Well done McDermott and Hammond - Positive transfer window

[cmonurz]

The stats can show anything.

I'd argue, from my point of view of course, that WBA, Spurs, Everton and Swansea had strong squads and so haven't been under pressure to spend heavily this season. And Fulham's place at the bottom is wholly due to Spurs (ironically given their total net spend) over-paying for Dembele.

For me it's only Wigan on that list who I'd look at and wonder why they haven't spent more.

[Scutterbucketz]

Oh well, huh? I just hope that the majority of people will take the same attitude if we go down. But in all likelihood they won't and theyll be that fukked off that we didn't make a proper go of it, with some "Premier Quality" signings that they wont bother going.

And I think you're just being deliberately obtuse about buying new players, Brendy. If you're honestly convinced that there is no one else out there who could have done a job for us, that suited the money we had to spend and would have want to come here then I would be extremely surprised. And we didn't have just yesterday to do it either.

And in answer to your question; a little longer than A or B. Especially when we know we aren't the most attractive prospect in the league.

[melonhead]

The stats can show anything.

I'd argue, from my point of view of course, that WBA, Spurs, Everton and Swansea had strong squads and so haven't been under pressure to spend heavily this season. And Fulham's place at the bottom is wholly due to Spurs (ironically given their total net spend) over-paying for Dembele.

For me it's only Wigan on that list who I'd look at and wonder why they haven't spent more.

swansea operate on the same basis as us, albeit with the increased comfort that being established in the prem for more than a season brings.
dont see anyone moaning about their spending policy

[Scutterbucketz]

The stats can show anything.

I'd argue, from my point of view of course, that WBA, Spurs, Everton and Swansea had strong squads and so haven't been under pressure to spend heavily this season. And Fulham's place at the bottom is wholly due to Spurs (ironically given their total net spend) over-paying for Dembele.

For me it's only Wigan on that list who I'd look at and wonder why they haven't spent more.

Yes, exactly. Has that poster got the list for the Record Transfer for each club? Again it won't tell the whole picture but I'd just be interested to see it.

Anyway, this is all pretty dull. I just hope now that we've saved £10 million we spunk £30million on anyone with a long name in the summer.

[melonhead]

Oh well, huh? I just hope that the majority of people will take the same attitude if we go down. But in all likelihood they won't and theyll be that fukked off that we didn't make a proper go of it, with some "Premier Quality" signings that they wont bother going.

And I think you're just being deliberately obtuse about buying new players, Brendy. If you're honestly convinced that there is no one else out there who could have done a job for us, that suited the money we had to spend and would have want to come here then I would be extremely surprised. And we didn't have just yesterday to do it either.

And in answer to your question; a little longer than A or B. Especially when we know we aren't the most attractive prospect in the league.

not a scout, dunno.
sure there are
sure we looked at some
but unfortunately a trnsfer is a complex system, and it can go wrong in many ways, from either end.
just cos you heard about sig and ince, doesnt mean there werent more enquiries, or even bids.
just cos we get to the window slamming shut and hear that our attempts have failed doesnt mean weve not been working on them for a month

[melonhead]

I just hope now that we've saved £10 million we spunk £30million on anyone with a long name in the summer.

in the sumer, if we stay up, we could actually afford to

[maffff]

Just quickly skimmed Twitter and came across this nugget retweeted by the club

Premier League ‏@premierleague
New #FPL players (3/3): DEF Samba (QPR) £5.0m; DEF Yun (QPR) £4.0m; FWD Blackman (RDG) £4.5m; MID Shea (STK) £5.0m; DEF Scharner (WIG) £4.5m
Retweeted by Reading FC

The underlining is mine btw.

That seems to show a fee of 4.5 Million for Blackman. Eyebrow raising if accurate.

edit- looking back at that I am wondering if that represents fantasy football values or some such...In which case I have merely been a bit of a prat....

£4.5m for Blackman. Now THAT's the club showing some ambition and intent at last.

[maffff]

I just hope now that we've saved £10 million we spunk £30million on anyone with a long name in the summer.

in the sumer, if we stay up, we could actually afford to

Błaszczykowski

[Extended-Phenotype]

No mate, you don't understand. Spending money means administration. Looking at the window ins and outs, that's a hell of a lot of teams going bust!

We can sleep soundly knowing we have avoided relegation by the fact 19 other teams in the league will be bulldozed wastelands by the summer.

strawman


no one said that. youre the only one going on about it. again.

