It’s going to be an interesting transfer window

And a testing one for the board. I guess that bids will be coming in for Cole.

I also assume there’s a little bit (not much, but a bit) of a transfer budget from the sale of Kitching once we have taken into account balancing the books.

the question is do they ‘go for it’. In my opinion we aren’t close to last seasons team but that said, a strong window helped that team immensely. Same again and given league position we have a shout of the play offs, which are then a bit of a lottery (see sheffield Wednesday winning the lucky ticket last season)

If decent money comes in for Cole then I will assume we will sell him - is he out of contract at the end of the season? It will certainly be a tough decision for the board if so and anything north of £1m is tabled

 

It does and following this terrible one in the summer let’s hope they really pull it out this time. Time will tell.

 

We won’t get anything close to a million for Cole. He’s a decent league one striker, but out of contract at the end of the season and he’ll turn 29 next year too.

Any bid of about 500k would do it I’d suggest.

 

Was it really that terrible though? We upgraded our keeper - nobody can legislate for him getting injured later on. We also replaced our entire back line through necessity, having raked in the best part of £10 million quid. The new central defenders have looked shaky at times, but that's only to be expected. De Gevigney and Lopata both look like they'll be excellent signings and McCart has been very dependable. The only dubious signing for me was Andy Dallas. His stats suggested he was worth a punt, but the fact that he was loaned out so quickly makes the deal look completely pointless.

 

Surely he's worth far more to us than £500k though, especially if we go up. Whatever happens he'll leave with my good wishes. Has become an excellent L1 striker and I reckon he'll bang in goals at this level for another 3-4 seasons. Nowhere near good enough for the second tier though.

 

I see your logic

but football clubs defy logic- especially when they’re on a desperate relegation scrap!

 

I disagree that we upgraded our keeper. Collins cuts it in the championship, Roberts was surplus to requirements at Boro. That's not to say that he did a sound job up until his injury, definitely the best signing but he's only on loan.

 

We got nowhere near 10m for Anderson and Kitchen. The 10m quoted was for the fees combined of those 2 and Thomas that was never our player to start off with. Nareev even said at the fans forum that so far we have only received 1m from those transfers.

 

What did you suggest for Kitchen. Regardless of contract. Not meaning anything by it. But I reckon we'd want more than £500k. Or may as well keep him. And I reckon this lot will.

 

That’s why he’ll be here after January.
Also unlikely it will be in players interests as he will be able to command a signing on fee that goes to him not a transfer to the club.
Only way I see him going is if a club in top 1/2 of Championship comes in with around £1 million as it could fit ours and his requirements. But can’t see it.

 

I honestly can't see us selling him for anything less than a million, so I don't see him going this window. It's not often we let our best players go in January, unless we have no choice (obviously there's one or two exceptions), so I'm not sure that'll necessarily change now unless we get an offer we can't refuse for Cole.

 

There is no way De gevigney, Lopata and McCart were adequate replacements for a League 1 team looking at Playoffs/automatic.

Three or four major signings minimum needed, not lower league punts. I wouldn't class that as 'going for it' either, that is just a basic necessity that should have been done in the summer.

 

Strangely perhaps, but we're doing better in points than last season at the same stage... 34 pts from 19 games, 33 from 19 last season. The league leader had 45 points then.. and now, albeit 20 games this season, 21 last season. The main difference is we were 3rd then, 7th now.

 

I said the best part of £10 million, and I'm well aware we didn't get the money up front. That doesn't mean we can discount it.

 

Still nowhere near 10 million though bud, and when it's coming in over 4 years it's no good to us when we need it now

 

Plenty of people said very similar things about Mads and Kitching when they signed. And they were partially correct, in that both of them took a while to get up to speed. They were both pretty good when they did though, and I'm sure Lopata and De Gevigney will also be integral players. McCart is clearly a stop-gap but apart from a nightmare 20 minutes against Pompey and a sloppy performance at Derby (in both cases he was far from the only culprit) he's not really let us down. A lot of people judged him before he'd kicked a ball purely on the basis he was a Rotherham reserve.

 

I could do with my entire annual salary going into my bank account today rather than just getting paid for the work I did in November. But that doesn't mean the rest of it won't be any use to me in the future.

 

I get what you are saying bud, but everybody seems to think we have this massive war chest of funds available in January because we sold x,y and z but the reality is we don't unless the owners put it in and take it back once those funds do hit

 

Most transfer deals are in staged payments I think mate. So if we are getting £250k per month for those deals, we can use that £250 k per month to buy players in staged payment deals. We pay those clubs £150k per month on the drip.

 

No I don’t believe most think we have a ‘ massive war chest’ many people will be aware that money is paid in instalments. This means that the board can do likewise when buying players. They probably couldn’t/wouldn’t do so to the extent they wanted to if there wasn’t these future funds coming in.