TRon

get a grip ffs

Bow wow wow yippy yo yippy yay :bng:

Any 20 year old in the Championship who even remotely looks like a striker will probably come with a price tag of £6m with no guarantee he could score at a higher level. That's just the way the British market is. Could get Andy Keogh for £4m, no problem. Stick a £2m bid in for Sharp from Sheff United whilst we're at it. Perfect. Or £4m could get you Shola with a better scoring record. Maybe we should wait till he moves and then buy him back. Keogh's much better though. What's your point? My point is that usually English youngsters command the sort of price tag which should get you the finished article. Never seen Keogh to be fair. If he's worth £4m and can be bought for that then I'm all for it.

That's interesting...we appear to have signed Snoop Dogg. Is he a direct replacement for Smith?

My concerns are the same as last season, i.e., the midfield lacks legs through the middle. Butt, Geremi and Barton are all a bit pedestrian especially when played in the same team. On the plus side, Jonas looks quick so we are pretty well served out wide now.

much better :clap:

Can't say I agree with this. I think that with a couple of good, first-team quality signings we'd have plenty of cause for optimism for the coming season. Obviously our preperation for the August schedule isn't very good, but realistically anything more than 3 points from those 3 games would be fantastic, so it's not as important as most years. I think we're set for keepers and in defence, assuming Collocini comes in and maybe a squad player who can play left-back. The key is what system we're playing IMO, if it's the 4-3-3 we finished last year with then one more signing would do me. In midfield we've Butt and Guthrie to fight it out for the holding role, with Barton, Milner, N'Zogbia, Geremi and Spiderman vying for the spots flanking them in the midfield three. Then up top we've Viduka, Owen, Martins and Duff (I hope to see him used as back-up to Martins, in a sort of wide striker role with a target man ala Viduka to play off). If we can sell Smith and get in someone to challenge Viduka for his spot as target man then it's not too bad by any means. Baptista, if available, would be perfect because he could play up front or fill in for Owen in the deep striker role should Owen be absent. If we're going for a 4-4-2 then we need a starting quality CM rather than a forward, and then also a 4th choice striker, but I hope that won't bethe case personally. Guthrie doesn't look physical enough to be a holding player, at least not yet. Butt, along with Geremi and Barton are either too old or too slow to be playing week in week out in the same team. Duff isn't a striker and Viduka won't play much, so there's plenty room for improvement to that squad.

In any case, I would say agree that signing a decent striker is at least as important as a creative midfielder. We have other options in midfield, we have Smith and Ameobi up front.

erm...ok

He needs to back up this words with giving KK large amount of money for transfers Its always easy to speak empty words when our squad is short on players like never before. He also "explains his short-term goal was to get it back on its feet". Arsenal's blueprint isn't a bad one to follow, especially for a club which has been spending recklessly on wages for players who weren't earning them.

Let's discuss ways in which Alan Smith might get murdered in an alternative universe. I'll start the ball rolling: a pick axe up the arse. The blow would be delivered by an 8ft alien with abnormally large biceps. Called Kev.

Well I agree with one quote and not so much with the other one.

Those "2-3 players of decent quality" gets you a mid table team at best. We'd had a bad season, but we still had one of the better squads in the league at that time and we needed to replace Shearer. Maybe instead of buying Coloccini we should have bought "2-3 defenders of decent quality" to "strengthen the squad" instead? No. Buying a load of "decent quality" players every year gets you absolutely nowhere unless you are a scouting genius or get very lucky. I'd far rather we spent the budget on 2-3 quality "trophy signings" than 6-7 players that might be a bit better than what we have and "improve the squad" but bloat the wage bill. Talking of Shearer, he was the ultimate "trophy signing" yet I don't see too many complaining about that. Buying Shearer was adding to an already strong squad. If he didn't arrive we still had Ferdinand, Beardsley and Asprilla. If we spent £17m on one player -Owen - and he was injured, who were our back up strikers?

Smith must die. That is all. Everton will probably up the offer a bit and hopefully Smith will bite his lip and accept. Otherwise he should be playing for the reserves next season. On the bench.

Any 20 year old in the Championship who even remotely looks like a striker will probably come with a price tag of £6m with no guarantee he could score at a higher level. That's just the way the British market is. Could get Andy Keogh for £4m, no problem. Stick a £2m bid in for Sharp from Sheff United whilst we're at it. Perfect. Or £4m could get you Shola with a better scoring record. Maybe we should wait till he moves and then buy him back.

I don't agree that the strikers are sorted out. If either Owen or Martins are injured we are short on numbers. We need another one in before the window closes.

The Owen signing was a feelgood signing and underlined a lot wrong with the club at the time. It was daft money paid on one player because it looked spectacular. A sensible approach would have been to strengthen the squad by buying 2-3 players of decent quality if buying Owen meant we couldn't afford anyone else.

Any 20 year old in the Championship who even remotely looks like a striker will probably come with a price tag of £6m with no guarantee he could score at a higher level. That's just the way the British market is.

http://football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_3948840,00.html Zigic is obviously their 2nd choice striker after Shola knocked them back then...

I'd love it to be true, but I can't believe some journalist wouldn't have picked up on the story by now if it was the case. Although scratch that. Most of the piss-heads just copy stories from the web anyway.

If we are looking for quick gratification then there's reason to feel disappointed as we haven't splurged money like some may have been expecting. If you take a longer term view though, a lot of what is currently going on at the club is pretty good. We are weeding out over-paid non-performers, and the signings so far look pretty good in comparison. It might not be obvious, but the squad is slowly and surely being upgraded. We are setting up a decent base for future progress.

No one's going to pay it though, so they'll end up dropping the price IMO.

The squad is light in a couple of key positions for me to be optimistic at the moment, but I trust this will be put right before the window closes.

I see the Journal is now reporting a £3m fee which is more realistic. When we bought him for £6m I said at the time he was worth only half that, but thanks to us putting our faith in that fat gobshit Allardyce, we got stung. Still, £3m is better than a kick up the arse and it's another high paid waster off the books. Touch wood.

Based on what? We score more goals with no strikers.