UV

Don't forget, we're booting out the sensible new chairman after a year (even though we all knew it was a temporary appointment). Yes, I think that's probably a very fair summation of what people who don't know much about the club think. The thing is, you will only get stability when you get a manager who can meet the chairman/owner's expectations. It's up to the chairman/owner to financially support the manager fairly for that level of expectation, but there's not much you can do about that. That goes for any club, at any level. There's no point in having stability by keeping a manager who is evidently crap and keeps getting you relegated, but for some it's enough to have stability with a manager who can keep a team in mid table and simply avoid relegation every year. Is that stability better for a player than the instability of a team who are constantly striving to better themselves? That's a question for the player and different players will have different ideas about it. Also agents will absolutely LOVE less stable clubs, as they get to cash in on transfer fees more often, so us, Chelsea and Man City should get the pick of the crop this season

In theory I agree with afar, but in practice players and their agents are going to stall as long as possible. The agent will try and drum up (or make up) interest from other clubs, to increase the bargaining power of the player. If we offer something close to what Owen wants then if he's going to sign at all, I think he'll sign soon enough; but if we're looking to seriously knock down his wages when seemingly everyone else's are rocketing, then he's going to leave it to the last minute or more likely not sign at all. He's certainly not going to be signing a 4 year contract on £80k anytime soon.

Was this thread an attempt to take Crumpy's title in next year's awards?

You know the odds before you make the toss and you make the decision on whether or not to take the bet based on that, not on the outcome. In the case of a player, it's a judgment call based on your opinion of his future ability within your team rather than fixed odds, but it's still a gamble. The odds on Duff being a bigger benefit to the team than defenders to the value of £5m were good in my opinion, so I thought it was a good decision to take the gamble. The subsequent failure of the gamble on Duff doesn't change the fact that I think we were right to take it. (Plus of course you're assuming the £5m worth of defenders would have been a benefit to the team and not ended up as more average players to get rid of).

Rubbish. Say I offered you a bet of a pound to a penny on the toss of a coin. Heads you lose 1p, tails you win £1. You're saying that it's only a good decision to take the bet if you win?

A source close to the East End club = Dean Ashton's agent

Was my decision to buy a lottery ticket in a roll over week a good one or a bad one? When it turns out that you've wasted your money, are you going to argue that it was a "good decision at the time"? Painfully stupid analogy, tbh. Yes, I am.

Was my decision to buy a lottery ticket in a roll over week a good one or a bad one?

It's about doing your "homework" and having some idea of what a player is worth. Luque is on record as saying he didn't want to come so he asked for daft wages and nearly fell off his chair when Freddie said yes without any hesitation. That's something I would hope we don't see again, don't know about you. He also said: So which quotes do you believe? Those of a new starter sucking up to the fans, or those of a bitter ex-employee trying to justify poor form and a pay cut. Or neither?

If it was (b) then we're f***ed. If Ashley's going to lie to or mislead the manager then we're never going to be able to get a decent manager to stay for any length of time, and I don't care how many promising young talented players we manage to sign, if we stick with that policy only we're always going to be a mid table side at best acting as a feeder club to those with ambition*. Edit: * That's the ambition to win things, not just the ambition to make a tidy profit.

Ideal scenario: Hughes -> Chelsea Allardyce -> City Mcclaren -> Blackburn

We haven't signed him because Keegan's being a t*** and dragging his feet so he can get the experienced Premiership players he wants instead. He's better than Crouch already but if he goes on to be a top player over the next few years and we're left with Crouch doing the f***ing robot then Keegan can f*** off. Am I reading this right? You want the club to sign players the manager doesn't want? I'd rather the club went with Vetere's opinion rather than signing w*** like Crouch, Kapo and Riise yes. Same here. Keegan isn't bad in the transfer market but he's never going to do what Wenger does - he's usually wanting established stars and that's a limitation in many ways. No way should the club be buying players the manager doesn't want. It's just madness. Unless you have a really pliable manager who's willing to have his team chosen for him it's just not going to work. The manager wont pick the player, the player will get pissed off, and we'll just end up having to sell him off on the cheap after paying his wages for doing nothing. Either that or get a new manager every year.

