The Kraken

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.

Article says we have the option to sign him permanently in the January window, so it sounds like a very good low-risk deal.

I think we should have a thread a day if it means we get the players in! Can anyone actually clarify where "Guly" will play? I know the article says he's an attacking midfielder but any ideas whether that's been part of a midfield 2 or 3, is he out wide, or in the hole? Apologies if its been confirmed before but I've been away on hols and haven't trawled back through.

I think many people have already stated that gelling is not an issue for only 3 players. It wasn't at Xmas for Fonte, Puncheon, Barnard or Seaborne so why would it be now? We've had a p!ss poor start, that's for sure and I'm pretty disappointed we're seemingly still a fair distance from the squad we need to be. But we haven't "f*cked up" the season at all. Did Norwich "f*ck up" their season last year with a worse start than ours? You can throw the towel in now if you like, but I'll carry on supporting.

While saying "nothing's happening" is truly ridiculous as no-one on here has any clue what's really going on with negotiations behind the scenes, I'm getting ever more worried as the end of the transfer window approaches of our ability to get in the 3 more players we really need to contend this year. I still have faith it'll happen but would like to see it done before the last day.

Being as the article contains zero quotes attributed to Pardew or anyone else at the club concerning their stance on transfers, it probably is complete b*ll*cks, yes.

Crouch never played for Saints after we were relegated. Edit; scratch that, I think I just missed the point....

Unfortunately, in this case Alpine's been proven right so far. We were all banging on about how important it was for us to come steaming out of the blockes from the very first game, and that hasn't happened yet. Yes, of course there's plenty of time left in the season and the transfer window is still open. But for the squad not to have been strengthened in two such vital areas (CM and RM) does point questions at the manager. I think Alpine was wrong when criticising AP in June and July for the lack of signings by then, but we're now in late August and seemingly no closer to getting the players AP said he needs. I still think we'll sign the players we're missing, and of course I think our fortunes will turn around. But it's no good re-writing history and pretending now that a slow start doesn't matter; it does. We're the "team to beat" in this division and the longer we stumble along the more difficult it will become to turn losses and draws consistently into wins.

If you think this is bad, wait until the Olympics is right on the radar; you'll have every two-bit union from here to kingdom come threatening mass walkouts, the country will come to complete standstill.

Very much agree with this, and with CB Saint's assessment of it. I saw one poster on the main board say it was "the most upset I've ever been for a death outside the family". Fair enough if it is, and maybe he/she has been sheltered from losing close friends, but the amount of grief is a bit excessive for how I feel. I'm very sad that Markus is gone, he was a perfect owner in so many respects, but I just don't feel the grief that others claim to do.

Tough to tell exactly, but as I understand it Les Reed has a slightly different role to DoF. His role seems to be dominated by looking after the coaching setup for the whole club, at all age levels. A DoF, in my eyes anyway, seems to be more closely associated with the first team and is a bridge between the manager, the chairman, the technical director (Les Reed in this case), the scouts, agents etc. Although previously Cortese had said he wanted a DoF by the end of the season, so maybe that's changed. Edit; just read his job descriptions, so perhaps you're right. However, that role would seem to have him reporting to AP, whereas a typical DoF role would have AP reporting to him.

This is a large part of it, for sure. Rather than just ignoring the club, The Sun in particular with their "South Coast Club" nonsense are trying to escalate the row and make it into a big story, presumably for printing when they have less news to fill the back pages. However, it doesn't stop them being right in principle. It's just yet another small step from the club in trying to manipulate and control all editorial content and news coming out of St Mary's, which is quite a worrying approach in my view. What next; a ban on selected national journos in the ground? We've already seen an Echo ban, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

I'm going to go all Alpine here for a second, and I hope this is just a slip of the tongue as AP's trying to award some platitudes, but I'm a bit concerned if its apparently so easy for us to get bamboozled at home by the likes of Bournemouth.