Kanj

Any manager who could save the rot, keep our top players interested and do his job in training and on the touch-line.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to turn on our own players, but to suggest the one striker we depend upon to fire us to safety missing four big chances in a match we eventually lose against relegation rivals is "not a problem at all" is a bit odd.. Well obviously I'd have rather he scored those chances, but apart from the one he blasted over (that I acknowledged in my post) I don't really see what else he could have done on the others. Header was a magnificent save, contact on the volley was probably too perfect and the cross from Debuchy was smothered well. He didn't score, but it doesn't mean he was poor. Sometimes you've just got to admit that the opposition goalkeeper had a great game. The real problem was how easy he had it in the second half. Spot on Dave

No excuses for that awful fucking match.

Agents have exerted far too much power in the recent years imo. The "best interests" of the client/player used to be for footballing reasons and financial hand-in-hand. It seems more and more today, the "best interests" of the client/player are money and money only, on top of a little more money.

PLEASE BE TRUE

Right on. We need to add a no shop provision to our bids. Yep. Exclusivity would be helpful to us. I think it's nonsense that our bids are getting highjacked or shopped to other clubs after we get them accepted. Really poor on seller if that's true. Our policy of backing down in "auctions" doesn't help either. We don't even low ball bid and increase to our "ceiling" it seems. We just offer what we can pay max, say to the seller take it or leave it, f*** off if the deal requires any brain work. Obviously these deals aren't going to be clear, cut and dry anymore. We aren't even adapting to these changing conditions either ffs. Would it be better to stealth with multiple offers for different players? Obviously not versed in footbal transactions, but I'd think that would be a way around it. Having a better relationship with the selling club would be helpful too. A p*ssed off seller isn't going to help us out at all. We've been on the fortunate end of getting quiet deals done during the Ba/Cabaye/Marv summer, but now the selling clubs and player reps have caught on to us. We've GOT to adapt our policy or we will see more and more of this. Everyone knows we are cheap and won't move our bids up much (ie like Madras said, De Jong, Ba etc) so if they get wind we won't up our bid, then your West Ham's of the world will up their bid by 500k and if the player isn't totally in love with joining us, then we'll lose out. Again, I'm only trying to apply what I've done in my own career in transactions for my company and take some of those elements and apply them to football. I know we've not a clue what is going on with the deals, but we have quite a strict wage policy and valuation policy that has gotten us this far, but it sure could use some tinkering. Thanks for the considered reply. Don't worry too much Ashley and lambyarse are clueless about football anyway. They've got lucky with a couple of deals and thought it would just continue like that (low-tight bidding). The competition have adapted and have our deals on their radar what with our recent scouting prowess. Either we go for exclusivity in the first phase (no leaking or some kind of penalty clause) or we tie up deals in 24hrs (give selling club a short deadline). why would the selling club go with an exclusivity dealand what agent is going to dash into a deral if he thinks he can drum up intrest from elsewhere ? Why have they done so before? have they ? never heard of it, thats not to say they haven't. what would they have to gain ? Well how else have we done these signings 'out of the blue' that some are clinging to right now? Cisse springs to mind. £9m, a free-scoring striker and it was a done deal within three hours of it being known he were even in talks to sign him. Why wasn't he touted around for weeks? This is what I've been aluding to. Thanks for that. How did we do these deals so smoothly? Assume he had 1 agent, he was keen, the club were happy to do business and not drive up price and it was done and dusted. Had we failed to agree on something, sure his agent & club could go and find a new buyer or go to the next highest interested party. Yep. That's why this is frustrating to me. Not having exclusivity to negotiate a terms of a contract that is accepted by the buyer makes these deals fucking impossible to get done if we have a policy of minimal negotiation/bend on fee and not wanting to get involved in transfers involving multiple middle-men & agents. And if getting exclusivity is not something that is normal in football transactions (its very, very normal in real estate transactions) then we clearly need to reassess our transfer policy if these sort of things are going to happen more and more.

Pieters seems like a crazy fool. I like him more now.

Right on. We need to add a no shop provision to our bids. Yep. Exclusivity would be helpful to us. I think it's nonsense that our bids are getting highjacked or shopped to other clubs after we get them accepted. Really poor on seller if that's true. Our policy of backing down in "auctions" doesn't help either. We don't even low ball bid and increase to our "ceiling" it seems. We just offer what we can pay max, say to the seller take it or leave it, f*** off if the deal requires any brain work. Obviously these deals aren't going to be clear, cut and dry anymore. We aren't even adapting to these changing conditions either ffs. Would it be better to stealth with multiple offers for different players? Obviously not versed in footbal transactions, but I'd think that would be a way around it. Having a better relationship with the selling club would be helpful too. A pissed off seller isn't going to help us out at all. We've been on the fortunate end of getting quiet deals done during the Ba/Cabaye/Marv summer, but now the selling clubs and player reps have caught on to us. We've GOT to adapt our policy or we will see more and more of this. Everyone knows we are cheap and won't move our bids up much (ie like Madras said, De Jong, Ba etc) so if they get wind we won't up our bid, then your West Ham's of the world will up their bid by 500k and if the player isn't totally in love with joining us, then we'll lose out. Again, I'm only trying to apply what I've done in my own career in transactions for my company and take some of those elements and apply them to football. I know we've not a clue what is going on with the deals, but we have quite a strict wage policy and valuation policy that has gotten us this far, but it sure could use some tinkering.

except we did up our bid for de jong and we did deal with ba's multiple agents. what you have to remember is that we know very little of what goes on. I know and you're right too.

