The Kraken

See post #8 in this thread.

Supposedly on GM's twitter. "Big dude, not very Brazilian, great seasons last yr, level is mid-table Champ IMHO

I'm not sure I prefer the risk, but I can totally understand why it's been taken. We know that AP has said he would like to bring in players from the Championship, or of Championship quality. But out of all our signings, how many have actually done that? Fonte was the flagship signing, Jaidi did it but it's looking unlikely he'd survive in the Champ right now. Butterfield came down but was just a squad player at Palace with decreasing likelihodd of game time, and will likely be the same for us. And Connolly was crocked so maybe not worth the risk to a Champ club. So other than that, we have had to "make do" with buying the best League 1 has to offer, with the likes of Hammond, Lambert, Barnard, Richardson, Dickson, Harding and Puncheon. So, assuming we can't actually attract a Championship quality player on the right terms (Danns has turned us down before, the Stock deal didn't happen for unknown reasons), the next best option is to again try and go for the best that League 1 can offer. So we get a Dean Hammond. But we've already got one of those, so what's the point in spending a good deal of money on someone who doesn't actually make us any better? Gabriel Marcotti describes Guly as Championship standard, so its a fair and unbiased view of his ability. He wants to come here. And he's on loan for the first 5 months, so it's low risk. A risk very, very worth while taking. Particular if your primary targets simply won't take the drop in division.

Given that the deal is an intial 5 month loan with the option to buy in January, I find it unlikely.

I think this attitude is probably the nub of it, to be honest. If you'd have asked me, at the start of the transfer window who I would have said the most important signings would be after filling the right back vacancy, I would have said getting in a new, strong, attacking centre midfielder. Neil Danns would be an ideal candidate for that role. That said, we tried to buy him in January when Palace were totally up the spout financially, and couldn't agree personal terms then. In other words, he either wanted far too much money than we can afford, or he wouldn't drop a division. So it's no good saying "we should sign someone like Danns" without looking at the bigger picture; they may not want to come here. So Pardew has a difficult job of either finding someone else of similar quality who will want to come, or taking a huge gamble and waiting right to the end of the transfer window to see if Danns will actually change his mind. So of course it's more of a risk to go for Guly; Pardew would be a liar if he said it wasn't. However, he clarified that by saying "we think he can handle it". Which means that Pardew and Les Reed's staff have all had a good look at him and decided he can do a very job for us. Only time will tell if he can. But the comparison with Danns is completely unrealistic if the player in question will not drop down a division; we can only obtain players who can actually be enticed to the club.

http://www.football365.com/fun/games/missingmen/0,21276,13272,00.html Saints are the "Missing Men" game on F365 today, for our 1-0 victory at the Reebok in 2001. Basically, name the Saints starting line-up of that game. I completed it in 1min 28sec I'm sure someone can top that though....

Having read the OS it seems Pardew agrees with you. In which case, I think I might get myself down to the ground tonight, I've missed all the games so far as I've been away. Hopefully Guly will get a run out so we'll get to see if he's either the next Anders Svensson or the next Marcelo Sarmiento.

I'll give you the example of Kevin Phillips, and see if you find this "dodgy". In Season 2007-08 Phillips played for West Brom in their promotion campaign to the Premier League. He won the "Championship Player of the Year" award. He also picked up Player-of-the-Year awards from both the West Bromwich Albion Supporters Club and from the club itself, after scoring 24 goals from 30 starts and finishing as the Championship's second top goalscorer. He was also named in the PFA Championship Team of the Year. When his contract with West Bromwich Albion expired at the end of the 2007–08 season, the club offered him a one-year deal, with an additional second year if he made 19 or more league appearances. Phillips rejected the offer and joined Championship club Birmingham City, signing a two-year contract on 9 July 2008. Phillips considered the best bet for hus future was to move to a club on the up, rather than go up with a team who were destined for a quick return to the lower leagues. Nothing dodgy about that, in fact perhaps something to admire.

Its neither tripe nor nonsense, just people expressing a view on a player. Waigo seems to be like marmite on here; you obviously very much like him. I for one thought he was not good enough for the first team, pretty average and frustrating out wide, a good attacking threat when playing off the shoulder of the defenders but absolutely devoid of a footballing brain hence getting caught needlessly offside so, so many times. The fact that we have not replaced him yet is the only reason (to date) I'd even contemplate having him back, and if other quotes are to believed that a new pacy striker is on the way I shan't miss him at all. Just an opinion of course; neither right, wrong, or tripe.

How? The pitchside advertising is predominantly aimed at the supporters who attend the game, plus for televised games. Saints home games are on the BBC Football League programme every other week stilll, which is the media that pitchside advertisers will be hoping to exploit. Pictures of Saints game are very, very rarely used in the national papers at this level and when they are the probability of pitchside advertising appearing in them is not very high. OK, having extensive pictures in the Echo may lose a propensity of possibility of advertising space but not significantly so, again for the low probability of an advertising board actually appearing in print.

As I've said before, I'm perfectly happy with the Cortese link; as long as it continues to utilise the support of Les Reed and his team, and with the input of the manager, prior to the signing. I feel confident that will have been the case here, but I never believed it to be true in the case of Waigo's arrival. I look forward to hearing about more (potentially) new signings coming up.

