Lighthouse

In 2003 James Beattie and Fabrice Fernandes entered a civil partnership and adopted an infant son, Tim. He’s just graduated through the academy.

I don’t understand the assertion that, ‘Mara is the Long replacement’, just because he cost a relatively low fee. That hasn’t been written down anywhere, we’re just naming strikers who’ve come and gone. However you want to try and rationalise it, the fact is that Broja, Long and AA scored a combined 9 League goals last season. If we’ve found a better role for AA, 5 goals each for him and Mara this year really is an achievable target to improve on last season. That’s before we’ve even entertained the idea of goals from Edozie and Aribo. I can’t see an argument for us being weaker up front, I really can’t.

So, just trying to get my head around who’s available after all that, I’m going to have a stab at something like: Bazunu KWP Salisu ABK Perraud AMN Diallo Aribo JWP A. Arm. Adams Subs: McC, DCC, Djenepo, Lyanco, Stu, Edozie, Mara, Moi, Ballard

Larios, perhaps but I don’t think we’ve just spent £10m on Edozie to beef up our youth team.

Pretty decent window overall, can’t complain about any of the incomings or outgoings. 9/10 I’d say, another striker would have been nice but not essential IMO. As for Bednarek, I don’t care what he said or how ‘big’ Villa are. Like any player really gives a sh*t how big a ground is or what trophies they won 40 years ago, anyway. I’m just glad he’s gone, thoroughly mediocre defender at best and I think their fans will turn on him pretty quickly.

Not with certainty but I don’t see any subtext implied by that tweet which would lead me to be annoyed and declare it ‘bollocks’ when Broja doesn’t sign.

It’s official, he’s gone to Angers, home of a certain Mr S. Boufal.

If what is a load of bollocks? He literally just said ‘why don’t we do it’, there was no implied knowledge of any transfer.

Signs

I haven’t seen much of him but I’m guessing the plan is to play him next to Lavia with JWP further forward. Can anyone elaborate on this?

I’m not sure how you’ve arrived at that conclusion regarding Mara, Aribo and Edozie based on what we’ve seen so far.

Adams, AA, Stu, Mara, JWP, Aribo, Moi, Djenepo and Edozie would all be fighting over four places. Seems reasonably well stocked to me, we were over staffed with forwards last year they were just mostly crap.

Both, however are out of contract next season and we don’t seem to have any need for them. It’s perfectly plausible that we’d be willing to subsidise some of their wages to offload them.

Cliches they may be but there's a large degree of truth and relevance in all of that. The only dubious issue is really whether we get another attacker and if not how well Mara stacks up compared to Broja. Even if we sign nobody else, this is still an 8/10 window IMO but all the noises are that this isn't the case.

My priority #1 would have been a creative player as we had pretty much nothing last season other than JWP’s set pieces. Stu is a decent ball carrier who moves play up the pitch but Tella, Redmond, Theo, Moi and Djenepo were hopelessly substandard. In Adams we had one player who can find the net. Not enough but not as hopelessly empty as we were in the playmaker dept. A striker was probably my third priority after AM and GK.

Damn onions! Thanks and farewell Rom.

Diallo never looked suited to being a DM, next to JWP in a 4-2-2-2 but if we’re playing more of a 4-2-3-1 with Lavia next to him and JWP in front it’s a completely different role. He may also be able to play further forward where JWP currently is in the ‘Davis’ role. As much as I loved Rom, I’m happy enough that he’s gone as he did limit the way we play and when he wasn’t at it, we looked dreadful as a unit.

Broja was the replacement for Ings, we don't need to replace both. We're clearly looking for another attacking option but to say we've achieved nothing all summer is wide of the mark. Long didn't need replacing because he contributed nothing last year. If we're talking numbers then you'd have to include Aribo if you're including Tella. We clearly want another attacker but if we don't get one it's far from, "a bit of a nightmare." Long and Tella contributed absolutely naff all and we were already overstocked in numbers anyway. We had 10 attacking players fighting for 4 places on the pitch

We've got Mara.

Well, if he has a bad game we can always revert to this meme

I can believe many things but not the Saudi PIF being the victim of some sort of PL big boys conspiracy.

I agree, if that's the way we're going. Mara and Adams as the focal point, JWP in the Davies role and any two from Aribo, AA, SA or hopefully a new signing behind that.

If he played every minute of every game, at his current strike rate, he'd score 83 League goals this season.

Haaland against PL defences.

I'm more than happy to go with the vote, however I have a full time job and several other commitments and hobbies, so the three thread system is entirely reliant on other people starting the threads and posting on the right one at the right time. This was always the problem before, the same things were being posted concurrently in different threads which weren't being locked.