I'm going to add that transactions are my trade. I work in acquisitions, so this process does intrigue me. If you can't secure exclusivity In a deal, then a deal can collapse or the bogey price could move at any time. So fine, if in football that's not possible to secure exclusivity or whatever, then deal makers need to be aware of the volatility, which ours are aware of. So If we can't get our heads wrapped around that fact, and it pisses us off to the point we hold on our terms - then we won't sign the players we target unless the seller, the player, and his reps don't have other motives (in terms of fee, terms and other clauses). One of those parties can make the deal complicating, and as it stands we don't prefer to do those nor do we like to do them. Are the Club's deal makers wrong? I don't fucking know, but I'll point at the results from summer and January so far, and we've not signed the players we need.

We've already heard the board say we don't do bidding wars and we won't deal with complicating transfers with multiple agents etc. those are deals that require brainwork no? I mean im putting 2 and 2 together, but that clearly seems to be the case with many of our recent targets, if the rumors are to be believed.

Of course I don't man. I'm speculating like everyone else on here. Just frustrating that we seem to be resolved to only bid once and stop there. I'm saying we seem to be too strict in our policies and in return we are losing out on players.

Right on. We need to add a no shop provision to our bids. Yep. Exclusivity would be helpful to us. I think it's nonsense that our bids are getting highjacked or shopped to other clubs after we get them accepted. Really poor on seller if that's true. Our policy of backing down in "auctions" doesn't help either. We don't even low ball bid and increase to our "ceiling" it seems. We just offer what we can pay max, say to the seller take it or leave it, fuck off if the deal requires any brain work. Obviously these deals aren't going to be clear, cut and dry anymore. We aren't even adapting to these changing conditions either ffs.

Retracted our 2.5m bid? No such thing as a CA on these deals anymore? Am I missing something? Surely if a club bids for someone, its accepted. It should be done in good faith to let the club work the deal out? This nonsense is the complete opposite of actual business transactions too by the way. Fucking frustrating.

If he ever sacked Dekka and brought in a football man to be our chairman and really turned things around from the board's point of view and became more competitive in transfer dealings (not being so stubborn) he could easilly regain a ton of support from the common fan, in my opinion.

This could be a fantastic signing, top analysis by Tooj. This allows for true cover for RB/LB and competition for the left back position for young Santon. Get this one done and dusted quickly, and hopefully we'll see progress on the other areas of weakness.

Performance: Top 8, challenge for Europe, and an annual deep run in one of the cups. Recruitment: Continue to recruit great talent and put together a run of 1-2 years where we make a push for top 3.

Hope its true mate!

Wish he would sell us to someone who gave a fuck.

Agreed

Halfway through the month, glaring holes in the team to fill and we sign one player and lose out on another on the 11th hour right after we had some decent feel-good and momentum. Our captain could quit the club or stay; we haven't a clue. We are in a s*** position in the table and in poor form. We have 2 very winnable games and not a clue how we'll do that given the previously said form. Yeah, I think anyone who wants to be concerned has every reason to be concerned right now man. I'd love to be real happy and optimistic like I always am about things, but Im struggling with that like many of us are.

Nah, of course there are times when the valuations are far apart you need to walk away. But it was plain for everyone to see we needed another striker, another rb, and another cb capable of playing in the first team now. We signed 1 cm and left the rest alone. So we failed, b/c injuries kicked in and form never picked up, team morale suffered and we are stuck in the position we are in the table. Thats poor vision from the board. It wasn't like Debuchy was rated at 10M at his age, De Jong was 20M, and Douglas 15M. These were all pretty reasonable prices given the age. Sure in hindsight the Debuchy deal looks good right now given we paid much less than that summer quoted number from Lille, but we've once again put ourselves in this position where our Board has failed the coaching staff, players, and ultimately us as supporters of the club.

I've no problem with us being very shrewd in the market. Negotiating to get a fantastic deal is good business. Now when our valuation is some less than 1M off or so; I have issues with our deal makers not recognizing the opportunity cost associated with getting top players to help ensure a better results, finish, etc. Debuchy, Douglas, and De Jong or whoever we wanted in this summer - ALL of those players should have been brought in. ALL of those players would have helped our squad size, morale and ultimately our results. I've also no issue with us having a wage structure, and kudos to the club for getting this structure in place and being able to have the players we have on those sort of wages. But also, there comes a time when the wage ceiling needs to be increased at a certain time to ensure we continue to get top players and continue to pay our best players commensurate with their status in the team, performance, etc. For all the hard work Graham Carr and his team put into scouting and such, we continue to undo his hard-work with our transfer fee policy and our wage structure. Fucking frustrating this club at times. Painful when you look at all this city, stadium and supporters offer. Can't help but wonder, why us? Whenever we fail to sign someone/build the squad whenever we gain any momentum whatsoever.

The caption under the pic of her in a bikini "Hot model...Sylvie van der Vaart" FFS

Like I needed another reason to be pissed off with Harry