January Transfer Window

[DT]

6 minutes ago, Matthew Le God said:

If we stay in the Championship why would you not want Armstrong?

Because his heart is not in it and he's bang average. But wait 'til he goes to Wrexham and is suddenly Ronaldo because a) he will get his arse in gear b) he wants all that Hollywood bollocks c) he might have better coaches and certainly a better manager there

Christ.

[Fabrice29]

3 hours ago, Saint86 said:

 

This squad is more than good enough to be achieving a playoff finish and should be challenging for the autos. The answer isn't to get more players - its to hire a competent manager.

Don’t remember the manager missing sitters all season but might have missed it. 

[Fitzhugh Fella]

7 minutes ago, Matthew Le God said:

If we stay in the Championship why would you not want Armstrong?

Because he's not very good, seems to have lost his interest in us and he's a useless captain. And that's just off the tip of my tongue. Hope it helps.

[Chez]

1 hour ago, woodsaint1 said:

We need to be using up our allocated loans. At least if it doesnt work out then we're not stuck with the player on a 4/5 year contract. Would rather that than panic buying another Carrillo or Tall Paul

The club seemed to decide that it was better to buy young players like Quarshie and Downes to help build a side that would survive after getting promoted without having to sign a complete new team. Just two loans in the summer, with Peretz making it three. I doubt they will buy anyone in this window, but maybe a loan on the last day of the window if they find someone better than we have. 

Like others have said, if you are unlikely to get relegated or promoted this season, then adding wages doesn't make sense. We are only 7 points behind Wrexham in 6th with 17 games left. Does the club still see a chance of making the play offs? Will one loan signing make all the difference or is the reality that the current squad with a more comfortable back four, with Peretz, Wellington, Bree, Stewart and Charles returning get their act together?

[Lee On Solent Saint]

7 minutes ago, Matthew Le God said:

If we stay in the Championship why would you not want Armstrong?

Because he misses more chances than he actually scores from. We need somebody more clinical in front of goal. Fed up with him missing chances such as the one on Sunday. 

[Fabrice29]

1 minute ago, DT said:

Because his heart is not in it and he's bang average. But wait 'til he goes to Wrexham and is suddenly Ronaldo because a) he will get his arse in gear b) he wants all that Hollywood bollocks c) he might have better coaches and certainly a better manager there

Christ.

I’m quite happy to see the back of Armstrong (as long as we replace him properly) but the idea that he goes to Wrexham and suddenly turns into Ronaldo/Gets his arse in gear is quite funny. He’s got plenty of goals this season and if he continued to do that at Wrexham it wouldn’t be some up turn of quality, it would be a continuation. 

[Chez]

23 minutes ago, SaintLondon said:

Let me rephrase, you're right, plenty will want to come here BUT I don't think they'll be able to tempt players here that we, the fans, deem better than we currently have. People have been talking about players such as Callum Wilson, Josh Sargent and Taiwo Awoniyi and I'm saying nobody of that sort of calibre is going to come here. Not a chance in hell. So, we'll be left with players who are seen as risks - lower leagues etc or young foreign imports. Obviously for every Scienza there is a Damion Downes so it's just more gambling. We shouldn't have signed Downes in the summer, we should have signed a proven Championship striker who at the time would have seen us a shoe in for top 6 and an easier sell. Once again, they opted for a clever move and once again it's not worked out. 

Agreed. If we were in the top two, that might help a fraction to get that better quality of player (like we did with Brooks), as a player could see themselves staying with the club on promotion. For someone like Piroe, who has made it to the PL, dropping down a division is bad enough, dropping down a division for a side going nowhere isn't all that attractive. 

[Chez]

4 minutes ago, Lee On Solent Saint said:

Because he misses more chances than he actually scores from. We need somebody more clinical in front of goal. Fed up with him missing chances such as the one on Sunday. 

He definitely hasn't been as clinical this season as he was in our promotion season. In our promotion season his goal tally pretty much matched his xG. He scored 24, while his expected goals scored was 23.94. This season he has scored 11, xG is 13.74. I'm not up on my football stats, but I read that as he really should have scored 14 goals this season, and obviously if he had tucked a few really tough chances away, he could have got a few more. 

[danjosaint]

17 minutes ago, Chez said:

and obviously if he had tucked a few really tough chances away, he could have got a few more. 

They weren't tough chances Sunday 

[saintant]

3 hours ago, Willo of Whiteley said:

I think we’ll be lucky to get anyone else in.

Why pay out on a striker or upgrades in certain positions when let’s face it, the board and fans alike cannot be convinced that we’re good enough to get there on large.

As much as it’s mathematically possible, why pay out more when they need to cut wages and you won’t gain from it.

Last year was a prime example. Too little to late.

Not being in a good position to chase promotion is not a strong reason not to do business in this or any other window. Transfer windows should be used to trim and strengthen the squad. Ours has clearly not been good enough to sustain a promotion attempt and needs work so, if the right deals are unearthed, we should do some business. As previously said the big caveat is that most of us have no faith in SR, Spors/Ankersen to get it right.

[saintant]

30 minutes ago, Chez said:

He definitely hasn't been as clinical this season as he was in our promotion season. In our promotion season his goal tally pretty much matched his xG. He scored 24, while his expected goals scored was 23.94. This season he has scored 11,xG is 13.74.  I'm not up on my football stats, but I read that as he really should have scored 14 goals this season, and obviously if he had tucked a few really tough chances away, he could have got a few more. 

