S-Clarke

It will eventually trip you up and leave you relegated. It's not sustainable. In some windows you need to invest a little, because not every transfer will be a success - it's impossible. We can't keep peppering this line of 'sell for a profit, reinvest that money in the team - but no more than what we brought in' - one or two bad windows and your entire stance is ruined, because you can't raise enough capital. Which is what we've found. Little bit of help from an owner wouldn't go a miss.

Moussa just needs a run of games, he is coming into this season with no form at all. He had a very stop-start first year with us, in fact it was more stop than start. Not sure what the injuries were, but it was certainly hampering him getting up a head of steam. If we've got to the bottom of those injuries and he's now fit, give him a run of games and we'll see the trickery/pace that we know he can produce. He was utterly hopeless on Saturday for sure, but it's a hard game to judge him on as he needs to find his way back to some form.

But we should have got enough background info on everyone on our 'list' to understand the work permit issues/if there are any. There's no excuse for the substandard bollocks this club puts out in the transfer market, every.flaming.year.

Three becomes one, what happened to Ralph's 'two minimum, maybe three''. Absolute mess. No doubts the club are proper hamstrung from the pointless Gao, but their planning never ceases to amaze me.

The work permit isn't a get out of jail for the club. ''Oh fair enough, club can't do much there!'. WTF are the club doing chasing after a player who would have been very difficult to get a work permit for, when they've had an entire 12 months to plan for this and to eek out all this info before making a bid. Shambles is one word for it.

I wasn't talking about Boufal, I was talking about Redmond. As far as Boufal is concerned, he offers nothing and never has. If getting shot of him frees up the money to buy someone more direct/quicker, then let's do it. We won't miss him.

When he's on form, we win more than we lose - without question. The problem is that he flits in and out of form so quickly, he needs to find more consistency. But no doubt that he's a top level PL player when on form.

I don't think we'd be able to get Chouduray, as he's quite expensive. English young player, first team player for Leicester (ok, not every week). Upwards of £25m imo. Davies on a nominal loan is probably the option we'll go for.

14/15. We lost a lot, for sure, but we replaced them well and didn't leave any obvious holes in the squad. The second season under Koeman we signed VVD, but we also started to baulk out the squad with the likes of Juanmi etc - and that was kinda a sign of things to come.

Barring the 'weather', I think it's going to be a winter of being indoors more than being out anyway. If fans are in stadiums before the spring then I'll be very, very, very surprised. They should just start refunding season tickets now imo.

I honestly think our slowness is because we have to wait to release more players, which in turn releases more finance. that's my hunch. They'd probably come to us without much issue, but if I was them I wouldn't want to hang around whilst we tried to find a buyer for Hoedt/Carillo/Boufal etc. Kinda puts their career on hold if they have other options, and that's what PSV presented as.

Think Reed is injured (no surprise there) and Lemina is probably just being Lemina. Can't say we made a mistake letting either of those go, the mistake will be if we don't use those funds to replace.

I think so..? However, there will be an additional, domestic window that continues through to 5 p.m. on Oct. 16 when clubs will only be able to trade (either loans or permanent registrations) with EFL teams (so not internationally or with other Premier League clubs).

It's weird that we even thought that was a goer, he was already on huge wages. It wouldn't take much for the club to do the initial due diligence on those elements before wasting any time on it.

Interesting dig from PSV there! I think that's pretty clear we didn't get our shit in line for this one! Don't know anything about him to be honest, but it's another kick in the balls to our transfer plans. I wonder if this was who Ralph was referring to as our 'first targets we missed out on' - or was that more Mckennie?

The argument is that we've had 1 year to source replacements for Hoj, some were even calling for another midfielder last summer. I get that the budget has probably changed from where we were last year, but planning should have also included alternatives at different price ranges. My worry is that the budget has changed to less than £10m, not much you can get for that. This puts us in a very, very dangerous position in terms of league survival. We are pretty much relying on our core 11 to be fit all year.

So if we summarise it... This is what Ralph has been quoted as saying: Asked if he would be happy to go into the rest of the season with the squad he currently has available, Hasenhuttl said: "No, I wouldn’t. But I know that we will get players in. "Either way I think we know we need a few, one or two players minimum we must get, maybe three." Semmens has been quoted as saying we don't need to sell before we buy. So what is the issue here...? If we fail Ralph (Again...) then I wouldn't blame the guy for walking. He has never been backed here, he must be so frustrated. It could be an exciting week or it could be a week of pure frustration. Whilst we have a decent 11, if we were to lose 1 or 2 out of that long term, we are absolutely dead.

I think the problem with that one is his cost. He's still got a few years on his contract, Bournemouth paid £25m for him. They will want at least that amount back for him and we wouldn't be able to get close to even half of that. We're struggling to raise funds for anything over 7-8m IMO. Which puts us out of the market for pretty much anyone unless it's a loan, with small loan fee's and big wage contributions from the parent club.

Not entirely sure how we've managed to miss out on that one, less than £10m. Work Permits, as speculated? But again, we've had over a year to think about this, so you'd hope we've sourced players and scouted players to understand how buyable they are. What is all this PR bullshit about us always having a list of 4/5 players lined up for any potential departure? Yet here we are, sniffing around last min loans, for players who wouldn't have been available a year ago anyway. (so, reactive buys).

That January transfer window when we sold Fonte and didn't replace him was criminal. But...we kinda did - we bought in Caceres who couldn't oust Stephens from the starting line up! Yep, that's right, Uruguay international, former Juventus and Barcelona centre back could not oust Jack Stephens from the starting 11. I don't think we could ever afford Caceres and Puel was played like a puppet to ensure he didn't hit x amount of apps so we had to sign him, or something. He was signed for a PR thing I reckon. We then had 6 months to sort it, so we came up with Hoedt for £15m, who we are now trying to sell for loose change to anyone who can whisper loud enough.

They were all the result of dreadful defending, tbh. Clumsy tackles, Mendy giving away the last one. He was turned on the edge of the box, lost his player, and just tripped him from behind. Dumb. Not sure about that Eric Garcia either, he is equally as slow and clumsy.

Do we have any money to even contribute to this?

I've never rated City's LB, Mendy. I think he's a dreadful defender, doesn't offer anything going forward either

He's made for those sort of games against those sorts of CF's. The problem is when you put him up against movement and pace, that's when you see his real limitations and why he'll never be a regular for us.

Not sure he's ever been too suited to the PL to be honest, think we need some height and presence in CM. He wouldn't add that in any way. He seems a very Italian league style player to me.