The second worst transfer window in history.

I know we are paying for the Conway situation.

Who is this squad could even hit 10 goals?

Relegation battle. Hope me can keep MD as manager, but he must feel let down by the board. Sorry to be so negative, but I had not contemplated it being this bad. Norwood & Cole up front? Bring back Peachey & Price.

 

I'd be amazed if Duff feels let down or surprised. Any prospective manager only needed to come on here and read the comments of those with financial nous to figure out what a state we are in let alone probably being fully aware of the situation from the footballing grapevine.
If he expected anything other than a transition season with a lot of belt tightening then I'm afraid he's not as clued up as I'm hoping he is.

 

To not sign any striker though? I'm perplexed.

 

Just mind boggling. Loads of young Prem & Championship strikers went out on loan yesterday. Just where were we looking….or weren’t we? Signed 3 decent players but yet again the squad is lopsided. Packed with centre halves and midfielders but no decent striker or cover at LWB.

 

And still Derby are signing players…

 

So so so rubbish. Had weeks and weeks to replace players that have left and fill the gaps yet they haven't done it. Ended up with an abundance of CMs and CBs but we are incredibly short up front and now only have one LWB barring a fax machine error that sees the shambolic Styles loan deal fail.

Serious questions have to be asked. It is not like they haven't had the time to sort this out, and there have been loads of players move around L1 this summer that would have been affordable/achievable for us that haven't been signed or looked at.

 

It hasn't been the best, but I don't think it's as bad as people are making out.

We needed another striker, we all know that, Michael Duff has said that, and I've no doubt we were trying to bring one in.

For me, what was more important yesterday was adding creativity to the side that we've desperately lacked. Benson seems to have upped his game this season, as has Thomas, but neither are showing quite enough consistency, or creating enough chances. Neither did Styles in all honesty either. Martin and Phillips should hopefully go some way to addressing that. Getting that element right is key for me, because I find it difficult to criticise the strikers of we aren't creating chances for them.

My only gripe though with a lack of another striker signing, is that Cole and Norwood don't fit our style of play. Well Cole does to a degree, but the high press doesn't suit Norwood at all. For me, if we're going with 2 up front, it'll have to be Aitchison and Tedic. Both at least put a shift in, and I think if we've recruited someone who can provide that killer pass from midfield, we'll start to see an improvement in our forward players.

Oh and Andersen and Collins are still here, 2 players who many said at the end of last season would be sold.

The Styles situation is a bit of an odd one. But if you consider that he's got 18 months left on his deal (assuming we extend his contract, which we will), and we've not received an offer that we're happy with, and he doesn't want to be here, then moving him off the wage bill on a temporary basis isn't the worst move. He's one of the better earners at the club, and we'll still be in a position to try and command a good fee for him in January or even next summer, particularly if he performs well at Millwall.

I think we were only a striker away from doing all the business we intended to.

 

Much as I'd love to press Like to all that Archey, the last sentence is the killer for me. We can have all the creativitiy in the world but without someone to convert it all goes to waste.
I'm the happiest clapper imaginable (and I don't give a toss what anyone else thinks of that), Ive stuck around for over 60 years and seen us through worse than this. But this morning even I feel massively disappointed, bemused and deflated.
Spectemur Agendo indeed.

 

Totally agree with you here.

Another forward would have been perfect but I'd prefer us to focus on what we have over what we haven't. The three additions over the last couple of days look good and should have the experience at this level to improve the side. We've started to see signs of improvement under Duff and I'm sure this will accelerate with these additions. A midfield of Benson, Kane and Philips with Caddis and Edwards as wings back looks promising and should be more creative. I don't think we'll be flying up the table just yet but I think we should be able to hold our own in the middle of the table until Christmas at least when we can revaluate and kick on with further additions following the next transfer window.

 

Easily the worst I can remember. We go into a season with Cole as our our only fit forward option. I discount Norwood who looks spent and can’t manage more than 30 minutes. Squad has relegation written all over it. It’s very hard to see any player scoring more than 10 goals.

Squad lacks quality and is unbalanced. The only ones at this stage ready for a top end L1 team are Collins and Mads (no idea of the new signings at the moment so excluding them obviously).

I would either play without forwards or chuck Jaio in. Don’t think we have other options.

 

This is a bit over the top isn't it?

We're short a striker, yes. We have signed two though, which I think people are forgetting, and Norwood's record should suggest he'll be able to score goals when up to speed.

Look at the players we've brought in - I like the look of Connell, Cadden, Martin and Phillips. We'll see about the others. And we've at least still got Andersen

 

Crazy talk. Worse than Summer 2019? When we lost the whole defence and GK, plus big Kieffer, and signed Schmidt, Radlinger and Bambo to replace them?

 

Norwood will never get up to speed.
He's spent....

 

yes. Absolutely.

Schmidt and Bambo walk into this side. Liam Kitching makes Bambo look like Virgil Van Dyke

How many regular first teamers have we lost 8/9 + 3 influential loan players. and of the replacements so far only one looks a good enough. Obviously too early to judge the new signings.

 

13 league goals in the last 2 seasons. Unfit.

 

I guess time will tell. But we have Norwood who has been prolific in his career, as has Cole in brief spells when he's been given the service.

Do we have a 20 goal man? No. 15? probably not. But if we create enough chances, we might have several players who can hit the 7-10 goals mark to keep us competitive. We've 6 different goalscorers in the league already. It's all assumptions I know, and I guess I'm trying to look for the good in a desperate situation.

 

Crazy. Schmidt?? Bambo????

And that time round we were on the back of a great season with some money to spend. This time we had a terrible season to bounce back from and were completely skint.

 

Luke Jephcott to Swindon; Coburn to Bristol Rovers; Admiral Muskwe to Fleetwood - all strikers and surely we could be competitive with these teams for a deal for just one of them. I wonder if we were in for any of these, or one or two others. On the other hand, we need to get behind who we now have, because at least they seem to want to be here and improve the status of the team, as well as their own standing. So, that's Cole, Aitchison, Norwood, Tedic and, maybe of necessity, Jalo and Dyer. Well, it could be worse and we need to encourage all of these to perform and not get on their backs if the goals don't easily flow at the start. Surely the deficit must be almost wiped with the outgoings and Phillips looks the best of the bunch of newcomers as a box-to-box midfielder. Down days, but at least the first team had a good result last week at Ipswich, so we need to keep that going into Saturday. COYR.

 

Schmidt would score more goals for us and Bambo is a still playing at a higher level. The expectations were higher Certainly higher but we didn’t lose our entire starting eleven minus a CB and goalkeeper and replace them with no one in particular and end up relying on Devante cole as our sole striker

 

And there I rest my case.

Jalo is the only option now as I see it. Hope to be proved wrong. Unless Iseka gets out of Nando's & gets his boots on, but that looks unlikely. He's hardly gonna run out of chicken on a 3 year contract.