What's your point? Mine was simply that Spurs thought Duff was worth (over) £5m. You said it was the same situation as Spurs which it wasn't, Spurs didn't have a young player like N'Zogbia as first choice who had just put in an excellent season, they had Edgar Davids playing out on the wing and were desperate for a first choice winger. We needed other positions filling but instead we had to scrabble around signing youth players on loan from Man Utd, a Man City striker who most thought was s**** and Ollie Bernard who wasn't good enough for Rangers reserves, just because we had blown a large portion of our budget on a big name player. The "same setup" I was referring to was the Chairman/DOF setup who are buying up all the players in the world, nothing to do with their need for the player. It was a throw away comment meant to backup the fact that the amount we paid was a good price. Personally I thought it was a very important position to fill at the time (rather than buy a bunch of cheap defenders as most other people wanted). I'm interested in this "homework" and what it is exactly, please give a bit more detail about what more the club should have done that would have stopped us buying Duff. It wasn't just Duff, in fact I was referring to other players as well, one of which you mentioned, such as Luque. If you think our homework was done there maybe you can fill us in on the details of that one. Or Steve Carr for that matter. As for Duff, do you think he just suddenly started playing s*** once he crossed the M1? I can't answer your question, as I don't know what the homework involves. Does it involve looking into crystal balls which tell you when a player is going to get a serious knee injury? No it involves calling Luque's agent asking how much he wants and agreeing to the first daft figure which is demanded. So this is now just about player wages then, not about whether or not we should sign them?

What's your point? Mine was simply that Spurs thought Duff was worth (over) £5m.

I'm interested in this "homework" and what it is exactly, please give a bit more detail about what more the club should have done that would have stopped us buying Duff. It wasn't just Duff, in fact I was referring to other players as well, one of which you mentioned, such as Luque. If you think our homework was done there maybe you can fill us in on the details of that one. Or Steve Carr for that matter. As for Duff, do you think he just suddenly started playing s*** once he crossed the M1? I can't answer your question, as I don't know what the homework involves. Does it involve looking into crystal balls which tell you when a player is going to get a serious knee injury?

We haven't signed him because Keegan's being a t*** and dragging his feet so he can get the experienced Premiership players he wants instead. He's better than Crouch already but if he goes on to be a top player over the next few years and we're left with Crouch doing the f***ing robot then Keegan can f*** off. Am I reading this right? You want the club to sign players the manager doesn't want?

I'm interested in this "homework" and what it is exactly, please give a bit more detail about what more the club should have done that would have stopped us buying Duff. I don't get your logic here really. First you agree with Mourinho that ideally you should have 2 players for each position capable of playing in the first team, but then you say a 20 year old who is still developing should be the first choice, and so I guess a younger player (who is capable of holding their own in the premiership) should have been brought in instead of Duff? Good luck finding that player, or did you mean we should have played Pattison more? N'Zogbia was pushed to the fore ahead of his time because Luque turned out to be shit. There's no shame for him in being put back to notionally 2nd choice behind a more experienced player. A young player with the desire to improve himself will use it as a chance to learn and as a personal challenge to make the manager pick him. It gives them a reason to improve further, rather than being just able to sit back on their laurels and think they've made it. He'd still get plenty of substitute time (great for a young players confidence as the opposition is tiring) and games when the 1st choice player was injured or rested. In the end he got plenty of games in the 06-07 season, and did nothing to suggest he should have been made 1st choice ahead of Duff. We had potentially 50-60 games that season. That's far too many for a 20 year old to be playing 90 minutes in. Without the benefit of hindsight, for £5m Duff was as good a signing as you'll get (the same setup at Spurs that everyone is now so jealous of certainly thought so).