I'm highlighting how stupid the argument "look what happened to Portsmouth!" is.

[melonhead]

but youre the only one saying that argument from what i can see.


going bankrupt isnt really a worry for us.

[JC]

But the thing is, we are taking the middle ground....net spend this Window was in excess of £3M, which puts us somewhere around 10th in the spending table for Premier League clubs. Had the Gylfi deal come off, we'd probably have been third!!!!

Pretty meaningless stat, but other clubs have spent more at different times - Villa and West Ham for example spent a lot of money in the summer.

But not all - give or take a few "undisclosed" fees we're 14th in net spend this year according to the stats from http://www.transferleague.co.uk

Chelsea--------------£72,000,000
Liverpool------------£40,800,000
QPR------------------£38,050,000
Man United----------£36,100,000
Southampton--------£32,700,000
Aston Villa-----------£23,700,000
Stoke-----------------£20,100,000
Sunderland-----------£18,350,000
West Ham-----------£18,250,000
Man City-------------£14,000,000
Newcastle------------£13,300,000
Norwich--------------£9,000,000
Arsenal---------------£8,600,000
Reading--------------£6,700,000
WBA------------------£3,500,000
Spurs---------------- -£1,300,000
Everton------------- -£1,816,000
Wigan--------------- -£1,900,000
Swansea------------- -£3,950,000
Fulham-------------- -£10,500,000

Quite surprised trhat Saints and QPR have both spent over £30m. Would be a bit worried about Villa spending nearly £24m and not having a lot to show for it

[Reading4eva]

but youre the only one saying that argument from what i can see.


going bankrupt isnt really a worry for us.

On the spin side I bet QPR are actively soiling themselves at the moment.

QPR spend Millions
Get Relegated
Redknapp Leaves
Fernandes decides to save a few bob and leaves
Club in Limbo
Samba comes knocking for his £100,000 a week
QPR meet Portsmouth in the Premier League (the Blue Square one that is)

[Cypry]

The stats can show anything.

I'd argue, from my point of view of course, that WBA, Spurs, Everton and Swansea had strong squads and so haven't been under pressure to spend heavily this season. And Fulham's place at the bottom is wholly due to Spurs (ironically given their total net spend) over-paying for Dembele.

For me it's only Wigan on that list who I'd look at and wonder why they haven't spent more.

Yes, exactly. Has that poster got the list for the Record Transfer for each club? Again it won't tell the whole picture but I'd just be interested to see it.

Anyway, this is all pretty dull. I just hope now that we've saved £10 million we spunk £30million on anyone with a long name in the summer.

I'm not doing it for you - the figures are all on that site I referenced (nothing to do with me BTW) although club record transfers only deal with the 2011-12 Premier League teams (we wouldn't be bottom of that list, but would be bottom for todays PL clubs...

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that (in the TSI era) we are spending money - we have a net spend in excess of £7M on players this year (the stats don't include Kelly for example who is undisclosed). We're somewhere in the middle half of the spending table, and, interestingly of the six teams around us in the relegation fight, only Wigan have spent less, and relegation candidates make up three of the top six teams on net spend....

[Extended-Phenotype]

So on a table based on incomplete, undisclosed information, we are middle of the lower half?

[Libertine]

Did we do enough? Didn't we do enough? Time will tell.

Back in November the club made a "mea culpa" by admitting that not enough was done during the Summer in terms of upgrading our squad. We were told that the club learned its lesson and when the window opened in January we would "be bringing in PL experienced players".

So let's take a look;

Daniel Carrico (no PL experience)
Stephen Kelly (44 PL games over 3 seasons)
Hope Akpan (no PL experience)
Nick Blackman (no PL experience)

So far Carrico has played one half of one game and hasn't been seen since. Kelly has been very solid. Akpan has made 2 cameos, the second of which was very impressive and he was instrumental in us grabbing the late draw with Chelsea. Blackman was just brought in on Wednesday and of course has not had an opportunity to contribute yet. But I would have to assume he would be 4th on the striker depth chart behind Pog, Alfie and Hunt. Bottom line though with only one of the four having PL experience the club's claim of having learned its lesson about not bringing in PL quality players rings hollow.

