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I gotta say I was wearing my tinfoil hat with optimism but I am dissapointed.

One thing I will say is in his career to date Ba has had one injury so this constant claims hes injury prone is poorly judged. He may get injured again so may colocinni or anyone else.

As for not replacing Barton I believe we have we have HBa Gosling Marveaux Obertan vuckic and Cabaye all added to the midfield so I will wait to pass judgement on wether or not hes been replaced I will say though I dont see many differences between him and Cabaye they seem very similar.

to be honest I didn't want to say in the article, becuase I am willing to give him a chance, but so far Ba has been dreadful.

I'm still hoping Ba's poor performance has been down to his fasting, which is now over.


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Well lets bloody hope its down to something that wont last

Get that lad to McDonalds.

Good writeup, dave. Your pieces, at least, still bring a smile and I can use that today.

The Ruiz thing absolutely was a dummy bid (like KK said). Look at what we did. Erdinc valued at 8M, we bid 6M; Maiga valued at 10M, we bid 8M; Cisse valued at 13M, we bid 10M (again, just like KK said). I don't for a second believe we were willing to pay 10M+ for Ruiz when we weren't willing to match WBA at 4.5M for Long. There was never any plan to get a forward. On that specific point, I do think Pardew has been hung out to dry with the rest of us.

Ba is an injury risk. He has a condition in his knee that doesn't make him fail medicals outright but insurers balk at covering him. That's the line, anyway, as to why Stoke didn't buy him. He hasn't looked good yet anyway. I love how I'm seeing the same people around the blogs saying "Andy Carroll only had half a good season in the PL" and then telling me to rely on Ba-who has only had a good 12 game run in the PL-coming good.

Best largely ineffective?

Somebody please tell me how many games the magnificent Andy Carroll has played since he left us?

How many goals has he scored since he left?
How many goals has he scored this season?

As for Ba's injury, yes there is a risk that he may get a bad knee injury but Carroll's injury history isn't good reading, not only did he miss virtually the whole second half last season but he still hasn't recovered from that injury and it has come out recently that he may never recover fully from it or ever be fully fit again and all because he was out on the drink and fell off a bar stool!

Again i reiterate the fact that Ba has a better goal scoring record in the premier league than Carroll!

As for replacing Enrique with a player not as good, Enrique has had half a good season for us in the premier league, when we bought him he was older that Santon is and Santon is far more experinced than Enrique was and is! How many appearances has Enrique made in the Champions league, how many international matches has he played in? Can Enrique cover as a CB? Yes Enrique has more premier league experience but to buy a LB who has PL experience and is better than Enrique you need to look at Evra or Baines or Clichy who we couldn't afford!

We have bought a better player to replace a guy who no longer wanted to play for the team, he was another one who thought teams would be lining up to give him CL football but he ended up at Liverpool and only after they missed out on Clichy!

As for dummy bids we obviously identify players and how much our scouts or whoever value them at and we want to stick to that its not a bad way to work and avoids paying more than a player is worth!

With regard to the squad being weaker we have strengthened our goalkeeping options, we've brought in a more experienced LB, our midfield is far more mobile now and can attack with pace which we severely lacked last season! Again we have strengthened our strike force over the summer and a number of younger players have seen more pitch time and seem to be progressing into useful squad players we can now play with more than one dimension so how can it be said that the squad is now weaker?

"Best largely ineffective"

I'm tired of people ignoring Best's contribution to this team last season. The man scored 6 goals in 9 starts(and another 2 goals in his first start this year). Last season only 8 sides had players who scored more than 12 goals (and one of those was relegated), he was in form and definitely on pace to get there before seasons end prior to injury.

In just 9 starts, he scored as many as Anelka did in 27. He scored just two less than Sturridge (who many of us, myself included) would have killed to sign. Sturridge had 2 more starts and significantly more pitch time (Best was subbed off in every match). Saha scored just 7 for Everton in 22 starts (Cahill only scored 9 in his 27).


I get it, he was atrocious for us in his first half season in the championship. But he scored twice in the preseason before getting hurt and missing the entire fall half of the season last year. It's time to start giving the man some credit. He may not be the ideal front man, but if either he or Ba can notch 12 goals this season (and they both are capable of doing so) then we're going to be okay.

nice work dave just a shame your not eating humble pie....

