S-Clarke

Powerful typical number 9 type to be fair, decent stats last season but not earth shattering. He would have likely been recruited to the City academy by Shields, so might be something in it. Might as well rename ourselves to Man City B at this rate.

I wonder why no one else has yet? He was on my list of potentials at the start of the window too, he was linked to WHU but that never materialised. Like you said, last year of his deal, available in the 15m ball park. Not over the hill old, and at that right age of player we need to add. I do think we need to shift at least 1 CB before we can even contemplate signing another though, that's half the conundrum I reckon.

Let's not start that one up, it's going to be even more depressing.

They've spent more money than almost any club in the world, but everything about that club is just wrong from the scouting to the players. Their main striker target now, after Sesko said no, is 34 year old Marco Arnautovic. Baffling way that club is being run on the scouting side.

Yeah he's got another bad hamstring tear, few months I think I read. Got to feel sorry for him, much like Wiltshire injuries have totally ruined any chance of a top career.

Would be a daft move, you don't build a club on that. That's one way of moving from manager to manager to manager over a short-period of time. I can't see how we have the players for Dyche-ball either, for a start he needs defenders who know how to defend and target men who know how to play up top on their own. We have neither. I do still have the overriding fear that changing the manager will change very little in terms of our outcome. I just look at Utd and the amount of managers they've gone through, still utilising the same core of useless players and then wondering why it's always the same. Feels similar with us to be honest.

There's experience and then there's established players, I think people are calling for more established players if anything. We need more players in the mid-20's mark, young enough to still give us a potential all important sell-on, but experienced enough with a few seasons behind them to hit the ground running from day 1. I don't want us signing a load of 30+ has-beens on their way down, but we need a better mix. Equally I don't want our transfer policy being a case of trying to unearth every 'Tino' in the world (that was my fear at the start of the summer tbh). I know there is talk of there being 'established' players already here, but bar JWP and KWP our established players are pretty hopeless at football.

I wonder how long Utd will give Ten Haag? It would be ridiculous to even call him out though, given that many managers get the same tune from the same players - i.e nothing. Not sure what they expect to be different when they're STILL lining up with McTominay, Fred, Maguire, Dalot etc. It's just groundhog day. And every summer they seem to create some sort of transfer saga, by tracking a player who doesn't want to join them or they aren't willing to pay the fee for. It's funny to watch though. All the talk of this being the big Utd rebuild and they're still starting with Fred and McTominay.

I'd love to know the thinking as to why we went for Diallo once Sanagre didn't happen, if he rejected us then (or work permits were an issue) we were clearly looking for a physical DM, but Daillo is the polar opposite of Sangere.

Yeah, I'm not sure Selles was a Ralph pick. He had a say, but it was a SR pick with that in mind - thought that at the time. But I imagine it was ear marked for 2 years though, he wouldn't be ready yet if we pulled the plug on Ralph tomorrow.

He needed to get tighter quicker, at that point he wasn't marking anyone. it wasn't just a fault of him but a lot of our players just stood off of Spurs yesterday and let them ping crosses into the box from both sides or take a crack from the edge of the box. It was a very passive display from a team that is usually front foot engaged. If we went that way because we don't trust the defenders to play in a 'front foot' way, then given we still shipped 4 goals that's a pretty damming indictment on the quality of our centre backs. I include Salisu in that who has been nothing more than an absolute liability for months, more so than Bednarek. KWP had a bit of a bad one, not sure if he's been affected by talk of moves away etc, but he wasn't on it defensively.

That's the only logic I can put to it to be honest, an injury or something brewing on the transfer front. It's a shame we've gone into the season having to play Adam Armstrong in a position he can't play though, more square pegs even after spending £58m. Let's see how things look on Sept 2nd, as based on yesterday there is still significant work to do.

Yep, it's Wolves. They've had an offer in excess of £30m accepted. He's a Jorge Mendes client.

I found the distribution thing quite weird, in the pre-season games I watched that was one of his better qualities. ''At least he doesn't kick it out of play''. But straight away yesterday you could see he had more nerves and panic around his overall game, which contributed to rushed clearances. It seems to be a theme of all of our 'players' once they get into a competitive game, they panic and start doing odd things that they weren't doing in 'lesser' games. There is a huge mental problem with these players in my opinion, somewhat made worse by the haunting 9-0's , 6-0's etc. Panic and nerves are catching as well, it doesn't take long to travel around the side especially to the younger players. We need better 'established' players without a doubt.