If Pulis got run out of SFC I'd be a happier man

You see, I just don't understand this thinking that we MUST think he's rubbish if it's only on loan at first. Did we think that when we got Rasiak on loan with an option to purchase? Waigo was also a loan with an option to buy, which we have seemingly passed up, therefore we've obviously benefitted from such an arrangement despite someone at the club clearly believing it was worth the gamble. Loads of other clubs take this option, as it just makes so much more business sense to do so. It doesn't mean that the club has any less confidence that it will be a good signing, simply that they are inserting an insurance method into the deal.

I've said on that post, I don't really care too much how exactly we sign the players; whether its the manager's original spot, the scouts recommendation, Cortese's link, the tea boy making a suggestion, whatever; so long as the manager wants the player and is party to club discussions prior to the signing, its utterly not important in my eyes. Continental clubs have long operated whereby the manager is only part of a team to bring in players. Where that falls down is the Real Madrid approach where the manager seemingly has no say and the President and his mates make the choices; I don't think we have that here. I think we have a decent approach to new signings; and I think AP has been much more involved with this one than he was with Papa.

Not sure if I agree with that; but then I'm only going on Pardew's radio interview, which is not alot to go on. When Papa came in Pardew openly admitted he knew very litttle about him and was going off the recommendations of others who had seen him. AP had clearly never seen him play and seemed to intimate he had not even seen any footage of him. This time, he seems to have a very good idea of the type of player Guly is, what his main attributes and strengths are, and it would seem he's seen a decent amount of footage of him to gauge his opinion of him as a player (amongst other things, his comment about how he has long legs which he uses very well to get himself out of trouble). I wouldn't be at all surprised if the initial connection did come through the Cortese connection; but I think in this case AP has had much more of a chance to run the rule over him.

Strachan's autobiography tends to tell a slightly different picture though, with scouts like Terry Cooper selling Lowe on players (most notably Delgado and Cleber Chala, but also Peter Crouch to be fair) and Lowe pressurising Strachan to sign them. I don't really care what the method employed is; whether it's the manager finding a player, recommended one by the scouts, the owner having a brainwave, whatever. So long as they can do a job and the manager wants them in the team, get them in.

I'm not saying we should just turn up and roll over. I just think it gives the likes of Lambert, Puncheon, maybe Dickson a good chance to sharpen up their game. And a real motivation for any of the fringe players to stake a claim for a starting spot. Davies and Elmander are a couple of strong, backs to goal forwards so would be a great learning curve for Martin and Seaborne. And what better motivation for AOC and Guly than to say "get out there, give it a good go, show us what you can do going forwards", with having very little pressure on the actual result. I just have terrible memories of being at the Brum game last year when we, needlessly, lost a very good right back for the season.

Bolton do represent everything that's bad about the lesser teams of the Premier League, that's for sure, and their style has fuelled more of the likes of Stoke, Blackburn, Wigan, Wolves etc plodding along and eeking out horrible draws and narrow wins with negative, stopping football. But that's nowhere near a good enough reason for me to think we should risk our first team in a meaningless game in a competition we will never win. Much rather we used it for fitness and sharpness for those who need it and for the fringe players to have a run out.

It's a great point, and to completely dismiss loans is terribly naive of how football is going these days. As you rightly say we exploited the loan market last season very well with the captures of Antonio, Waigo, and to a slightly lesser extent with Jacob Mellis. Prior to that we've done well from the likes of Danny Guthrie, Jack Cork, Saijis, Richard Wright, Chris Lucketti etc etc. perhaps all of whom we would not have been able to attract without the benefit of the loan system. Also while there is apparently "Saganowski syndrome" there must also be "Rasiak syndrome", who lets not forget also started here with us on loan. And Alpine didn't seem to mind him too much.

I hope he doesn't though. I don't see any value in this game or progression in the cup; Saturday's game is much more important. Maybe play some of those who need a bit of sharpness and/or fitness (RL, Punch, Seaborne, Dickson), give Guly a try out, but other than that I'd fill it with fringe players (Bart, Wotton, AOC, Holmes, Mills, Martin etc) and see what happens. Let the rest of the first team have a night off and get right back to preparations for Saturday from Wednesday onwards.

Yeah, but you're making a judgment on actually having seen him play, after only 3 games. Alpine clearly has a better feeling about how it will turn our after having not see him in action. What an obvious WUM; sad really.

Someone should tell Antonio that. He could be a free agent by now.

Are you unable to read? The article clearly says he is on loan until the January window, when we have the option of securing him on a permanent basis. How on earth is that in any way a bad deal for the club?

Amen to all of that. There's no doubt that the current squad should have been perfectly capable of roaring out of the blocks, to be ably assisted and improved by 2 or 3 more signings by the close of the transfer window. There's just no excuses for 1 point from 6, it's an under-par start by any yardstick, and the fact that we're notoriously slow starters is completely irrelevant as this is an entirely different club setup now. We really need to kick into gear in the league right away. Personally I couldn't give a toss about the cup game tomorrow and would give the first team a rest away from game duty to ramp up the preparation in training to get it spot on for the weekend league game.

Still waiting for international clearance from the Italian FA but hope to have it in time for tomorrow's game, according to the article.