Would of loved to be eating humble pie.

As I will love to do should Best prove me wrong, but as of yet I stand by my coment that he is largely inefective.

I will of course defend your right to be wrong.

I'm tired of people trying to convince me that Best (who I think is a fairly good player) is Shearer based on his scoring record over a few hands full of PL games. It invites a closer look: 8 goals in 13 turns into 3 in 11 if you don't consider games vs dire and relegation-bound WHU and Fulham. I'm not just picking on Best here. I said the same thing about Berba's scoring record last season.

I cede that 12 is a realistic aim for him if he keeps playing.

Also, and this is my own aside: I wish people would stop putting so much pressure on HBA to be our savior at forward. The guy has 17 goals in 130 games in his professional career. He's not a striker.

Tunyc, I agree he's not Shearer, he's a 12 goal (maybe 15 if he gets hot) striker. I don't think it's fair to remove all 5 goals from the WH and Fulham games, but even if we just give him 1 goal in each, he's scored in 5 his of 11 starts. That's not a bad record by any means. Would I like to have another striker that is better than Best? Absolutely. But to discount him as a perfectly reasonable member of this squad, a player who could finish with a dozen goals (again something only 8 PL squads had last year, one of which was relegated), is an injustice.


While I agree that Ba, Best, Lovenkrands and Shola are not an ideal front line, Best is capable of 12 goals, Ba is too if he can find form, Loven is good for a half dozen after January (he can't hit a barndoor before it), and Shola Ameobi is what it's all about. That's as good a front line as that of Everton (Reliant on Cahill, a midfielder), Fulham (Reliant on Dempsey, a midfielder), Bolton (Sturridge is gone), Stoke (Crouchie has only scored in the double digits four times in 13 seasons and 2 of those were in the Championship) or Albania (Most of you were relieved we didn't sign Bendtner). Hell, if Defoe can't get back to his form from the previous two seasons, Spurs have a weak front line too.

We are far too quick to put the necessity on a world-class striker, when so few teams in this league actually have one.

Its not the point though waffles.

those sides might not have a world class striker. But they aren't the third best supported side in the league.

They didn't have transfer profits of 42 million to supposedly re-invest.

They were not promised replacements by their owner.

They have not been consistently lied to while its obvious the profits disapear into their owners back pocket.

The sample is too small to draw conclusions about Best in the PL. It's bad methodology, statistics-wise. Leon has been a good member of the squad since he got his run of games last year. It's Loven and Ranger I would have moved this summer and I wouldn't have resigned Shola until he's 33.

EFC have Fellaini-bought for 15M after the sale of Lescott. They paid 10M for Bilyaletdinov. Fair enough, they have an even more thin squad than uss and not much more goal threat. I don't want them to be our benchmark except in terms of managerial stability and communication from the chairmen.

Fulham reliant on Dempsey? I don't think so. Zamora & Dembele are quality and would walk into our starting XI. Johnson probably would too. Then there's Ruiz...

Bolton gambled that Klasnic will come good. They still have Davies and are still dangerous from FKs. If they have a personnel problem up front it's because Elmander left for free-not sold for 35M. Again, I am not and don't want to be a Bolton supporter.

This is delayed but:

Quote:

mentalman
As for dummy bids, we obviously identify players and how much our scouts or whoever value them at and we want to stick to that it's not a bad way to work and avoids paying more than a player is worth!

Let's break it down:

-"dummy bids": Keegan said we made them and that assertion fits the narrative of our transfer window. He was manager so he's probably better informed than any of us, so...

-"obviously" is a bit strong.

-"how much our scouts or whoever value them at...we want to stick to that" - an arrogant stance at the bargaining table. Why should Sochaux/PSV/Freiburg accept our valuation when they have their own? It's a negotiation, so both sides have make concessions. When demand is high supply low (eg, last day of the window), the buyer has to make more concessions.

-"it's not a bad way to work and avoids paying more than the player is worth." - If we're in 18th place on 1 January, was it a good way to work? Again, a player's value is necessarily determined through negotation-not either side stubbornly insisting on their valuation. That is, if you want to complete a deal...

