Hodgey

Just sets further alarm bells ringing on the state of our youngsters and total lack of overall strategy. Between this and loaning youth players out to the likes of Eastleigh, Woking and Gosport you really do have to worry.

Being in London the standard claim it’s £1m loan fee and c £2m to cover his £65k pw wage. Not sure of any of those facts but I’d have thought £3m overall for a player who wants out and will be a free agent in the summer sounds about right. Would have thought our loan fee for KWP would be similar but saving on wages. Risk of course is come summer we’ll still only have one contracted right back (who Ralph clearly has concerns with)

Not keen on this one, Tosun will be an added danger, Zaha will get round the back, and their cbs are very dangerous from set pieces (especially if we have as small a backline as I fear). Alternative is to play Vestergaard but we do that then Wiley old Woy will immediately get Ayew on his lumbering shoulder. Draw would be good - we’ll see if he fancies the cup if he rests Ings tonight or Sat....

Not sure Ben would be too keen on returning to the club that rejected him !. But that point shows our weakness in CB - he’d be a first choice candidate for us but is behind 4 others with Brighton’s much better CBs.

Not sure why we can’t do both !. Let’s face it there are few clubs with as little silverware as us. Football is about winning leagues and cups or at the least trying as hard as you can to do so. I’ll take a cup over £8m cash for better league placing. 44 years and counting since our last major trophy. Thankfully I think Ralf thinks the same (he hasn’t done a Poch so far in the cups).

I get the impression Che can be similar to Long - a pest who can help other players but won’t really trouble the scoresheet at this level consistently - a 6 goals a year player (may have a couple of purple patches over his career to push that to 10). The Ings thing is unrealistic - it’s how many years since we had a striker in double figures in Jan ?, if he gets injured the goals will need to be shared by others (same as if VARdy gets injured). For me he just doesn’t quite have that killer instinct at this level - you get a bit less time with Prem defences which means a Championship level chance is gone. Think £15m is par for the course - ie that is what you get so not a bad signing. Like others I still think he’ll be useful so rumours of sending him on loan don’t add up (and we won’t be buying another striker in Jan)

He’s got something, but he’s not a first choice prem cb. I think he’ll get better and would be a good player to fill in for a few games at cb / rb and even possibly dm. It’s an odd one as he can pick a pass, can carry the ball fwd comfortably and isn’t bad in last ditch tackles. His positioning, defensive awareness, heading and marking can be shocking though - and sadly he doesn’t have the speed or energy to be a serious dm or full back (which is probably more suited to his game). The fact he is currently first choice, and did ok when Virgil left, shows he can do it (but only for a few games, and only as a reserve)

Absolutely this. Pointless buying another youngster for £15m who may improve and we can make a profit - we don’t need another Hoet or Vest. We need an experienced cb leader nearing the end of his career with game management who can dole out the odd Bollicking to team mates and be given the captaincy. Cahill would have been ideal but that ship has sailed, there will be others though not getting a game currently. Problem is - this isn’t in the strict strategy of under 25s c £10-15m on a second contract.

The fact a lot of people (rightly or wrongly) want Stephens in as a def mid speaks volumes about how poor we have been in that area. Personally I don’t see that working but do think we need to play a settled back line and keep with it - half our problem is the constant chopping and changing of personnel and tactics. I’d go McCarthy, Cedric, Bednerak, Yoshida, Bertrand - Rom and Hoijberg def mid, Djenepo/Armstrong/Redmond att mid and Ings upfront with Adams, Valery, Danso, Boufal, Gunn, Jwp and slattery pushing for places. All that said I’m unconvinced they could stay up but think it’s our best shot - need a new centre back leader Jan which is not going to be easy.

He’s not the best owner, but not sure we can be overly critical. He’s made available cash we generate and tried to overhaul a failing management team. If you want to be critical then he has made someone endemic in transfer and contract failures the only person left who knows anything about football - with the rest of the new board marketers. That and as far as I can see Ralf has far too much on his plate with no quality advisors and he is losing the plot as a result.

Don’t forget they actually promoted Ross ! Hopefully with a new recruitment team they can make better signings, but they have wasted an awful lot of money (add wages to those fees and it’s more like £100m). Can see Gao reluctance to give them more until they start showing success.

Thanks Cabbage face for your, as usual, very direct question. Rather than slag off the poster - why not counter argue. Osvaldo was a total nutcase who behaviourally couldn’t cut it in the Prem (or anywhere). Cedric was able to cut it in the Prem - then couldn’t and was promptly replaced by an untried 19 yr old. Boufal so far hasn’t been able to cut it in the Prem - failing to get into a team battling relegation. Be good if you could explain why my statement was a mess. Glad we agree on the difficulties on signing a cb though - I wouldn’t want to be a mess on that as well..,.

