The Kraken

Are people not allowed to speculate on how good a particular signing might be? Or must all such conversation be limited until they've played a game for us? It's a weird world if that's true, especially on an internet football forum.

I don't disagree it's overpriced. But are we better off with the money in the bank and not getting a player like that right now, or getting a youngster in who needs to improve? The football market seems to move on at an exponential rate, Hernandez now would probably cost £15 - £20M.

The question is though; are we better off with £6M in the bank, or with Maynard on our books? Or Rodriguez, for that matter. If (and its a big if) spending that £6M buys us promotion, then it's £6M well spent. We are the Arsenal conundrum, on a smaller scale of course. We (arguably) have a couple of areas where we need to improve, at CB and CF. Do we spend little on a young player who'll improve over the years? Or spend big on a player who can come in and have an immediate impact? Tough one to call, but I'm almost at the stage where I think it's better to have the player than £6m of cash in the bank.

Not really; well, certainly not any more than last year. We have Fonte, Seaborne, and Martin currently available, with Jaidi to come back from injury. Hardly short of numbers. It's the quality issue I'm more worried about, I don't see Seaborne or Martin (yet) as a long term solution, and its a complete unknown whether Jaidi's legs are up to it.

I'm pretty sure I've seen 3 players arrive this summer. One of them arrived about a week or two ago.

Yes, I'm sure that's the reason.

Lallana is 23, is he still eligible? EDIT: Hmm, I see this has been covered!

Actually they aren't. BCFC aren't giving any reason as to why the transfer didn't go through, it's all very non-committal, they just say "he proposed move will not go through". Which I think we can safely assume means he failed the medical!

Yes, as funny as it sounds. Questioned it, in that he saw we already had 2 or 3 players at left back who could do a job, so we weren't weak in that department. But then clarified that Fox was a better player than all three, and therefore it was better to sign him that not. The two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. *smiley winky thing* To be fair, it only echos what most on here were saying at the time, that it wasn't the position we most needed to strngthen but, if its adds to the quality of the first team, why not?

JustMike has just PM'd me to say that the medical is still ongoing, so he's lying to one of us.

I've actually just got off the blower with a very good friend of mine who looks after player recruitment for Cardiff; he's said that he was a bit surprised to see that we went for Fox as we already had Harding and Dickson plus Mills, but he thinks that in Fox we've got a very good player who's better than all of them.

I agree about Waghorn and wouldn't be massively enthused if we went for him. I'm hopeful that's just agent-talk for now.

I think my point was that I don't think we are signing squad players. Guly played most of the back end of last season; he's a different player to de Ridder entirely, I think de Ridder is more of a direct replacement for AOC. So maybe a squad player, but with first team intentions firmly in mind while offering a completely different alternative to the current incumbent. Fox, I really can't see us lashing out nearly £2M on a squad player, I think he'll soon be the number one left back. And as I said, Fontaine I think is targetted as a starting centre-back with Fonte. You say we don't need more squad players and I agree; anyone we sign should be a first team player and that's exactly what I think we're looking to do.

In a way you're right, but you need to look at the players we've actually signed on an individual basis: Chaplow: originally went straight into the team, and bolstered what was a weak squad (we only had Hammond and Schneiderlin as viable CMs). Forte: Squad player at best and admittedly not inspiring. Cork: Excellent signing. de Ridder: Time will tell, looks like he's being given time to adapt to English football, and is being kept out by Guly who is one of the best performers of the season so far. Fox: Too early to tell but has Premier League and SPL experience, I expect him to be in ahead of Harding before long. Fontaine has 4 years of Championship experience, finishing 4th, 10th, 10th and 16th with City; he seems like a first choice signing to me.