You could go into every grocery store here in NYC and refuse to shop because everything is overpriced. If a friend did so, I'd agree with him in principle, but I'd remind him that if he doesn't eventually buy food, he's going to starve.

Aye what he said

Tunyc, we were going for unproven players in this league you questioned on many occasions the suitability of some of these players and now you are saying we should of paid more for them just to secure the signing of a striker!

Clubs throughout the world think that we have all of the Carroll money to spend and any extra from the sales of Nolan and Enrique, this will put the price up aswell as the fact that they know we were desperately looking for a new striker!

So what do we do go into negotiations with a club our valuation is a few million off their inflated value we try and negotiate we cant get them to come down so we just pay whatever they are wanting for a player who may well flop as a result your all on here slagging the club off for over paying for that player!

Most clubs this season have been looking for new strikers and the majority have struggled just like us!

Again you don't seem to be getting the point. The lad from france we said was worth 8 million they said ten.

However Liverpool I will grant you massively overpaid for carroll so the funds are there.

Spend them for @#$%& sake.

42 million is all very well and good but its not sticking the ball in the back of the net.

And the majority did not have the transfer profits that were supposedly there to re-invest.

Really your faith in Ashley is quite touching, if totally misguided I wish I could join you.

Hell I am off to buy tin foil and see what the grass is like on your side.

mental: Shane Long would have suited me just fine. I was consistent in calling Cisse a quality player who can help us. I never had a bad thing to say about Pieters.

I did question the quality like Barnetta, Maiga, Derdiyok and Erdinc. That, however, is irrelevant to my opinion that our negotiating tactics appear to be asinine.

Other clubs don't think we have money, they know it!! That said, I doubt the valuations we heard were tailored for us: when Cisse and Pieters go, they'll go for at least 13M and 6M respectively. Do you think because we walked away last month that we'll be able to get Cisse for 8M in January? If not, what's the point?

You're biased in your description of the valuations-NUFC and you say inflated, PSV/Sochaux/Freiburg say market rate. To-may-tow, to-mah-tow. We didn't get a forward, and mark my words: the asking prices ain't coming down.

The fact that we didn't shell out the 5 million it would have taken to get Shane Long is inexplicable. The lad was there for the taking and we didn't even bother. Cisse wasn't going to go anywhere for the price Ashley was willing to pay.

For what it's worth, I agree whole heartedly that we should have brought in a better striker, but it had to be the right person. Paying 6 million for Maiga or Erdinc would have been too risky. Paying 10 million for Cisse would have been okay, but I wouldn't have shelled out 13 million either.

I'm not going to argue that we should have spent some more money, my arguments are two fold a) Best is better than people are willing to credit him for, and shouldn't be discounted as a potential 10-12 goal striker.

and

b) This division doesn't require a 15+ goal striker to finish top 8. It requires 50 goals and a positive goal differential, from whom or how you get those goals has not shown to make a difference the last two seasons. A striker like Odemwengie would help in that pursuit, but it's not a guarantee (The top 6 teams all had 15+ strikers, but the other two teams were Brom which finished 11th and Blackpool, relegated.)

I do believe we have a squad that can score 50 goals (I can't see us scoring MORE than 50 goals). 40-45 is probably more realistic, so we'll be reliant on Krul and the back line (Birmingham finished 9th in 09-10 with just 38 goals scored because they only conceded 47). If we score 45 and concede 40, we will finish top 10.

In conclusion, when you have 42 million pounds of profit from transfers, you should be out there spending some of it (even if it's just 10 million) on goal scorers, but to say that a 10-million pound striker is a requirement in this league is fallacy. You can finish top 10 without one, just as Everton have done nearly every year.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011:09:08:18:52:15 by waffles.

It's not inexplicable. Apply Occam's Razor. We didn't sign Long because:

1. We thought 5M was to much to spend...

and/or

2. There was no priority placed on getting a forward

Then you return to the 10M canard. Shane Long: 4.5-6M. Cisse, however, is-in my opinion-worth 10M+. One can say United don't need Rooney or Barca don't need Messi. Of course they don't; they will still exist and play football every weekend without them and they have other very good forwards in their squads, but still...