I don’t see why Saints would be surprised by lack of interest - Osvaldo, Ramirez, Claise, Hoet, Cedric, Carrillo, Boufal, Mayuka - that’s c £100m spent with maybe £10m returned in loan fees etc over recent seasons. Selling players who can’t cut it in the Prem on big wages is very very difficult, you can’t even give them away. I can’t see us signing a CB - we’ve been very consistent on outgoings £50-60m per season last 5 years and we’re already £50m this (net £30m), getting a half decent CB is going to be £20m min so unless number goes in next year (loan) I can’t see it happening. That might not be the worst thing - it’ll be extremely hard finding a cb better than what we have for less than £20m, we could easily have another flawed cb on our books draining more wages.

Has it all in his locker - but he clearly isn’t interested. Can’t see the top clubs touching him due to that, although if cheap enough they may use him as bench filler. Like to see the stats but I can’t believe results wise we are any worse on his frequent visits to the physio. He clearly wants out so we might as well get rid if we can recoup original budget.

Err thanks for that utterly bizarre selection of unproven prem players CF - you seem to have missed about another 50 if you are going back as far as Fonte. That complete list would just confirm my point that getting a player proven in a different league is extremely hit and miss - hence congratulating ourselves seems a little premature. I do however agree on the strategy, we’re not going to be able to afford proven Prem players anyway.

It might be good business, you have two proven young English championship players moving for decent prices. Neither proven at Prem level though. I will say I’m more encouraged with our transfer strategy now (as in we have one) which at least is starting to resemble the formula which brought us a lot of success, but I’m not going to complement a dept with clear failure over the past 2 years just because they might have found a striker who can score (but might not), judgement still out.

Austin needs to be shipped out, but he was a good buy. Yes on high wages - but when you tot up transfer fee and wages we had more return from him than Long, Gabbi, Carrillo, Osvaldo and so far Ings. Also his goals kept us up for 2 seasons which is worth what £150m ?. Not a great buy correct, but a much better buy than the rest. People looking for wastes of money and space have plenty of other more relevant targets at SFC

We played QPR or Fulham away (can’t remember which - was definitely Loftus Road) and I remember seeing a ball played over the top, as soon as Olli Lancashire started to move, I, and the rest of the stadium, knew he was going to sythe down the winger. A minute later he had, and 1min 1sec later the ref(who presumably had seen what we had) duly sent him off. It was like watching a train or cruise ship - no hope of changing course !!

Strange isn’t it - Dawson is an extremely average cb, yet I find myself annoyed we didn’t get him given he is as good or better than any of our cbs, and will be strictly bench material for a relegation rival...

Can someone please explain why McCarthy is suddenly so bad. He was our deserved player of the year and frankly has made as many mistakes as Gunn over a much longer period. Yes Gunn has potential to improve and yes McCarthy has resell value. That I get. What I don’t get is why so many are suddenly convinced he is a sub par keeper. I’ve seen a lot of him and he has always looked a safe pair of hands so can those calling him out explain why. Here’s a novel idea - why not have two good goalkeepers in case one gets injured. I can’t fathom why people are so keen to get rid of him given his good history with us - are people rewriting history here or am I just ignorant about goalkeeping ???

We’re not going to get £50m from our misfits we want to shift. At best we’ll sell a few for c £25m and maybe get £5m loan fees for a few others (but at subsidised wages). Add a nominal £10m to that and you are likely to get a budget of £40m where we are going to need to be very savvy to find the cb and cf we need (sadly we have wee Ross negotiating). Hopefully we can get a couple of loan deals in without ridiculous obligation to buy (again we need Ross to somehow do this).

Think we should be aiming for min 14th with anything else a bonus. Last 6 games were a more accurate representation of where we are - hard to beat but struggle to win. We have a way to go to catch Watford, Wolves, West Ham, Leicester, Everton who will again be in the mini league above us. We should aim to come top of our mini league and prime ourselves to be in the hunt for 7th with those teams the season after.

I’m sure he does want to fight for his place and ideally would be good enough to at least be an impact sub. Sadly as stated he has none of the attributes needed at this level and never will have. Not his fault - blame lies squarely with Ross and team (I mean they’ve tracked him for 5 years so had plenty of time to assess). Again you can’t blame him for getting paid much more than he is worth , and dropping down a level means a significant pay drop. So best all round we send him on loan for a fee and subsidise his wages for a year (shop window) than be pressured to play him given he’s one of our higher wage earners. Same goes for Hoet, Gallagher, Fraser and Carrillo. Think we may have to accept subsidised loans until their contracts run out (3 yrs ?). It’s better than thinking they have a use as squad players - as they don’t (eg recent West Ham debacle) and it will negatively impact results (and cost us more money in lost places / relegation).

Lol - good point so long ago forgot that was still the Prem !

The opinions on here are interesting. I do get those who question whether since Dec JWP is having a brief purple patch before returning to the frustrating footballer who didn’t stamp himself on games - hence sell whilst stock is high. So can I ask those with the sell opinion - would you still sell JWP for £35m if he maintained his current form ? and if so I why ?(ie think we can buy better, better to sell him than others etc). Personally I think if Ralph stays so does his form and we have a 10 goal a season midfielder on our books (which probably equates to c 10 points). Another question for fun - have we ever had a 10 goal a season midfielder in the Prem ??