Conjo

Only Schar I'd keep on from that list.

I'm a bit conflicted on that topic. Heart says they should not be allowed/do not deserve to play football professionally again, head says they should. It's not their fault footballers are looked up as role models (they shouldn't), and they should be allowed to work and contribute to society in the best way they can, which obviously is playing football if any club is willing to give them a chance. Lee Hughes went on to play professionally for 13 years after serving his sentence to a lot of uproar initially.

and we signed Howe, just before the window. All I know is that if I look at the squads, I'd rather have ours than any of theirs, and I think we have the better manager of them all, thus more likely to stay up than them.

I get why people are nervous as there's no guarantees in football, but I still don't understand how you can look at the table, look at Norwich, Watford, Burnley, look at their transfer business in January and think that we somehow are more likely to go down than them.

We should have enough quality in the side besides Wood to be safe, and in about a month Wilson will be back too.

"We have to put more intelligence into our players here" is a banger quote tbf

4. Was close to a 3. Find it weird that so many people think it is more likely that we'll get relegated than staying up after strengthening the squad significantly compared to every other team in the league. Oh no we failed to get a 1 goal every 5.5 game player in Lingard, how will we ever score a goal again

Happy with the players brought in, just wish they had been brought in earlier. If Howe can't get this squad to stay up, there's no excuses really. I was prepared to let Howe stay on for a promotion run when he signed for us if we got relegated, but now I don't think I'd be satisfied with that unless we are hit by an unusual amout of injuries to key players. Really looking forward to not reading about Jessie fucking Lingard again on here in every thread after the window shuts. Think we dodged a bullett with him. We already have two players who did well for a 4 months spell, never to replicate it again, so I've been quite surprised how sought after he's been on here. It is more likely that he'd be another hard working Fraser/Almiron with little end product than the player we saw for a short spell at West Ham.

I'm the complete opposite tbh I can't see him replicating anything close what he did at West Ham a year ago. Would much rather we got some exciting talent in on top of the experience we've brought in so far. We're past the time where we took care of Man Utds forgotten and elderly. Time to build our own stars. No reason to wait until the summer.

Reason he came here was becasue he didn't get enough play time at Dortmund, and insisted on a release clause in case he didn't get enough play time here. In retrospect, unfortunately for us, Shelvey and Diame somehow was one of the best midfield pairs in the league for 4-5 months and it didn't look like he'd get much time on the pitch the following season either so he bailed. Much more prefer someone like that, who's hungry to play, compared to some of the players we currently have on our books who'll be clinging on to their contracts until the very last day even if they'll never even experience the smell of grass on a match day because they won't be able to get a better deal elsewhere than they're currently on here.

It's all speculation though, but hope you're right I'm happy either way they go tbh, as long as they aren't hindering progress like our last owner.

We'll never know. It's just as likely the budget have been revised based on results not going as we were hoping for prior to the window opening as well. Eiher way, it's reassuring to see that the owners are seemingly willing to do what is necessary to keep us up. If we stay up, the summer window to me will be more indicative of what we can expect the coming years. If we were 6-9 points better off at this stage, I'm not sure we'd spunk £25m on the likes of Wood f.ex.

Perfect signing. Can't wait to see him in action.

I'd prefer Joelinton - Bruno - Willock over Joelinton - Shelvey - Bruno, but like many others I'm almost certain it will be the latter.

Yeah, prime Robert. Easily.

Bit weird to think that if we play Joelinton, Shelvey and Bruno as a midfield 3, we'll be fielding a 100m central midfield trio.

I mean...Nketiah is more exciting and pleasing on the eye, but he is 22 and has 5 PL goals in his career while Wood as his senior has scored more than that in every season he's played, so that would be my assumption unless Nketiah has a break through moment.

Nketiah is a decent 3rd option behind Wilson and Wood imo. Would hope we could get a better CB than Burn in, but at least he will improve what we have. If we get Bruno in together with those two on top of Trippier and Wood I'd say it's been a very pleasant transfer window and that Howe has gotten the support he needs to keep us up.

This I don't agree with. This I agree with. Maybe I haven't watched enough of him, but Lingard doesn't strike me as a player that dictates a match. In his first 10 matches for West Ham he scored 9 and assisted 4 goals. He managed 0 goals & 1 assist in remaining 6 matches which is more in line with the rest of his career so it's safe to assume it is more likely a purple patch like Willock rather than being a player teams have to take special precautions against. We seem to be getting a proper CM that we've been screaming out for in Bruno. If we get him, I think our next priority should be a CB considering the amount of goals we let in.

He's 10 months younger than Joelinton, hardly up an coming talent. It's more like we're buying a top player who should be at or close to reaching his peak.

Not really fussed whether we get him or not. He would definitely be useful for the next 4 months, but not crtical for survival imo if we get Bruno and a CB in before the window shuts. There's younger and better players we can bring in for next season.

I love that Supermac video. It must have been so much fun to watch him play. Built like a tank, seemingly able to leave every defender for dead even when they are trying to piggyback onto him on his way to goal, agile, tough in duels. For anyone that has seen him play, or watched more than that video of him - did he have any weaknesses?

Never heard of him but very pleased to see we are seemingly adressing our weakest position.

I was mostly a lurker on here at the time of signing up back in '06, but do remember fondly @Gemmill contributions to the board for a short while until you stopped posting. Hope you and the other new/old ones stick around

@ManDoon