Another fact: in the last few years,EFC spent 25M on 2 players, Fellaini & Bilyaletdinov-the former because, even in EFC's straightened financial circumstances, the board felt compelled to spend some of the stupid Lescott fee. Ashley's regime has barely spent that on all signings.

I don't see how we'll score 50. We scored 56 last season, and 23 of those have gone. Ba replaces some but I don't see him & Best matching Carroll & Nolan. Maybe we can tread water (our defense is no better and if Santon struggles or takes time to settle in...). You're pleased with that?

I don't get the strident insistence on Best's quality. He's the best we have and should be given a run. He's shone some opportunistic finishing. That's a useful skill and he can certainly get 10-12. Thing is, that was Caroll's total for half a season. He's going to have to show me a lot more before I accept him as our (de facto) #9.

Tunyc, we scored 28 after January first (which Carroll saw no pitch time for us after that). In that time, Nolan scored 2, Barton scored 3 (2 of which were penalties).

Without replacing those goals, 23 of them were scored by players still on our squad who played the second half of last season. Add those with our new hires and slowly recovering gimps and it's not hard to foresee 20-25 goals in half a season, or 40-50 in a season. As I said above, I see us hitting 40-45, but 50 is not out of reach.

Last season we scored EXACTLY the same number of goals before Carroll's last game as after it. The only difference was that instead of 75% of them scored by just two players (11 by Carroll and 10 by Nolan, 7 by the rest of the squad), they were distributed among the side (Best 6, Loven 5, Staylor 3, Barton 3, etc etc) .

why is it that Shane Long went to west Brom, they are hardly a team thats going to challenge for anything this season, perhaps teams looked at him and thought he wasn't good enough!

If we have a good first half of the season and Ba and Best produce the goods then teams will see we aren't as desperate for a striker and prices won't be as high! Plus isn't maiga's contract nearing its end so his price will continue to drop until he signs a new one!

Bilyaletdinov is a perfect example of what NUFC wanted to avoid, he has hardly been a success in the EPL how many goals has he scored in the 2/3 seasons he's been here and look at the state of EFC's finances now!

As for needing a 15+ striker, if all of your goals come from one source like Blackpool then what happens when that player is injured?

Whatever. I give up. If you can get excited about this squad and you're happy with this regime-seriously, good for you.

I understand that we have lost two of the big scorers in the team last season, so potentially we may not get as many goals, but then you nver know and I do think we will get more this season than last, as I think the team looks more attacking and once they settle in they will create plenty of chances, and hopefully Best and BA can knock them away.

I think saying the defence is poor is harsh, I have liked the look of them, and maybe we haven't added more players in there is a bit disappointing, but I do think that they are looking more of a unit know and something that we have missed in such a long time, I can see us conceding less goals this season than last.

I am in agreememnt that Long would have been a great signing and certainly wouldn't have added some quality to the team. Hopefully Jan we can get somebody in, and if Carroll was still doing cr@p at the reds I would do a cheeky loan bid to bring him back

Like I said tin foil hat. Its no point trying to argue.

I will always argue your right to be wrong. and wrong you are.

Give me one reason why as a footballing point of view we are better under FCW.

If you can I will never slag him off again.

It's not perfect and it would have been a lot better having other people, but I do think that it could be worse having other owners, don't get me wrong I would another Sir John or somebody who would take the club forward with skinting us. I am one of the fans that want us to bring in more players but then not many clubs outside the tpo 8 actually have a massive squad and we are one of the them

Personally I think our team is stronger which offers us more than one way of playing, last season if Plan A didn't work we were f@cked. I think with this team the defence looks stronger, and obviously I would imagine all the work on the training ground, I think the midfield will get more goals as we well as creating more chances. We are actually getting more youth coming into the team than we did a couple of years ago, and maybe people can come back with the arguement that our squad is big enough where bar a couple of positions I think we have some depth. No point in having a academy unless players come through, it works for Man U,

I'm with dave. We can talk past each other all day. Let's watch some matches and revisit this.