alpine_saint

I'm not. Clyne is the only one of the back 4 who is firing on all cylinders, but he cannot do it alone. Yoshida may well turn out to be brilliant, but I feel he is quite a high risk signing. But the problem with Fonte and Fox has been apparent since the footballing lesson we got from Reading at SMS last season.

This is a superb point. Someone was obviously looking closely enough at Billy Sharp to decide he wasnt PL material to do something about it, but no-one was looking that closely at Danny Fox. Proof, it seems, that the focus was wrong.

FWIW I dont think the money was really the issue here (although one can never be certain) that meant "Ramirez or defence" I think it just wasnt as much in focus or had as high a priority. Which is bizarre.

Bottom of the table with 0 points because you cannot keep the opposition out, probably manages to totally negate the effect of signing Ramirez, in the eyes of big-name transfer targets..

No, but he has seen just how bad Fonte and Fox are at this level...

For all those of you who said "of course we were looking, they obviously just didnt come off/werent meant to be" or words to that effect, the reason for that is that our transfer activity is always too f**king late. And when it falls through we are playing catch up to identify and court new targets. Someone has written on here that Fergie identifies his targets and doesnt mess about - he goes and gets them straightaway (ignore the RVP issue, Arsenal fought tooth-and-nail to keep him). The traditional argument here was that Manyoo can afford to pay wages over the summer and we cant. Well, if we are stumping up 12m for transfers now, and considering the supposed resources behind us now, perhaps, just perhaps, we should go out and get our man earlier in order to avoid "didnt come offs/werent mean to bes"...

Without someone setting the record straight, the efforts on defenders appear half-hearted compared to the landing of GR. I was told on here a couple of weeks ago to shaddap and the defenders would come. Guess what ? They havent.

Yes, this. Someone has been fixated with pretty football and attack.

Dont rise to it. For me, surrey1saint has made the first trolling comment on this thread, not you.

Do you really think Fonte and Fox can reach the required standard with "better organisation" ?

So the question is : was the ball dropped in other areas because too much focus was given to closing the GR deal ?

He's not judging the transfer of GR that harshly. He's judging the emphasis of the transfer window in its entirety.

Yes, good article. We are in a pretty good position, plenty to be positive about but need to start getting some points soon.

Nope. Perfectly vaild opinion observing where we are now. Dont understand the hissy fits about him asking it.

Oh come on, give the guy the chance to even TRAIN with us first..

Now you've done it. Its a taboo subject. Forget that we've rocked two of the best 3 teams in the PL over the past 2 weeks, therfore demonstrating our attack is already strong enough. But that on both occasions they scored one more than us because of our sh*te defence.

No, he's just unemployable - hes a trouble-maker.

We either havent been looking hard enough then, or too much of our transfer/additional wage budget has been earmarked for f**king attacking players.

Why are so many defecating themselves over the Arsenal game ? If we can make the two Manchesters panic in previous games, then over the next two weeks ease in our signings, get Fox and Fonte to get their sh*t together (as far as they can) or pick up a free agent or two for the defence, and NA also has a bit of a re-think about his substitutions and this odd strategy of playnig everyone up front except Rickie out-of-position, we can definitely give them a run-for-their-money.

Agreed; Pistorius wants to have his cake and eat it.

Much as this has Keegan-like glamour about it, I'd much rather the energy were spent finding another CB and LB...

Yet our worst performance was against the other "ordinary" team. We raised our game against the Manchesters because of who they are.

Appleton is talking b*ll*cks, imo. If those players dont sign a renewal, they are free agents. Unless, of course, they have some clause that PFC must formally say it is over after the month otherwise it is automatically renewed, which means imo Birchy has been lying about them being one-month contracts

Thats simply not good enough. The SFC management have known for months these areas needed addressing. But no, we focused most of our transfer resources on sexy attacking options. I'm not the greatest fan of Pardew, but credit where credits due - he built from the back first, I seem to recall.