Dig Dig

With Lallana being moved to a more central position, we're not completely comfortably on either flank in terms of our existing personnel. These two players would walk straight into the team IMO so I can see the logic in signing both.

On the bench

Weird approach to it, signing a RM is likely to have zero impact on our ability to sign a CB as well.

True, but the point is, unless our owners are willing to invest significantly into the club going forwards, we're pretty much only be able to generate income self sufficiently so the whole 5th richest club in the land would be complete nonsense. We'd be no better off than many other clubs who can only rely on TV revenue, player sales etc. These type of clubs don't do much more then achieve mid table obscurity. I'm not complaining about this at all, but if that's the extent of the owners investment, all talk of Champions League and stadium extensions would be pure nonsense.

I agree with this although I only became aware of Ince towards the end of the season and in the play off's. I recall Phillips having a bigger impact consistently throughout their season. Perhaps the Ince hype is only based on a handfull of games and as you said, he looks very lightweight.

10 million pounds a year if that includes infrastructure upgrades doesn't give you much to play with.

I understand the argument that it would have been better to be 90% there already in terms of bringing players in but do people really believe that there will no more signings in this window? If so, for what reason?

I'm sure we do. Our squad won't look the same come end of transfer window as it does today

You go for the 6/10 as the extra 3 weeks or so of training with the squad will turn it into an 8/10. Our football management experts keep telling us this.

So the Italian Journalist was wrong about Cortese meeting with Ramirez's agent yesterday then?

Negative and dellsized mentality

Negative and dellsized mentality

Exactly. If the quoted €15M is true, this is the minimum we should be spending on our best attackers to achieve top 10/Europe in the PL.

You've taken my quote and made it look all weird! We'll likely to lose the city, Utd and arsenal games regardless and a loss to Wigan wouldn't be the end of our season. We should be looking to get 3 points against them and I think we will anyway. I'll judge the window come the end of the deadline day and if we are as we are now, we'd be in trouble. Just can't see that being the case and I'm sure we're in for a couple of surprises.

It's a shame we haven't got anyone in sooner as the benefits are obvious but not everyone manages it. We're one of many still actively pursuing transfers. Last minute will be the last minute of deadline day and as long as the squad looks more competitive than it does now, I'll be happy.

You wouldn't have to go back too far to see when very average players began creeping into double 8 figure sums.

MM denotes a million in the financial world. I'll stop using it and use milliom instead though from now on

Yes, because they are so rich they can afford to chuck 35 million down the drain every now and then. Point is that in today's market, paying 15 million quid for a player doesn't gaurentee quality anymore.

Million

I know that. What if the club want someone who's club say they want to get their business done first before selling? Do we wait or do we just sign anyone just to give them an extra couple of weeks?

Your general point I agree with.... The best players cost more. However, caught up in all the high fee's which good players attract is a fair amount of distinctly average players and Fletcher is a good example. 12 goals would be average at best from a striker you spent 15MM on. Rodriguez could get that amount of goals, Danny Graham did last season but none of us would say we should spent that amount of money on them. Andy Carroll....35MM for 4 league goals. The general principle of paying the most for the best players is ruined by the greed and knee jerk stupidity in football so I would say that the correlation between money and success is dwindling in the modern game.

I'm not even sure it's about the wage structure. For every player we're interested in, you'd have a fair idea of what you'd have to pay in wages before hand. It's more likely to be that the club have a very specific recruitment policy which looks at much more than just playing ability. Therefore it's very likely that we have a few targets in mind and negotiations with the club and player require a certain level of time and patience. Or it could just be that we are **** at transfer negotiations, who knows? Laziness and going around offering poor wages relative to the player we want seems unlikely IMO

Yes we could have easily got A CB in by now but is it so easy to get THE CB that you actually want?

Wolves have a striker which has been priced at 15MM. Would Fletcher gaurentee goals? How many more goals would he score than Rodriguez? As he's more than double the price, I calculate that he would score over double the amount of goals and 15 times more than Lambert.

So we should have spent more on a striker to gaurentee goals but should have signed Ba and Cisse who cost less than Rodriguez? And whatever the reason why we haven't signed anyone in a few weeks, I'm sure it's not laziness.