tajjuk

Phil Jones was in the England World Cup squad and still plays for Man Utd........ The fact he has played for top clubs and struggled to consistently score is why people are worried about him. We are not going to progress as a club IMO signing players that have consistently failed at bigger clubs, signing someone who is young and not had the chances at a bigger club is decent way to go (worked with Romeu, Bertrand, might work with Lemina/Hoedt), but signing a guy who is 28 in a few months, has a 1 in 5 record playing for Utd/Arsenal and is injury prone does not look like an obvious upgrade IMO.

Not sure he would even go to West Ham unless they offered him a big pay rise. Plus we'd want £30 million plus I reckon

True forgot about that. They will be relying on a PL sucker to take them though, as we have seen with Clasie and Tadic, most European clubs can't spend £15-20 million so easily.

We've been linked to Kostic before, 5 goals and 1 assist last year doesn;'t fill me with much confidence.

Also whoscored ratings for him over the last 5 league games of the season were 8.16, 7.13, 7.43, 7.97, 7.26, which suggests that Hughes was getting the best out of him.

Sheff Utd are linked with David Nugent so possibly are looking elsewhere than Gallagher.

Not sure Wellbeck improves us, if you can't score regularly for Arsenal and Utd then he's hardly going to bang them in here. I mean he's better than Long, but still 43 in 206 mainly for Utd and Arsenal, doesn't scream of a player a goal shy team needs, or at least a team that misses chances needs He seems more like a Redknapp West Ham type signing of a few years ago, I'd prefer we went out and gambled more on someone that might score more goals than a 'proven' PL player who has proven he doesn't score regularly. Wellbeck should have moved to a middle PL club when he left Utd, gone somewhere where he would have been a regular and then he might have kicked on to being a good striker. H's also injury prone, he has only managed 80 games in 4 years for Arsenal.

Not really true, he played 48 league games for them over two seasons, they just had good competition for places. Hoedt had some good games last year but as standard the level of writing of players on here is hilarious. Personally I'd say he was average in a bad team but of course now a guy who's played for Lazio and Holland is a terrible defender.

They are optimistic with those valuations, near £30 million for a striker who managed just 6 goals last year, over £20 million for a guy who has been crocked for 2 years, £15 million for a 21 year old that has mainly played in the championship.

£65k a week for like 3.5 years is about £12 million, fee was reported around £18 -20 million. To be fair I thought he was on a 5 year contract but seems it was 3.5m, so £25 -30 million is possible.

We might still be paying a lot of their wages, I doubt mid/lower La Liga clubs pay PL wages. We also still have like 27-28 first team players for a 25 man squad as well. There are the likes of Reed, Gallagher, Clasie, Forster etc. that could be moved on. Carillio is probably going to end up costing us £30-40 million in total if we can't get any to actually buy him, same with Forster, his long contract could be another £20 million that basically has to be written off. Same could happen with Boufal, is probably on £50-60k a week at least and was a £15 million transfer fee, could be another £15-25 million gone if we can't get a buyer. If we can't sell these dead wood players and likely the clubs taking them on loan won't pay full wages easily could be looking at £50-60 million that just has to be written off as a f*ck up.

Personally I am for giving him a chance, it doesn't look like Long is going and apparently is important in the dressing room, but he's been poor on the pitch for a while, Carillo is gone and not likely to come back. So why not give a guy who has scored goals in two crap championship teams, who offers physicality we don't have, a go as 3rd/4th choice rather than buying some other player, like a crocked Ings, that could be no better or worse.

IIRC 8 or 9 teams were worse than us defensively last year, I don't get the fuss people are making about our centre-backs. Our issue was scoring goals, that is what almost got us relegated.

To be fair lots of sub appearances in there. I mean 'on paper' Austin scored 7 in 24 last year which doesn't look prolific either but made 14 sub appearances with many of them being 10 mins or less. IIRC when we signed Gabbi, it was noted that his actual goals to minutes ratio was good, he was just behind better strikers at Napoli. Again Gabbi played 28 'on paper' last year but only scored 5, but again he had 17 sub appearances and 15 of these were around 20 minute appearances or less. In minutes terms last year he played less than 12 full games, same with Austin, in minutes on the pitch he played less than 12 full games. So if you looked at them as both playing 12 gamea and scoring 5 and 7 respectively it suddenly doesn't look too bad. Both were rotated, under used and played for pointless amounts of game time last year (being brought on as basically time wasting subs) which added to the negative play overall cannot have helped their confidence and form.

Should also be noted that his two championship seasons have been in relegation threatened teams who went through multiple managers. Hardly an easy situation to play well in, IIRC he was top goalscorer for both Blackburn and Brum, which shows how poor those teams were. When he got a run in the team, he generally scored goals. IMO he's got an eye for a goal, he's got the physicality and he is decently mobile as well for his size. All attributes that given a run and some confidence could see him do well. If we don't give him that run and they are thinking of loaning him, they should make sure it's on loan to a Championship club that is going to challenge for promotion.

