hypochondriac

I haven't. I'm commenting on things as they are now and what could possibly occur in the next week.There's no assumption about what will definitely happen .

Assume we will be losing Edozie. We also lost Sulemana who wasn't great but offered something we don't now have .

Putting aside that I don't think we will keep Fernandes, we'd be worse at RB, arguably cb and in attack although possibly better strength in depth in those departments. We'd be stronger at lb and central midfield. Out wide remains to be seen.

Or a player that the premier league clubs don't want to spend 20 million on to have to develop for a year when they would prefer someone ready for the prem now?

I hate five at the back but he's obviously doing it until we get what he sees as proper wingers. If he plays it once we have them then I'll be worried.

I'm sensing that Azaz, rak saki and a loan midfielder isn't going to be viewed as sufficient by the majority .

It's not even that. If the choice is losing Edozie for a small amount and then signing this bloke who seems similar for a lot more then it seems a bit of a bad deal .

I've even got normal non forum people mentioning in conversation how shit this transfer window has been for saints unprompted.

I would suggest if we have arrived at rak sakyi that we are already some way down our list.

Not exactly a nostradamus prediction given he's one of the only wingers we've been linked with .

I'm assuming Azaz and rak saki or similar and a CM backup option will be our lot. Will be interesting to see where we are stronger if anywhere !

If Fernandes goes will be interesting to see a comparison of the first 11 for this season compared to two years ago. Will be quite close I would have thought.

I assume a backup cm will very much be of that level.

Always the most likely choice. Perhaps him and Azaz and a winger on loan and that's it .

Chris Wood was the one for me. I thought we shoild have signed him for ages yet people turned their noses up because he wasn't sexy or exciting.

Why on earth would we agree to spend almost 9 million pounds in the championship on a striker that our new head of recruitment had nothing to do with? What madness is that?

"if it isn't broken consider breaking it". Edit: see someone beat me to it!

That's the bit people have an issue with. And who is to say Norwich are in a position to turn down 20? Sell Fernandes, smallbone, aribo and get Azaz and Sargent and two wingers on loan from the prem and we will go up imo. You won't get a better championship striker for the money even if there are doubts about him in the prem.

Living in hope we just sign a brilliant player with no previous links. Whilst there's time there's hope.

Brum are very much the exception in this league though. They are something of an outlier it must be said. I'm not writing off Downs and Quarshie yet, simply saying that I assume we didn't sign them and expect them to hit the ground running and we probably knew they were works in progress that may be able to contribute at some point in the future for us. I'd argue those weren't the sort of signings we should have been making at this point unless we were also buying established players to improve the first team now in those positions. Downs at this point for me is a bit of a waste of a squad space. What we badly needed was someone immediately superior to Stewart and offering something different from Archer and Armstrong and I don't think we can say with confidence that we definitely have that at the moment and that's a problem when you're spending that amount on a striker.

I think this week will tell us a lot. If I had started this summer and had 8.6 million to spend on one player (an absolutely massive amount of cash let's not forget), Downs would not have been the player I went for. He's going to have to really go some to justify that price tag. He's going to have to start justifying it this season, not be someone like Charles whose value is now paying off after three years.

Fuck me 8.6 million from a championship club for Damion Downs. He better start performing soon and settling into this league because that's a huge amount of money for this league.

I agree. Our scouting is mostly crap and I've seen very little indication that there's been a big change of strategy this year despite the different personnel and despite the slight changes of location for the players being scouted.

That may be the case but in fairness that's why I was reluctant to put up names when someone routinely demands that we name better players than the ones we have brought in already. As I pointed out earlier, the club have an entire department who should be able to find names similar who wouldn't cost as much. Maybe we do have to bring in one of those bigger names though if the alternative is underwhelming and underperfprming signings from foreign leagues which will just mean we don't get promoted and end up losing the remaining quality we had anyway.

Haji Wright would be a good signing too. See there's loads and that's only looking at the championship. It's a nonsense to say there are no other options.