Did we do enough? We are still getting run over in the midfield and only look threatening late in games when other teams have the lead and switch off their offense resulting in maybe the three greatest consecutive comebacks in the club's history. I still think we can stay up and put our odds at slightly better than 50-50. But if we brought in the kind of players we said we would I am thinking survival would have been much easier. I view the window as a positive one. We lost no one and brought in four...but I still think it was an opportunity missed for doing what was needed to absolutely ensure our survival. Right now it is a coin flip whether we stay up or go back down...



edited for typos...never content.

[JIM]

isnt it great. not to see the vitriolic ravings of SDR.now he is back in his wooden box. so the transfer window was good for most after all.

[Ian Royal]

Interesting point mentioned on the radio yesterday...

In American football, when clubs are looking at potential players they will spend huge amounts of money with private investigators looking into their background, interviewing family, friends, college staff, coaches etc. before they make a decision because they recognise the importance of the personality and how it fits in with the team as a whole.

Over here, despite the huge sums being splashed around clubs will spend millions on a player on the basis of a fcuking YouTube clip or a few games seen on TV.

It has been said on many occasions by Coppell and McDermott how RFC will only sign who we consider the right sort of character, and we do our research to establish exactly that - another example other clubs would do well to follow.

We don't bid for players without doing our research on them. So we can't just say on TDD, oh well, look like we're not going to get Ince, let's make a bid for another similar player. We don't operate like that. That game's for suckers and gamblers who are happy to be held over a barrel whilst being royally screwed for a player they don't even know properly!

Laughable really when you think it through.

Mostly agree, but it's equally laughable to only investigate one player at a time for each position you're looking at. The sensible position is to identify a host of possibilities and then winnow them down to the final favourite as you look into them in more detail, so if you can't get your favourite, you already know who you're second and third choice will be.

[The Beardy Man]

With all the talk of why we didn't go for other players of a similar ilk, this line from the BBC's report of our bid for Gylfi caught my eye.

'The Royals were keen to bring in a new attacking midfielder and failed with an offer for Blackpool's Tom Ince, while talks with Chelsea's Yossi Benayoun were unproductive.'

Just goes to show things were being pursued that the club made no mention of. Seems likely there were plenty of other enquires made, contacts tapped up etc. Probably this is going on all the time.

Point being, just because we as fans only hear about the odd possible deal...doesn't mean we aren't constantly weighing up moves for value to the club.

Both on and off the pitch, we only ever see a fraction of the full picture.

[Cypry]

Did we do enough? Didn't we do enough? Time will tell.

Back in November the club made a "mea culpa" by admitting that not enough was done during the Summer in terms of upgrading our squad. We were told that the club learned its lesson and when the window opened in January we would "be bringing in PL experienced players".

So let's take a look;

Daniel Carrico (no PL experience)
Stephen Kelly (44 PL games over 3 seasons)
Hope Akpan (no PL experience)
Nick Blackman (no PL experience)

So far Carrico has played one half of one game and hasn't been seen since. Kelly has been very solid. Akpan has made 2 cameos, the second of which was very impressive and he was instrumental in us grabbing the late draw with Chelsea. Blackman was just brought in on Wednesday and of course has not had an opportunity to contribute yet. But I would have to assume he would be 4th on the striker depth chart behind Pog, Alfie and Hunt. Bottom line though with only one of the four having PL experience the club's claim of having learned its lesson about not bringing in PL quality players rings hollow.

Did we do enough? We are still getting run over in the midfield and only look threatening late in games when other teams have the lead and switch off their offense resulting in maybe the three greatest consecutive comebacks in the club's history. I still think we can stay up and put our odds at slightly better than 50-50. But if we brought in the kind of players we said we would I am thinking survival would have been much easier. I view the window as a positive one. We lost no one and brought in four...but I still think it was an opportunity missed for doing what was needed to absolutely ensure our survival. Right now it is a coin flip whether we stay up or go back down...



edited for typos...never content.

In fairness Brian never said we would, but said we would TRY to bring in experience, and in the next sentence, pointed out how for a club in our position that would not be easy....

It might seem a bit pedantic, but if you're going to quote the club to support an argument, at least quote them accurately...

[Snowball]

Agreed with that generally but I'm not falling for the Ince stuff!!

You genuinely think that RFC have orchestrated all the media stuff over the last week or so to make a few hundred fans who actually bother following all the rumours on twitter/HNA a little happier

Exactly.





I wonder how many pound notes in a brown paper bag they had to give to AVB
so he'd go along with the Gylfi conspiracy?



I think we set a value on Ince and when we'd got to our limit, tried for Gylfi