We won’t be paying any transfer fees unless Connell &/or Phillips are sold, so a loan signing is most likely
The last transfer window was the measure of our ambition for me. Im not sure we will change our approach in Jan.
We have two choices if we are to buy another striker, well I say 'we' and I mean Parekh. He's come out and said we're a good side. We may be, we might have potential with good coaching and players improving and developing. But he's insinuating we should be in the playoffs with the options we have. Choice one. Fund it through Parekhs pocket money. If he's funding us to the tune of £5-8m a year already, a decent striker is going to cost you a big chunk of money in wages, transfer fees and agent costs. Choice two. Fund it through squad trimming. That would take an awful lot of doing and I don't think there is much you could save by offing a few players like McCarthy and Cotter. Neither does loaning more out generate funds, it just saves a very nominal amount of wages. The alternative is you sell an asset. We don't really have many of those and I'd say the two we'd think of first, Connell and Phillips have had a poor to average first third of the season, though I suspect we might get a fee for one or both that would generate the funds for a punt on a striker. The question is do we do that, or do we have faith that coaching and development, combined with minutes and gaining experience will make things more likely to click?
We have this debate every transfer window mainly about selling our assets and pocketing the money which just isn't true.For example we were selling Woodrow for about 4 consecutive windows ,we are selling Connell every window ,Phillips ,Cole etc etc . In the last window we spent over a million pounds without selling first.
Given the list on here I’ll go for someone I’ve never heard of from somewhere in Eastern Europe, Africa, America, Japan or anywhere.
Unless we can cut some of the squad who are on a decent wage but not anywhere close to being first choice I can only see us going down the loan route. Slonina (end his loan) Mccarthy Benson Wolfe Cosgrove Marsh all could with moving on.
I'd be very surprised if we have the funds to buy anyone of quality. We might get a youngster on loan from one of the big clubs, but that might be little improvement on what we have.
Good question. I imagine the going rate for a League 1 coach is around 50-75k pa? Much more than that and we should be asking questions. He absolutely shouldn’t be picking up a player’s wage.
So have we concluded we’re no further forward on ‘realistic targets’? Not easy, is it? Hard to imagine we couldn’t improve on Cosgrove and Marsh, but easier said than done moving them on and covering wages.
Short term , I’d definitely be working with Big Donovan! He’s quick, a handful, shown he can score goals AND he can head a ball properly on target!