Whats everyone praying for today before the window shuts and what is everyone expecting to happen? My wishlist would be 1 centre back with experience in this league on loan e.g. Hefele, Bamba, Mulgrew etc. and would love a different option up top in the Kieffer mould. My expectation is one coming in and Thiam out - the one coming in I reckon will be some random unknown defender from Europe somewhere.
Wishlist: 11 experienced Championship quality players, who can find a red shirt with every pass, tackle like Norman Hunter, and routinely hit the back of the net with more venom than the Chester Zoo reptile house. Expectation: More players from overseas, who have no physical attributes whatsoever and are more likely to give us a performance of Swan Lake.
Van Dijk and Mané on six-year deals. Straight swap with Thiam and Cavare. It should help us, and f*ck up their title winning chances. A foreign centre half, that we’ve never heard of, is more likely.
If only their parent clubs would let them leave (in Matty James' case). I like the 'Loan Watch' thread as it shows us which experienced players are moving to other clubs in the division and gives us an idea of who we haven't looked at or have failed to do a deal with.
Frustrating thing for me is this consortium are billionaires. They could bankroll a completely new team, win the last seventeen matches and gain promotion via the play-offs if they wanted.
it really winds me up when they say its hard to find experience that we can get. So many players around on the fringes of fellow champ clubs that we could 100 percent get. I could think of at least 3 or 4 defenders with lots of games under their belts in this league that we could realistically get but they wont entertain it
Thing is though mate, you could name four players and not everyone on here would agree on them being good/realistic signings for us so who’s to say Struber and the coaching staff would want them? Wages in the Championship are scary enough without seeing what second rate prem players get paid. The other risk is wanting them to be ready to come and play straight away. If they’re being let go by their parent club chances are they haven’t played much football recently.
Fair points but we simply can't and won't pay for a first teamer from a fellow champ club it just wont happen. So we would have to look at bigger clubs fringe players. So its either we do that and get someone who has lots of experience but maybe not played for a little while. Or you go for some total unknown from overseas on cheap who could be great but could be pants. Any player on books at a championship club should be fit enough to play regardless of if they are in match day squads or not, it just may be that they are lacking in match sharpness but you would hope an older more experienced player should be better equipped to cope with that.
What I want - Quality championship ready centre half on loan with a gob on him to organise our shambolic defence. What we’ll get - another European no-mark who’s not ready and out of his comfort zone in the English championship.