ohmelads

Decent going forward but left us exposed so many times in defence. Under Rafa, we've looked better when Janmaat hasn't played. Despie his tactical weakness, Janmaat's a decent player who may thrive in a different system. That said, I agree with others that his head hasn't been right for a while and he's looked moody all the time. Best for all parties really - Anita, Gamez and Yedlin offer us different options there.

The thing people are worrying about is the opportunity cost. If we only sign one winger and it's Judge, then we're in trouble because we're beyond bare bones in that position, playing the likes of Anita and Gouffran there. We're blatantly lacking creativity and the injury to Aarons leaves us with just one winger in the squad. They're saying Judge is not back until November, but we all know that he hasn't had a pre season and is returning from a leg break, so he'll take weeks and weeks to get up to full speed. I'm no doctor, but looking at other players with similar injuries, you'd say the turn of the year is more likely. That leaves us short in a key area for half of the season. We're about to play all of our promotion rivals in what could be a decisive run. Whether we sign Judge or not, another winger is a must. If it's just him, we're going to struggle now let alone when injuries to our other players hit.

Liverpool mate reminded me that they signed Aquilani while still injured, and we know how that turned out. A winger is our number 1 priority. Surely this isn't the answer? If another is coming in then fair enough, otherwise what's going on? Half measures and wishful thinking have got us where we are now. Loads of players struggle to come back from broken legs.

Bit relieved to be honest. This signing never made a lot of sense, a makeshift left back. Haidara's back in training and we have Dummett. We need a specialist left back better than what we have. We have Dummett and Clark as defensive options, we need a proper full back who can get up and down the flank. Haidara might be good at this level but has to prove his fitness and can't be relied upon. We need a proper left back. I'd also agree with those who say a winger is a higher priority. We've got 1 proven winger in the squad. If you include Aarons then 2 natural wingers to get us through a 46+ game season.

Thought Southampton had their chances to be honest, quite wasteful. The pen was the type of pen Man Utd get at Old Trafford but other teams usually won't. You could make a case for it, but in the context of other penalties given/not given it's very soft. Man Utd fans wouldn't have any of that because they're used to getting them. I have a feeling Ibrahimovic is going to be a flat track bully. There's a lot of dross in the Prem who will sit deeper and he'll enjoy playing against them. I'm not sure I fancy him in the bigger games where he's picking up the ball further from goal, but we'll see. Pogba showed some nice touches and dribbles but overall a fairly quiet debut. Signs are there though, once he gets up to full speed. Strangely for a Mourinho team they look stronger in attack than defence. I can see teams causing them problems unless they get some defenders in.

Did alright for France in the final when they weren't really on the counter. He's good when he's arsed. The way I see it, sod the 30m we would get for him (8.5m for tubesock) if he stays and puts in the work required to help take us back up. And then he can f*** off all he likes. You'll struggle to find a dozen games in his career where he's played like that. Whether it's consistency or attitude, he has rarely produced it. Not to mention we looked totally unbalanced last season with Sissoko playing out wide. I'm not saying he couldn't be very effective in this league, but he isn't a natural winger and we need one in whether he stays or goes. Townsend and now Ritchie have come in and shown how it's done, and how much creativity we were missing last season. We haven't had a balanced midfield shape since Robert and Solano, which was also the last time we were genuinely good.

Even if he stays, we still need a genuine winger. His best games have come counter-attacking where there is space to run into. When we have to break teams down he has usually been totally ineffective because he isn't a natural winger.

Mitrovic, Thauvin, Cabella, Riviere, Cabaye, Debuchy, Ben Arfa, Sissoko. All represented by MSM (Mondial Sports Management). Guess who Saivet is represented by? The very same agency. Thauvin, Cabella, and Saivet (and, aside from MSM, you could add Doumbia and Ferreyra) all came and left while barely getting on the pitch, with other clubs (and agents) profiting from it with loan deals. In the case of Marseille, the very club we bought from. I don't know why they didn't get a chance but clearly something dodgy is going on. Let's also not forget that Keegan quit the club and took it to court (and won) after Ignacio Gonzalez was signed on loan "as a favour to agents".

Brinkmanship is how we've operated for years. We sell for top dollar exploiting desperate clubs, but if we ourselves fail to land our targets for the right price, we go with what we have. We've always been reluctant to overpay to get what we really need. This, among other things, is the thinking that has landed us where we are. I'd like to believe it has changed, but as you suggest, it seems we're at it again regarding the sale of Sissoko as well as the signing of Knockaert and other targets. The closer we get to deadline day, the more these clubs will want for their players because it diminishes their own options for signing a replacement. The more they ask for, the less likely we are to pay it. All we can hope for is that we get them "over the line" this time otherwise we're in trouble.

unfortunately knockaert may think he has a better chance of making it to the premiership if he stays on the south coast. 4 games in, huge pay rise, bigger club. Don't be too surprised if he's gone by September, even to a prem club. We should be offering wages that'll turn his head. He's done nothing but perform since arriving in this division and is doing it again this season. He's also a good age. He's highly rated and probably offers the closest guarantee of success of any potential (realistic) wingers we can sign, with the added bonus of weakening a serious division rival by taking their most creative player. We have the cash but we don't have time to wait for players to develop. We need the finished article, proven players like Ritchie, and they cost more. We can either go for unsettled Premier League squad players or try to steal our rivals' best players from the Championship. I prefer the latter even though it is more expensive. I think it is better to sign in-form players on the way up rather than players who have been outcast for whatever reason. It sounds like we put in a mediocre bid for him and then walked away. I'd be surprised if we don't go back in for him. As I said before, I think the club are waiting to get rid of a few because if we sign first and can't shift them, the squad and wage bill will be too high. It's not how I would do things, but I'm not in charge of the finances and we all know how the club operates.