Plenty of people saying he is their best defender; would you get any on here saying the same about Richardson or Fonte?! Lots seem disappointed they're losing him; others not so bothered. General consensus seems to be that he has takent but has stagnated a bit in the last season or two, possibly due to being played as one of various different centre-half pairings. They say he's quick, which is a leg-up on Gorkss. He's been a fixture in a side that has finished 4th, 10th, 10th and 16th in this league in the last 4 years. It's also rumoured that we've gone for him after turning down the opportunity to sign Gorkss, so if that's true we see him as a better option than someone who is nudging 30 and has signed for £1M for a significant rival of ours.

Last rites for Puncheon, Dickson and Holmes?

And the same board that gave SCW £1M per year for a similarly pitiful effort.

St. James Road, in the little parade of shops just down from the back of King Edwards school.

Exactly what I came in to suggest; portion sizes are amazing. My friends also live right by it.

Isn't that Bertie Bassett? I've actually got no idea why he's called Harry.

I think we agree; as I've said, putting Woodward in the DoF role was lunacy, as he knew next to nothing about a football club and all that it entails. Having him learn his trade with us (on a £1M p.a. salary, is that the best apprenticeship wage ever?) to eventually take over the first team was madness of the highest order, especially considering we couldn't really afford it. But I do think that, under the right stewardship, someone like Woodward (would have to be someone cheaper though) could potentially benefit a football club. For Saints at the time though it's difficult to see one area where it did or could have succeeded.

And you'll see that's not what I'm advocating by any stretch, and is indeed where our way of doing it went so drsatically wrong. But there is clearly scope to have a Woodward-type role work at a football club; we are living proof as I previously said, Les Reed occupies the hot seat. But the main man simply has to understand every single aspect of how a football club operates. There are so many areas where experts from other sports could have an input into the way football clubs operate, I've already mentioned some of them, you have fitness and conditioning experts, food nutritionists, all sorts who previously have had success in other fields (predominantly athletics, I would suggest). Closing off to the possibility that other sports could offer something new (and better) in certain areas is naive IMO.

I don't quite understand this point of view. That coaches successful in another sport cannot transfer some of their skills to benefit a different sport. The madness of our whole idea was that the "Woodward role" needed to be undertaken by someone who knew all about the inner workings of a football club. It's exactly the same role that Les Reed currently has with Saints. But to say that you should instantly rule out sprinting coaches from athletics, fitness coaches from rugby, and all sorts of other individuals with a huge variety of different skills, is thoroughly closed-minded IMO.

Woodward always worked to the idea that the easiest way to significantly improve the performance of an elite athlete was to break it down and instead of finding a 10% improvement overall, find 10 different things that can be improved and improve them by 1% each. It's fairly common sense and nothing really innovational, but demonstrates how you use the likes of fitness coaches, vision coaches etc etc to look outside the box and work on the whole field of athlete skills. I've said before, the idea of Woodward in such an advanced role for us was complete lunacy. But there are definitely parts of his skillset which can be applied to many sports (which I guess is why he is in his role with the BOA right now). Football teams have used rugby league fitness coaches before. Athletics sprinting coaches (Darren Campbell) have been and still are employed to work with football squads. Just because someone comes from a different sporting background it really doesn't mean that they have nothing to offer to football. Which is why I can see there is potential for cross-sports training iniatives. What we did, however, was never, ever going to work in principle as it was far, far too much too soon and gave far too much responsibility to one man who effectively knew nothing about the inner workings of a football club.

I think some of the principles could have been excellent; Woodward was seemingly very good at surrounding himself with experts and raising individual performance levels by one or two per cent at a time to get elite athletes performing at their optimal level. Unfortunately, the costs involved were astronomical at a time when we'd just lost the financial security of the Premier League. We could have put the money spent on Woodward into the team and invested in the sports science as and when we got back to the top table. Trying to put together the costs of the whole exercise would just reduce me to tears. Allegedly £1M per year for Woodward. £300K per year for Clifford. They refurbished parts of the training ground setup, putting in various costly gadgets, gizmos, playstations and such like. I'm pretty sure they hired a "vision coach" too. And I've probably erased from memory various other hair-brained schemes that took up vital funds and neglected the playing side of things.