitter Wikipedia TransferMkt The lad is a unit. He is holding off experienced pros aged 17 and clearly knows where the net is. CHDAJFU at 9 when we're up against it and need an out ball? Quality signing - well done to the recruitment team: If you can't buy a ready made £30m talisman striker maybe you can grow your own?!

He looks amazing here The lad is a unit. He is holding off experienced pros aged 17 and clearly knows where the net is. CHDAJFU at 9 when we're up against it and need an out ball? Quality signing - well done to the recruitment team: If you can't buy a ready made £30m talisman striker maybe you can grow your own?!

I can see that being a thing. Good spot

ISWYDT 😉

Data from the BBC's big article on the deadline day deals & transfer window as a whole

Toney is 28, came up through the leagues, may well come from a poorer background. He's run his contract down at Brentford, so in all likelihood his personal financial portfolio won't be quite as mind bending as other strikers with his current profile. Offered the choice to set him his close family, and possibly extended family up for life maybe he's doing the unselfish thing. Also gambling is illegal in Saudi so it would be easier to stay away from it, and fewer temptations. There was a discussion last night on BBC R5 where it was pointed out that actually there were a fair few top players at the Euros who came from the Saudi league. Kante being a prime example.

There's a good discussion on page 8 of the ABK thread

It's the full version discussing the transfer deadline day as of 08:30 this morning

You're right. Big Les, Aribo & Flynn > three lads who aren't easily knocked off the ball. We usually have one, sometimes two, but it's been a good while since we had three.

Saints complete Cornet signing - notification on the app 😁

and Sulemana... imagine if we were able to achieve some sort of coaching breakthrough and we see in a game what we see glimpses of in training videos I guess I chose the wrong night to quit sniffing glue 😕

I had TalkSport on in the background earlier, and there were coherent fans for both Leicester and Wolves who seemed pretty dispirited, underwhelmed and predicting relegation. Everton have got to be in the relegation conversation and I heard pundits describing Ipswich's window as reminiscent of Forest and the Loadsamoney Fulham failure window. ~ "They've signed 8 players who will expect to be starters, but they are surely still favourites to go down"

Aside from Ramsdale I'm going to stick my neck out and say I think Mateus Fernandes is going to be a massive signing for us. Even if we get relegated I think we'll sell him for big money.

The irony of Edozie not being able to make up his mind what to do before he runs out of time/space is not lost on me...

Has he been in a fight with Wolverine?