HarvSFC

Well after waking up sad following all the Fernandes news, the club have at least responded well and given us some optimism going forward despite losing our best player. This has definitely been a fun morning. We were promised some excitement this window and it has arrived.

I had a faint hope of Fellows after the Alfie House Tweet, but it didn't sound convincing. Sounded like one we were hopeful of and were going to negotiate and "try for" until the last few hours of deadline day. So, this has all moved very quickly. Good price, good player.

So, it sounds like before the deadline we're getting Azaz, Jander and an unconfirmed player (likely to be Guilavogui) in the next 48 hours and working on a deal for Fellows over the next few days.

So, is this guy going to be our 2025 Schneiderlin? Hopefully without the poor first year in the Championship.

Looked on the West Brom forum for any Fellows talk and they've got a 13 page thread on Russell Martin: https://wbaunofficial.org.uk/showthread.php?tid=38192&page=13

I'm sad about this one, a lot more so than the Dibling one. Fernandes had a longer contract, we held a lot of the power. He also has a very good attitude, as I pointed out before the Wrexham game. His head never dropped last year like Dibling's did and there's just over a year between them and Fernandes was always available for our games so far this season, barring the cup game this week. I also didn't think a club would meet our £50m price tag, and they haven't, but like with Dibling we've gone in with a counter offer and the price has come down. £38m initial fee isn't great. I just thought that we sold Dibling to raise some funds to build Still's squad as we were struggling in the market without that income and it would help us to keep Fernandes. But, I must also agree with others that the Fernandes we've seen this season hasn't been the same one we saw in the Premier League, or playing for the Portugal Under-21s this summer, so maybe he was holding back. With that said, after the sales of Dibling and Fernandes, alongside Sulemana's fairly big sale, Amo-Ameyaw, Bednarek, Onuachu, Ramsdale's loan fee, Emsden-James to United, Juan and some loans out, while also expecting Smallbone, Edozie and Aribo to go before the deadline. We absolutely need another big signing alongside Azaz. Or, we're going to absolutely walk the net spend trophy. Never heard of this Jander guy, will have to look at YouTube.

The best of us get knocked out of the cup by Grimsby.

Imagine one of them is Guilavogui.

We're no longer on the list of clubs for Kabore. Wasn't much chance after the Roerslev signing. Bree will do as a backup.

Very happy with this one. Signing the best of League One and the Championship has helped us each time we've been down here.

It did work in 2019. Angus Gunn was our league goalkeeper, Alex McCarthy was our cup goalkeeper. So, fortunately we went to Fratton Park with McCarthy. They went all out at the start of the match too and McCarthy had to make a few smart saves, which I wouldn't have banked on Gunn saving. Just over a month later, after the Leicester match McCarthy took Gunn's place in the league team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_national_football_team#Recent_call-ups Somebody let the Japan manager know he called up Tanaka when he was with Leeds last season. There's also some Blackburn and Bristol City players in there. Plus, are they now going to drop Kyogo as he's playing for Birmingham?

He's doing it again! Comes into the team, plays well, gets a new contract and then rests on it for a year.

I didn't know he had that in him. Does he not know that playing for us doesn't get you into the Japan squad?

That's what Archer's capable of. He's shown it rarely here, but I must say I can't recall him getting a proper run in the side. More of that please.

What do we reckon will stop Stewart from stepping out on the pitch this evening? No Fernandes, so is the inevitable happening?

I don't think Graeme Bailey is the best source around. Rak-Sakyi also wouldn't be top of my list. As noted by others his loan at Sheffield United last season wasn't exactly Nathan Tella level. Fellows, Sima or an outfield shout for a loan for Esse would be ahead in my list, although Esse did get a run out at the weekend.