It is largely unimportant, the only player in that period that they didn't want to sell was Coutinho, most of the rest is from failed former purchases that were not really in the first team. Sakho, Benteke, Ibe, Allen, and Leiva have raised over £100 million in sales over the last two seasons. All of them pretty much surplus to requirements. it's not like us who have had key first team players sold that we have then had to replace, in reality over the last 10 years Liverpool have only had to do that 3 times - Suarez, Sterling and Coutinho. So they have built a team for over £500 million, which was on top of £250 - £300 million of spending before that. If they can't challenge for a title with that then that is failure, regardless of how much you sell. You are talking about around one billion pounds of spending on players over the last 10 seasons. If Saints had spend £650 million on players over 4-5 seasons what would your expectations be?

That is Argentina who drew with Iceland and struggled to beat a poor Nigeria side, that is no achievement. Colombia and Japan were better than Argentina. And they won two penalty shoot outs against Russia and Denmark, again hardly much of an achievement and were in danger of losing both games, plus they also could have been 3-0 down at half time to the youngest team that reached a world cup semi. For a team with two of the best midfielders in the world, most of them playing for top teams across Europe and most of them at their peak, they were really not that good and that showed when they got spanked by France in the final.

If the Allison transfer goes through then in the 4 seasons (including this one) they will have spent over £500 million on players. And that does not include the £134 million that was spent the season before he arrived. So in 4 seasons and 5 summer transfer windows they have spent £634 million on players. Granted over the same period they have brought in £400 million in sales but still. To claim they haven't spent or can't compete with City is absurd and in that time they have finished 6th, 8th, 4th, 4th. Plus one league cup in 10 years as well. But tell Liverpool fans with that sort of spending he should be expected to win the title or at least seriously challenge for it and they mock you.

Career record of 1 in 3, 1 in 5 in the PL, do not see the appeal of Rondon at all.

Going to Palace by all accounts, with him and Zaha they will trouble a lot of teams. Decent goal record for West Ham in the league, 20 in 76 for a guy who is mainly a winger and has had to have spells playing at full back. As a comparison Tadic scored 20 in 134 in comparison playing a similar position. I think a bit too old and injury prone for our usual level of transfer. But personally would take him because he offers goals, pace and power that we lack.

IIRC Roma are not that happy with Liverpool over the Salah deal so they'll probably make Liverpool pay even more than that for Allison.

Disagree, you don't necessarily need out and out pace to be a good wingback, as you have cover behind you in the 3 centre-backs. It certainly helps no doubt but it doesn't mean players can't be good in that role if they don't have lots of pace. Wingbacks need to be good all rounders and be able to run all day, all those 3 have those abilities. They also have good footballing brains so would adjust their game accordingly depending on who they face. Super quick quality wingers barely exist anyway, most of them that are genuinely quick have no end product and those that do are few are likely to expose whoever we play there, especially in a wing-back system as they are naturally going to be further up the pitch. Like Cedric as wing-back against Zaha is going to have just as much trouble as anyone else, even if he is quick, it's the natural weakness of the system and the centre-backs have to be good stepping out to deal with the threats in behind the full back. People get too focused on pace.

Charlie Austin is our best striker IMO. Plus based on their form over the last year or so neither Tadic nor Gabbiadini are much loss, as long as we replaced them. If we sold Gabbiadini for around £20 million and then got in a promising forward with pace I wouldn't complain. But I would reckon Hughes thinks he can get a lot more out of him, IIRC is he not a player he wanted whilst at Stoke and we bought him? If he can get anywhere near his level when he first joined and keep that up for a season it would basically be like a new signing. Big IF though.

Signing some player to sit on the bench IMO goes against what we should be doing, our like 2nd/3rd choice slots should be filled from the academy, especially with our current bloated squad and unwanted players like Forster sitting there on £60-70k a week. Why waste another £40-50k a week on some back up we won't use, give Valery a chance to show what he can do. Also as we are playing wingbacks I am pretty sure most of centre-mids could easily play there, IIRC Hojberg played right back or wing back for Bayern, JWP could easily do it, Stephens too and Reed seems to have done it a few times in pre-season.

Abraham yes, all those Chelsea lads need to find clubs, they need to look at what De Bruyne did, left Chelsea to get first team football, established himself at a middling club and then got the big move. Loftus-Cheek and Abraham would be two quality signings. I wouldn't want Wellbeck, he's a not a goalscorer, 46 PL goals in 206 times, most of the time playing for either Utd or Arsenal. Would be a complete waste and at 27 he's not going to get any better now. Makes me laugh that people question Austin who has like a 1 in 2 record whilst playing for relegation threatened teams but seem happy to get a donkey like Wellbeck in.