The nonsense of Xg laid bare - how do you score 0.74 of a goal. They could at least round their figures up or down as appropriate.

[Chez]

4 minutes ago, danjosaint said:

They weren't tough chances Sunday 

Someone that knows their footie stats better than me will need to explain how two one-on-one chances plus the snapshot from the Bree cross equals an xG of 0.90. From those three chances, my expectation would be at least one goal scored, but perhaps the expected goals form a one on one and less than you think.

The skates xG was 1.48 by the way. The observer obviously felt their opportunities were better than ours. 

[Saint Fan CaM]

This idea that not getting another striker this window because this season is over in terms of promotion or relegation is very, very noddy thinking and totally SR style strategy in my mind. You speculate to accumulate, with the key success factor being squad BUILDING - it takes time to bring a player in and get them playing in cohesion with their teammates, so starting that process before next season surely has to be the smart move. If there’s no-one available that’s a different matter, however I refuse to believe there’s no decent striker out there to be hired.

[Chez]

11 minutes ago, saintant said:

Not being in a good position to chase promotion is not a strong reason not to do business in this or any other window. Transfer windows should be used to trim and strengthen the squad. Ours has clearly not been good enough to sustain a promotion attempt and needs work so, if the right deals are unearthed, we should do some business. As previously said the big caveat is that most of us have no faith in SR, Spors/Ankersen to get it right.

And the club has used it to trim with Edwards and Fraser departing. I am sure they are not palming off bids for Aribo and Edozie either.

If we not getting promotion, than loans are a pointless expense, but like you say, strengthening the squad still makes sense. Buy someone now, bed them in and see them fly next season. However buying players in January is pretty tough as clubs and players prefer to weigh up their options in the summer. 

 

[coalman]

2 minutes ago, Chez said:

Someone that knows their footie stats better than me will need to explain how two one-on-one chances plus the snapshot from the Bree cross equals an xG of 0.90. From those three chances, my expectation would be at least one goal scored, but perhaps the expected goals form a one on one and less than you think.

The skates xG was 1.48 by the way. The observer obviously felt their opportunities were better than ours. 

Or more numerous. The BBC had xG as 1.66 to 1.11 in their favour on the basis of 14 shots (3 on target) to our 6 shots (4 on target). So while we had the better chances we really didn't create all that much.

[Fabrice29]

15 minutes ago, Saint Fan CaM said:

This idea that not getting another striker this window because this season is over in terms of promotion or relegation is very, very noddy thinking and totally SR style strategy in my mind. You speculate to accumulate, with the key success factor being squad BUILDING - it takes time to bring a player in and get them playing in cohesion with their teammates, so starting that process before next season surely has to be the smart move. If there’s no-one available that’s a different matter, however I refuse to believe there’s no decent striker out there to be hired.

It also forgets that we have another 17 games at least to sit through as fans. The people who say it won’t be sat there next week telling everyone the season is over and the missed chances and dropped points they are witnessing doesn’t matter because ‘the season is over’. Didn’t happen last season and won’t happen this season. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Fabrice29

[Mozz]

33 minutes ago, coalman said:

Or more numerous. The BBC had xG as 1.66 to 1.11 in their favour on the basis of 14 shots (3 on target) to our 6 shots (4 on target). So while we had the better chances we really didn't create all that much.

More numerous, plus the impact of the goal itself given it was basically point blank into an empty net.

Opta have a total xG for Portsmouth of 1.66 of which half (0.885) comes from the goal itself with the remainder coming from 13 other shots.

By comparison they have us at 1.18 xG from 6 shots, from which Leo's goal was  0.554 and Armstrong's missed one-on-one 0.421.

 

[Turkish]

47 minutes ago, Chez said:

Someone that knows their footie stats better than me will need to explain how two one-on-one chances plus the snapshot from the Bree cross equals an xG of 0.90. From those three chances, my expectation would be at least one goal scored, but perhaps the expected goals form a one on one and less than you think.

The skates xG was 1.48 by the way. The observer obviously felt their opportunities were better than ours. 

just proves what a load of crap it is then. Did they have a single chance? A few long range shots that went miles over and that one that went across the goal and just wide, even their goal was a sort of bundle it in after a big defelction off THB which could have gone anywhere. We had  2 x 1 v 1 inc the goal, Armstrong has missed a ton of them this season by the way, plus their keeper made a great save. 

[Turkish]

2 hours ago, LeG said:

Unless something has changed since last week, I believe the club are working on two players coming in before the window shuts. No other information unfortunately. 

If we can shift some of the deadwood as well, it will be a nice window. 

We can still sneak 6th... There's always a team who will make that late charge up the table, and usually they're the ones who do well in the play offs.... I don't think we are good enough to go up this season though. I'm firmly in the 'Its the players camp'. I think Tonda will have a good career. 

well we dont have to bother going to see them play so that'll save time

[SaintLondon]

Is mad that there hasn't even been a sniff of an incoming transfer - fair play for keeping it quiet (presuming LeG's source is correct and we're working on two)

[davefizzy14]

Hopefully we can get these two deals that we are working on completed as LeG alluded to.

Edited just now by davefizzy14