Wherever they came from, they were all quite well rated players, coming into their peak years. Tadic and Pelle had been signed off successful seasons in Holland for reputable clubs in Twente and Feyenoord. Forster had performed well for Celtic in the Champions League, famously keeping a clean sheet against Barcelona. Mane was a young talent with a good record in Austria. Bertrand was once rated highly enough to start a Champions League final at Chelsea. He didn't breakthrough there, but was still more than good enough for us. Alderweireld was the starting Belgium international centre-back in their "golden generation", who was very good for Ajax, but couldn't quite break into the Atletico Madrid side due to their very strong defence. Either side of this window you had Wanyama, who was again very highly rated at Celtic and performed in the Champions League. Osvaldo, who was rated and good, but his mentality let him down. Pochettino managed him before, so took the risk. Then Van Dijk, who again was performing highly for Celtic domestically and in Europe, very rated across Europe. Nowadays it seems we sign players with barely 10 senior appearances, or players that are good to have around the dressing room. We had Kelvin Davis for that back then, but he had earned it after a successful playing career here and we had moved on from him. But, we didn't seek out players because they had good jokes.

Maybe Ramsdale is actually cursed. Another relegation on the cards.

Erikson?

Why couldn't we loan a first choice to replace Ramsdale? Didn't have to be a permanent signing. Patted our backs on the £4m loan fee received for Ramsdale, but not going to use any of it to help fill his place in the squad for a year. If we replace Dibling and Fernandes with players already at the club we'd all be disappointed. This is a similar situation, albeit we didn't get £30m+ for Ramsdale.

I'd rather we brought back Shane Long. Half a year of planning for this.

Why should we just accept not replacing Ramsdale? One of our better players last season. Obviously we're not going to get a like for like replacement, but we can get a top end Championship quality keeper. Would be like selling Dibling and Fernandes this week and replacing them with Fraser and Sesay in the side and then signing backups to those two. I know Ramsdale hasn't left permanently as of now, but there's nothing stopping us from filling his position in with a first choice loan, rather than a third choice. Ramsdale to Bazunu is a big drop off. The fact we're using one of the loan spots on a third choice goalkeeper is just a waste.

Somehow we're managing to downgrade on Lumley if true? That's impressive. Keeping an eye on how other clubs are acting in the transfer market and today Stoke signed True Grant, 19 year old goalkeeper, England Under-19 international from Manchester City. He's obviously not going to be their first choice with Johansson there, but he is one for the future and one they hope can grow into becoming their number one. It's what we should have done with Bazunu, have him play backup to a reliable pair of hands in his initial years here, rather than throwing him right into the deep end in the Premier League. If we're going for a backup goalkeeper I'd much rather we signed a young youth international goalkeeper with the long term hope they can become number one, pushing McCarthy down to third choice, rather than George Long, who we hope never steps out onto the pitch. Although, preferably we'd use one of our many loan spots to get a good goalkeeper for this level in for the season with Bazunu as backup. Isn't McCarthy a great man to have around the squad, isn't that position already filled? Signing shite squad players who don't improve the first eleven and never will is why we're in this mess and why we have such a bloated squad. Maitland-Niles, Bree, Caleta-Car, Lumley, Holgate and Rothwell. And last summer was particularly bad - Fraser, Taylor, Lallana and Cornet. All these names that when signed you thought, well that's underwhelming. They're not going to improve the eleven, they're just there to fill the squad. And then when they played the level drops considerably. Compare that to Sunderland, whose idea of signing experience is a 32 year old Granit Xhaka from Bayer Leverkusen, who was also a key player in winning the Bundesliga a year before. They also didn't wait until the last week of the window to sign him. For the last three summer windows those at the club have bemoaned and used the excuse that the squad size is too big and it's affecting our movement in the transfer market, but proceeded to continue to fill it up with crap players and extend the contracts of our most average. 2012-13 we had Kelvin Davis and a young prospect in Paulo Gazzaniga. Neither were good enough, so we levelled up and signed Artur Boruc. We didn't just settle and think, we've got two goalkeepers already, we're looking for a third choice. Bring back that way the club operated. We've been stuck with mediocre goalkeepers for years and the one year we had a good one, the rest of the team was at an all time low.

Dean Thornton wasn't a disciple of playing out from the back in 2019, as seen from the below Tweet. Although, he has had to find work at Millwall this season and stayed on after Martin's sacking. I think it is only Gill that's followed him up there. But, yeah, I always wondered why the coaches never told Martin what he was doing wasn't working, especially in the Premier League. What were they talking about, because nothing was changing from week to week. I apply the same question to Jack Stephens. Captain and the centre-back, so in the most volatile position in a Martin team. It's always talked about how he's such a great leader, but he never had the difficult conversation with Martin to say the tactics weren't working for him, nor the team.