And then subbing him at half time, only to replace him with a midfielder whilst leaving Che on the bench. Easily one of his, if not his most, baffling subs ever.

To be honest I'd have him over Bednarek. The problem with the Fonte situation wasn't the contract as such, it was our ridiculous approach to not replacing him in that window. As a token we bought in Caceres but then didn't play him. I would agree with others that we haven't had a 'leader' CB for many many years, that doesn't necessarily need to equal age and experience, but someone who can actually organise. There is talk about Bednarek and Stephens being experienced, but as defenders at this level they couldn't organise a defence if they were just defending 1 striker. It doesn't matter how many talented young players you add to that mix if the base experience is so terribly bad. I do think we need an established CB to come in, but I just don't see how it happens unless we shift at least 1, but the problem is no one wants them as they're shit.

I don't think we'll all of a sudden rip up the blueprint, we have targets and I'm sure those targets include the more 'experienced' and established players we need to add. I noticed Hudson-Odoi wasn't in the Chelsea team today, even with 9 subs. Not sure if he's injured or not, but if not that's quite telling. The guy needs to play, he'll get in our team every week and even offers the versality of playing wing back if required. So those are the sorts of opportunities that we'll see cropping up now in my opinion. The slight chink in our chances are Brighton, who are now flush with cash, and Chelsea wanting Leicester players who may be interested in those infamous 'swap deals'. Next few weeks will be interesting imo, for a change we're clearly going to be heavily involved in it.

There have been some big changes since last season though, coaches, players, options available (And more players to come). So I think it's only right, if they backed him in the summer, to stick with him through those changes to see what he can do. If he can't and in a month or two nothing has changed then we'll probably twist. But they've backed him for this initial period imo, I'm not sure we should expect him to go anywhere yet.

For a start they're engaged. I don't think they're going to start blowing millions and millions, but they have provided us the cash flow to be a tiny bit more flexible and move early in this window. Spending £58m before selling isn't something we've seen for many years, so there's clearly some intent from them. I liked the action from the summer with the backroom staff, time will tell if they should have got rid of Ralph or not at that point, but they didn't sit still. Joe Shields is also an ambitious appointment which I don't think we'd have done under previous ownership. Sports Republic make me more positive about our future, I don't think they're daft. They've got some smart people in charge in the footballing and business side and I think they'll give Ralph the opportunity to work with these changes, they're not going to react after 1 game. But there's clearly pressure on him now IMO.

Entitled to your opinion, I just don't get the point of doing it now. They made the call to back him with the summer changes, so they need to give him an opportunity to see those through and complete the recruitment.

It's clearly a club policy, not just from this season but it started from last year. I don't know if it's an instruction of sort, but the model seems to be...buy young, talented players for smaller fees, feed them up, get them to reach their potential and then double the money when we sell them. If we get it right it could be great, if we don't then we're only going one way. There is still room for more experience though, and I'm not talking 30 somethings. I want to see some players in the region of 23/24/25/26 who have a couple of league seasons behind them and I'm sure the club will sanction that should the right players become available. (As we did with Aribo)

Shifting the shit is the hardest part of it really, as we have found in recent years with Lemina, Boufal, Hoedt, Carillo etc. We'll probably have to give away Theo, Moussa, Redmond at the end of their contracts. Or do an early settlement or something.

I can see the reason why they didn't feel it was right to start ABK away at spurs, given that we had a young kid in DM, a young kid in goal. They probably didn't want to go all in with inexperience through the spine, that is the logic I can put and understand in regard to that. I'd have probably gone with Lyanco or Stephens instead of Valery though, but his pace in a 3 probably edged it.

I think I saw links to Boro more heavily than Watford, it was a loan but we wanted a fee. I think Boro went and got Forss from Brentford instead.

I'd say Valery was out of position, he's first and foremost a full back and a poor one at that. He can look reasonable at centre back if he's recovering/making last ditch tackles due to his turn of pace, but in the main his positioning and sloppiness on the ball isn't best suited when the oppo are on top of you like Spurs were. He's prone to panicking and giving it away. I'd argue that we should have started with Perraud, if he's only good for an hour then sub him at that point. I'm bored with the Moussa experiment, anywhere on the pitch. It's also a tiny failing of our transfer window that we've managed to go into the start of the season with players out of position. We should have sorted full back out before now imo.