Dark Munster

If it's a choice between spending stupid money on a proven goal scorer to give us a shot of staying up, and not doing that, I think they'll choose the former. Obviously a good goal scorer at a decent price would be great, but they are as rare as hen's teeth.

"Hold my beer."

Yes, but we're talking about the two strikers we are allegedly eyeing for January (I doubt Gakpo is one of them). Not just Leeds of course who could gazump us, there are plenty of clubs looking for quality strikers. As @saintant says, these two are probably short-listed, not done deals. I'm sure we had a number of strikers "lined up" over the summer, indeed Ralph was convinced we'd bring in at least one more (after we already got Mara, who is basically a Long replacement).

Sounds good. Let’s hope Leeds don’t come in and gazump us.

They made a massive unnecessary risk in not buying a goal scoring front man this summer.

Huge difference. Claude had top flight experience, not to mention taking Lyon to their first Champions League semi final. So we weren't worried about that, and no one was thinking about looming relegation at that time. I'd take him over Jones any day. Maybe by the end of the season I'll be proven wrong (I hope so).

Not to mention Tino.

Will he cry if we beat Liverpool?

Good grief, here we go again. Luggy wasn’t a disaster. His point per game average was 1.23 and that was often with many players out injured. Better than most of our useless managers and more than enough to keep us up. If you want to talk about disasters you’ve got plenty to choose from. Wigley, Sourpuss, Gray, Saggy, the Clown, The 2 Dutch jokers, etc etc

I think he would too. Unfortunately there's almost zero chance he'd want to come here, although I would love to be proven wrong.

Cue the "we need extra bite in attack" jokes.

As I said above, I believe the first follows from the second.

I've been saying this for a long time, a good striker lifts the whole team. Conversely having ones that can't score drags the whole team down. Why bust a gut getting good balls into the box when you know there's a 95% that they won't be put away by your team mate? You end up with side ways, safety first play, which we all hate.

Really? Awful final between two awful teams. Spain 82 for me was one of my favourites, with Italy-Brazil one of the best matches I've seen. I enjoyed Italy deservedly beating Germany in the final as well. 😀

So you think this thread is so long because the orange turd is appreciated by so many? 😂 The original P*mp*y Takeover Saga thread lasted for over 100,000+ posts and umpteen years .... and it wasn't because we were fond of the blue phew.

Dozens and dozens of solitary yellows, but never two in the same match.

If Spurs win they love him. If they lose they hate him. Weird lot, nothing like us.

The biggest change is that relegation then wasn't a financial disaster like it is now for clubs like ours.

Camouflage?

He'd be a lot better than no-one.

Or in the other 89 minutes.

I assume the "having a go" rant was referring to throwing men forward and making it an end to end game. Fine if we have strikers who can score. Which we don't of course. But what we are doing now most of the time is also shit, passing around at the back, often losing possession, or if we're lucky humping it up field if we hadn't passed it to one of the other team's attackers or been dispossessed. In the first half against Palace it was driving me mad. Palace had 5 quick players pressing high, and we were trying to tippy tap it out from the back. If we did manage to work our way to their box as you say we end up passing it back again, because the other team had all the time to get fully organised. When the opposition has that many high up just lump it over them and try to get it directly to Adams or someone else up field, FFS, which was we end up doing anyway most of the time when the player on the ball was under pressure and didn't actually lose possession in our half.

Plus “having a go” would be suicidal with a squad that doesn’t have any decent strikers, as well as a light weight midfield. And we’d be sacrificing the one one thing we’re semi decent at (defending).

Villa have done very well there. I wonder how much they are paying him and how much compensation they paid Villarreal?