Option 1 - Stay at Blackburn for years where it's going to be very hard to maintain a European spot on a limited budget, so all the time your reputation is fading. Option 2 - Go to city and get a £3m/year, 3 year contract + pots of cash to improve a decent squad. Either do well (more easily than you would at Blackburn) and improve your reputation, or get sacked after 6 months when you're not in the top 4 and leave for a new job with £9m in your pocket and reputation intact. Being sacked by Man City will not do him any favours (other than financially.) Unlike Sven he doesn't yet have a world reputation to fall back on. Would you say Allardyce has a worse reputation now than he did 12 months ago? Other than amongst Newcastle supporters I don't think he has, everyone else thought he was doing a great job and was very unfairly dismissed.

Option 1 - Stay at Blackburn for years where it's going to be very hard to maintain a European spot on a limited budget, so all the time your reputation is fading. Option 2 - Go to city and get a £3m/year, 3 year contract + pots of cash to improve a decent squad. Either do well (more easily than you would at Blackburn) and improve your reputation, or get sacked after 6 months when you're not in the top 4 and leave for a new job with £9m in your pocket and reputation intact.

So tempted to sign up to a City forum as Tsaksven Siliwanka and stir up some shit. With Hughes being ex Man U, he's not going to get much leeway with City fans if he doesn't get off to a good start next season.

Oh so now it's only 25 year olds is it, when the entire point everyone was making was about the relative unknowns and had nothing to do with age? And now it's capped out at 3m when no one set a cap? Well it wasn't the point I was making, his age was integral to my point - ie that he's unlikely to develop any further as a player. What you see now is what you'll get. If he we're 19 or 20 it's a completely different proposition, and I'd be happy that the club was willing to pay that much for someone they thought had potential.

Without the benefit of hindsight, I think most on here would have said Barton would be a bit better than Parker. I knew people would pick up on the Smith - Dyer comparison, but the vast majority were happy to see Dyer leave, and thought Smith would be a bit more effective. (Do you think we'd have done better last season hanging on to him?) The vast majority? I think that's stretching it. I think we'd have been better off if Dyer had stayed, plenty of times this season we've seen a team that's been crying out for more pace which he would have offered us, he also had a decent understanding with Martins when they played up top together, people didn't like him though because he didn't work hard which is kind of funny really since he was replaced by a bloke who offers nothing apart from charging around and working hard to close people down. Fair enough Dyer wanted to leave but not replacing him with a player of similar pace and the ability to stretch games was the first nail in Allardyce's coffin for me. I put "(injury prone) Dyer" for a reason. Now admittedly no-one could have predicted a broken leg, but even if he'd not been out the whole of last season with that, there's every chance he would have broken down in some other way. That was a large part of why most were not sorry to see him go. Regardless, ignore Smith & Dyer, I just put them in for completeness anyway. Unless you want to put the performance of the team last season down to 1 player, the basic point of my post was - you don't improve a team by replacing your average players with slightly better average players. You need to replace your average players with quality players, and that is why I find this proposed signing completely underwhelming.

Like most of the s*** signıngs Arsenal make of players most have never heard of . How many 25 year olds have Arsenal signed for <£3m like?

Without the benefit of hindsight, I think most on here would have said Barton would be a bit better than Parker. I knew people would pick up on the Smith - Dyer comparison, but the vast majority were happy to see Dyer leave, and thought Smith would be a bit more effective. (Do you think we'd have done better last season hanging on to him?)

For every Solano there are 10 Bassedas'. Faye > Bramble Cacapa > Moore Rozenhal > Onyewu Enrique > Babayaro Beye > Solano @ RB Barton > Parker Smith > (injury prone) Dyer Geremi > Pattison Viduka > Sibierski Allardyce > Roeder Improvements throughout, Europe here we come. What could possibly go wrong?