Sure Benitez said we didn't have to sell anyone, or was he lying. He's been making noise about the inflated squad size though. Given we've hit a brick wall with player recruitment, it doesn't take a leap of the imagination to assume that's the main issue. If you add up the wages of Saivet, Gouffran and Riviere among others it's probably a lot. Add to that the maybes like Sissoko, De Jong, Tiote.

To be fair, he's probably hardly played in that time.... True, but the point is we're after a proven goalscorer. Yes our squad needs more physical presence up front, but a proven ability to get goals is the most important criteria we're looking at. We should therefore stay well away from a 35 year old who hasn't scored for 15 months and has only managed 44 league goals in the last 7 seasons going back all the way to the time we were last relegated. That's a striker with an average of about 6 goals a season. We can only put 11 players on the pitch, and it's not like we have goalscorers elsewhere in the team. It only makes any sense if we were to bring in two strikers then Crouch is willing to be 3rd or 4th choice behind the new guy, Mitro and Gayle. Given Rafa often plays with one up front, that seems pretty unlikely.

I'd rather we tried to keep Tiote. He's just turned 30, has a year left on his contract and can get himself a lucrative bosman next summer if he sticks around. He's the best DM we have.

Crouch hasn't scored a league goal for 15 months.

I'm worried we're gonna see the classic Mike Ashley move - rinse a desperate buying club for 30m at the end of the window and then have no time to reinvest the money ourselves. In his press conference, Rafa mentioned that and I sensed his words were aimed at the board as much as at buying clubs. Really we should be listening to any offers over 20 million. This is an attacking player who scored 1 goal in 37 starts last season and commands huge wages. Like it or not, his antics have put us in a difficult situation and stubbornly trying to get a few extra million for him will ultimately leave us with a bigger problem. We're probably not signing first team players until we shift some big earners off the wage bill, which means the longer this drags on, the longer we will see the likes of Anita at right wing.

Early in this window I was all for cutting our losses, because I expected we'd target proven players to go into the first XI. Besides Ritchie and Diame that hasn't happened and we're getting close to the deadline now. We've reached a point now where we can't let him go unless we can bring in quality first, because there's a real lack of invention in midfield and attack.

If you're serious about winning the league, you have to overspend sometimes to get in the players you really need. I don't think Rafa will be that pleased with our business so far to be honest. He's been tasked with winning the division yet his bosses are making a profit from his squad and we're clearly failing to get targets in. Knockaert looks exactly what we need and we should be going all out to get him, as well as another winger. Overpaying by a few million is better than paying a bit less for someone who isn't good enough. Teams that win things tend to operate this way and don't mind overpaying a bit to get their man. Players proven in England always come at a premium, as do players from division rivals. They cost money but also offer a greater guarantee of success. Ritchie has been an excellent example of that so far. You can bet Rafa's other targets are also ambitious deals for proven talent that will improve the first XI, yet other than Ritchie and Diame we have failed to bring any in. Rafa negotiated his contract at length and you can be sure recruitment would have been at the top of the agenda. You get the impression we're waiting for the Sissoko money to do any major deals. If we fuck this up, as we have done in previous years, don't be surprised to see him pack his bags a la Keegan. The next two weeks are massive. Hopefully these results have served as a wake-up call for the board.

I wonder how happy he is with the transfer window so far. We've got the easy deals done early for squad players, but the key signings we needed still aren't there. We've seen a bid knocked back for Knockaert and it seems we haven't pushed the boat out to get him, and we've seen McCormack (who may have been our target) go to a rival while we struggle to find alternative options. We've also seen zero net spend on players. Something tells me this isn't what Rafa signed up for, and I could see him walking if we go into September without the players we need. He isn't blameless for the poor team selections, though. He's showing teams too much respect.

Agreed. Most of our signings have been squad players. We need proven quality. We're not thinking like a team that is aiming to win the division. Ritchie and Diame are the right type but when you look at how many we have sold and how shit we were to begin with, we haven't brought in enough of that type of player and our net spend is less than zero. Rafa isn't blameless, but I'm sure it wasn't his intention to buy a load of average or unproven players and bring in little proven quality. They're fine for building a squad, but I can't have been the only person who was concerned when I saw the first team lineup before the Fulham game.

We need 2 wingers if Sissoko goes. Pointless having ten defenders and 1 proven winger. Signing only 1 winger still leaves us light. We were already lacking in these areas last season and have sold more than we've brought in. I'm not convinced Galloway is the answer at left back either. We need a proper LB who can attack and not another makeshift. Get 2 wingers, a striker and a proper left back and we may be able to batter some teams and make teams start fearing us. We can't do that without flair in the side. We're trying to win the league with no matchwinners in the team and an average, lop-sided squad.

If you look at the teamsheet for both games, we're pretty toothless. Teams don't fear us because there's nothing to fear there. The squad has little flair or pace. We only have 2 wingers in the whole squad and that's counting Aarons who's unproven. We also don't have a proven goalscorer. If we don't bring in flair, pace, and proven goals then we won't go up. It's that simple because the current squad isn't good enough. We've signed a lot of defensive players but we're also currently on a profit from our player sales and haven't addressed the main issue. We've got two weeks to sign some flair players and a goalscorer. Once we batter someone teams will approach us with a bit more fear. The next two weeks are crucial.

No one fears us because we have hardly any offensive players.

Looks exactly what we need.

Could see that happening actually. About his level and would be very Pardew. I can see us taking 20m for him. We're just high balling.

Because we have Mbemba, Lascelles, Clark and Hanley for the centre, with Dummett and Hayden at a stretch, while we have no natural left back besides Haidara who is out indefinitely.