S-Clarke

I personally don't think we're looking for cover though, we're looking for players who can come straight in and improve us. We already have cover with Holmes and Forte to a degree, we want better now.

That is the sort of money needed to secure the type of players we're after. If we didn't have the money we wouldn't bother inquiring about them. One thing with NC is that he's clever and has a strong business understanding, so he'll never lead us into financial melt down and we'll only ever spend what we feel we're able to. At the end of the day to progress out of this league and establish ourselves in the premier league we need to spend some money, and £6m is a relative dip in the ocean compared to what we'd get back from it. If we don't want to break our record transfer fee then our progress will halt, I'm sure of it.

He'd be decent backup to Lambert.

I think you're being wound up there.

We now need to move on, this is as dead as it's always been. The summer is another story.

Probably end of Feb, beginning of March....could be sooner though, we have some quick healers at this club! He's had his opp and has started light training, but will be a while before he can participate in any full on stuff.

I've got a feeling this is going to turn into another of those massive player speculation threads, that doesn't actually happen.... ala Jay Rod, Austin... I cannot see him moving in January, it would seriously surprise me.

It could be the same for us, but you'd hope it's dynamic enough to adjust the higher we go.....you can't have the same wage cap going for the premier league, as we had in L1. It won't work and we won't be able to improve the squad. I hope that's not the case with us and we're a little 'dynamic' in how it works..

Link? Can't see them letting him go in January, whatever the price to be honest.

To me, reading Nigel's comments today, it seems we're being frustrated at the clubs prices of players and the wages these guys want in effectively englands 2nd division. His comments about going abroad are sensible and you'd assume...and hope we've got a good list of available European players, as with our signings of Papa, Guly, Lee etc. At this moment in time I'd say more ''surprise'' signings from Europe will happen, rather than anything from this league which is ridiculously over priced. £2m for Lukas shows exactly how overvalued players are at this level.

Aren't we going to be classes at the same level as Arsenal though? In effect this new rule is excellent for us as we'll be given Class A grading, but it's a killer for other clubs in the lower leagues who will undoubtedly have all their talent picked off by the bigger clubs and to be honest it will probably end up being us doing a bit of that.

It's doing my nut in. We're just a feeder club. Instead of wasting all this money on us and our players, why not invest it into developing their own scouting system rather than using ours? He'd be an absolute idiot to move before he's made an appearance for us anyway. I'm sure Chambo is loving the money he's getting, but surely he'd rather be playing at the top of a league....who knows.

The fact that he is costing £2m shows why you have to look outside of England for a striker. The fee's put on the heads of really average players are mental. I don't rate the kid massively, I think he's just an average championship striker. Nothing special, and if that costs you £2m then no wonder we're looking abroad.

He seems really settled there tbh, family wise. I don't think he's ever moved away from the Sheffield area in all honesty...but Leicester isn't that far...straight down the M1..

Possibly Bournemouth...? I'm slightly surprised by his fall from grace....Hednesford town ffs?? He wasn't that bad....I assumed he went back to Portgual or something.

That's so sad. RIP.

If you're offering £500,000 then let me know. I know of a good home for it. weird thread.

We have had this £1m tag on his head for too long now. Clubs will not meet it, as we've seen window after window....which is why he ends up going out on loan on deadline day. Fair play to us for sticking our feet into the ground and wanting the most though, at the end of the day it's no loss either way for us. We either get what we want, or he goes back out on loan has a potentially good spell and then ends up being worth more. He won't be playing for us again anyway, I'm pretty sure of that.

Don't get your hopes up over Hooper guys. Maybe in the summer, but I cannot see us giving them what they want at the moment and I'm not sure Hooper is that keen to move all the way down here, he's a big thing up there and it's quite an effort being a big name for Celtic. He's probably having the time of his life, so it'll need to be an enormous offer to tempt the club and the player which is why I don't believe it'll develop any further. We sounded them out to check the situation and that's that. What is reassuring is that it shows the quality we're going after, but as others have alluded to it means nothing if you don't budge from your own valuation of the player as we all know it'll always be miles apart from the selling club.

Forest are miles better than their position suggests. Players like Camp, Cohen, Wes Morgan, Chambers, Gunter etc...don't go from being amongst the best players at this level to utter dross. They've been badly managed for sure, but they'll be a threat for anyone at this level. The only area for them that is weaker this season is up top. They don't have a prolific out and out goal scorer and never replaced Earnshaw, Blackstock is still coming back from a serious injury so he will take time to bed back in. We have shown we still carry a threat without Lambert, albeit a weaker one, but we can still cause them problems. I'd play with Width and attack their full backs, because if we give Gunter the space down the flank he will just over lap, over lap and overlap all game long. Will be tough and it will take a massive effort to ensure we're still top by the close of play.

Who was utter crud at Championship level. Maybe he's got a new lease of life up there, but when he was with Sunderland he was £2m wasted for them. They couldn't wait to get rid. Says alot about Scottish football tbh....although Hooper has already proved he is prolific at any level. I'd be surprised if he wasn't a leading start in the SPL

We did bid for him and we continue to be very interested. Again it's a case of offering that bit more to secure a player, even though it may be a little over what we value them.

If we do stick with the ''only pay what we feel he's worth'' policy then I feel we'll hit a brick wall this month, not so much in the summer...but January is a nasty time to buy players, especially cheaply. Up until now we haven't had to break records to get the players we want. We were lucky with Fonte as Palace let him go for a snip, Lambert was a relative Bargain and players like Richardson, Harding, Hammond, Cork, Barnard etc were picked up for a relative snip. If we want to push on further then we'll need to take the spending to the next level as well. You can sometimes get lucky with a freebie or a loan but the real deal and the real progression is often initiated by the outlay, which we did in L1. In a way I see this transfer window as a similar one to the January window under Pards a few years back, when we saw around 6 arrive. The opportunity is there and I can't see us not taking it. I think we have big targets, and lots of money to spend as the players we're after are incredibly impressive. So the ambition is there, the financial clout is obviously there, but is NC able to loosen the strings to bring in a couple of players to continue the progression?

I commented on something similar in another thread, and it's an interesting situation we're in at the moment. We have operated a policy up until now whereby we only pay what we feel a player is worth and only offer them wages that we feel they're worth, which is fine and an incredibly sensible way to run a football club. The problem in January is that players are never priced at their true worth, a couple of extra million is added on and their wage demands increase along with it. Clubs are half way through he season and we're targeting their best players, they're not going to let them go for anything less than an overinflated fee - unless the club is in serious financial trouble. If we are really going to go for it, as I felt from Nigels comments yesterday, then we may need to just loosen the strings slightly and pay a little more for a player that we feel can make a huge difference. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

Thought that would happen. They have money to spend and obviously they don't trust the manager with the money. They will get Mark Hughes.