Number one priority. A proper centre forward or two.

Yesterday once again showed our lack of presence up front. Try as they might our current and only two are not the sort to get us the goals from the type of play we seem to fall back on, high ball.
Despite reservations about the Winnall situation he could at times out jump defenders, he had a spring in his legs that the two we have now don't seem to have. Plus Winnall had the benefit of some fabulous crosses from Hourihane. Anyway that's by the by.
I found myself yesterday admiring Yiadom more and more, thinking that he could possibly make a good midfield player. His control is good and his passing to feet is excellent. Could he step into that role and use this skill by passing to the forwards' feet rather than in the air.
But I'd still like a big guy up front, someone to knock defenders about cos at the moment they knock us about without a care.
Aylott and Parker, Wilkinson and Hendrie, Little and Large.

 

Marley Watkins baby...

 

You're bang right there. I can't question Bradshaw's ability or work rate, but he needs to work alongside a 'big lad', or even a battler like Watkins.
Watched a lot of Matty James off the ball yesterday, he has a great footballing brain. If Yids went forward, he'd be the man to cover the vacant right back space when our attacks broke down. But the Matty James situation reminds me of something me Mam said years ago when I brought a stray dog home "Don't get too attached, we can't keep him!"

 

Bradshaw and Watkins up front for the rest of the season.

 

Its the only real option, as neither Bradshaw or Armstrong can work as a lone striker, and they look far two one dimensional together.
Two very similar strikers, both with no height or pace.

We made a massive gaffe in the transfer window letting Winnall leave, without a replacement being in place.
I know we were in for Bogle, but Winnall should have not been allowed to force the transfer. Would have shown other players
putting in transfer requests that their disloyalty wouldn't be tolerated.

 

Bang on. James is different class. Will be very hard to replace next season.
We will have a big shopping list, as Hecky admits.

 

The key thing for me isn't that we let players leave but that the window shows just how unprepared we were in SIGNING players. No replacement lined up for hourihane even though we all knew his leaving was likely. No replacement lined up for Bree. No replacement lined up for white even though he had spent half the year out injured. No replacement planned for winnall.

How can we have been so badly prepared? It isn't like January came out of nowhere

 

You may be right, perhaps we were not prepared, but there are alternative scenarios.

Perhaps we made approaches but the clubs were not prepared to sell. Perhaps we made approaches but clubs wanted more than we were prepared to pay. Perhaps the players we wanted would be available for less during the summer. Perhaps we have players in mind but our strategy was that we were virtually safe and there was no point paying more in January than they would cost in the summer.

You see, I think that the run that the club has had entitles the people running it to the benefit of any doubt that I might have.

 

Perhaps you are right and you most likely are but that still means we were unprepared as we failed to properly research the value of those players and failed to ensure we had backups identified.

 

No, it means that January is a good time to sell, but the summer is a better time to buy it if have the time and patience to wait.

 

I hear this a lot. January it's easy to sell players but hard to buy them. Doesn't every player that is sold get bought by someone else?

 

Yes, of course they do. However, the pressure of possible promotion or relegation forces clubs to trade at the wrong time. We were not under that added pressure, so it makes more sense for us not to trade in January.

 

I have to disagree. If January means we lose our players for lower than they're worth because contracts are expiring then logically it means we should be able to pick players up for lower than they're worth because THEIR contracts are expiring.

I also disagree that we had no added pressure. We were just shy of the play offs with a £100m windfall in sight. We chalked **** on any chance of getting that and have instead seen us slide slowly downwards. We may not have gone up, probably wouldn't. We most likely aren't going down either but momentum will now not be taken into the new season. We will attract poorer quality players than a team who is around the playoffs, season ticket sales will not be as high, merchandise sales not as high etc and for a club posting a £1m loss who can't compete on wages then isn't that added pull for fans and players absolutely vital for us? If wages can't give us the edge on our rivals then league position has to and we threw that away by waiting till the summer where we are in a weaker position

 

We should go for someone like Omar Bogle

 

If you are saying that we should have sold Winnall, Hourihane and Bree in the previous summer transfer window, and that they would have all been worth more then, well I have to disagree. None of those players would have had a chance to prove themselves in the Championship. They would have effectively been sold on the basis of their League 1 performances only. If you are saying that they would have been worth more if they had 2 years left on their contracts, then you would be right. If you are saying that the fans would have been happy to sell a player with two years left on his contract at say 50% more, then I do not agree. Unfortunately, we cannot change the timeline. We are struck with it, and struck with the consequences whether we like it or not.

The decision was do we cash in now, or do we let them walk for nothing in the summer. All the rest is conjecture. We could debate all of the stuff in the second paragraph, but I see little point as it is all baseless opinion and rhetoric.

 

I wasn't saying anything of the sort. I was saying that if year after year we are forced to sell our players cheaply in January due to expiring contracts then logically other players must be available cheaply due to THEIR expiring contracts.

The second paragraph isn't 'baseless opinion' at all. It is factual that we cannot compete on wages and it is factual that that a higher league finish attracts more fans for the following season.

 

There is little reason to believe that we are about to chuck our long term plan in the bin. Our long term plan involves developing young players, improving them and selling them on. Young players come to us because they want to improve, they want the opportunity to play first team football and they want those things at a higher level than they currently play at. Their wage demands are lower because at their age, they regard their development as being more important than their pay. They are only willing to sign short term contracts because they believe that they will be ready to move on to bigger and better things after 2 to 3 years. Others will have their own opinion on whether my explanation or yours properly reflects reality.

 

You respond as though you haven't even read the posts others make. Where did I ask the club to stop buying young hungry players?

 

We had Cameron McGeehan from Luton lined up and still tried to sign him despite the leg break. We also probably thought we'd manage to get Omar Bogle. They are both deals that maybe would have succeeded if we still had ******** Ben.

 

Jonathan Kodjia - £19m
Scott Hogan - £12m
Sam Winnall - £1m

Summat not quite right there.