summer rumors and other nonsense

Amalfitano signing on loan from Marseilles. Looks like Kouyate is going to be our 4th centre back this season then

Yet again we get it SO wrong in the transfer market and leave ourselves short of cover in defence

If no CB is signed then the owners need to disclose who decided that and there needs to be some bloody good answers

Great now we have young jack encouraging some of our Muppets to go down the ground and we now look worse than the stoke faggles, no bloody class these days

Well that amalfi... What ever his name is has signed and it looks like song and chek will be covering the Cb role if the inevitable occurs

Tony P wrote:Amalfitano signing on loan from Marseilles. Looks like Kouyate is going to be our 4th centre back this season then

Yet again we get it SO wrong in the transfer market and leave ourselves short of cover in defence

you're missing the point Tone... Carlton is going to be banging in soooooooo many goals per game that we could play with no defense and still win...

this is al in preparation for Kevin Keegan to come onboard and lead out the team at the Olympic Stadium

According to young jack, we spent a full, yes a full 3 weeks trying to get a centre half in.

With  Collins, Tomkins, Reid and Burke coming through I guess they decided they didn't need any more CB's.....Hardly top drawer I know but solid enough on their day..........I just don't know how the club can win....One minute everyone is begging us to get strikers in and creative midfielders.....We do that...Then they say they want at least one good defender in etc.....How much money do you think we have for wages? Nobody wants our players.........We can't get them off the books! We've signed Zarate, Amaltifano, Song, Poyet, Valencia, Cresswell and Sakho this summer That's without any youth or developing players we have signed.......7 players of which 4 of them are bloody half decent....Just no pleasing some people

I think the simple answer to your question is that we should strike a balance Stoobs. We have gone for lots of attacking players but left ourselves short at centre back. Not rocket science is it?

Lacking a 4th quality Cb could be costly
I worry that young Burke will be thrown in to the fire pit and we know what can happen there aka Mr Tomkins against Bolton, he took a long time for himto recover from that

Listening to a discussion on the radio last night where it was said that there seems to be a dearth of quality centre-backs at present. Many big PL clubs have little depth of cover at CB, and I was expecting us to lose Reid TBH. Strikers are getting faster and more skilful ( except ours!) and they get better protection from refs.  A CB probably needs more maturity than any other position; they have to read the game better, they have to judge when an interception is possible and when it's just going to give away a freekick or worse, they have to judge just what they can get away with in the "dark arts".  The standard of football in the Prem is still slowly rising each season while the standards in the English lower leagues are largely static, so less and less chance of finding a promising CB there. If you're looking abroad it's a very expensive lucky dip. I hope the lad Burke continues to progress, he could be a very important asset for the future, but it's difficult to see just how to move him along. As has been said, throw him in at the deep end and it could cripple him. Loan him out? He won't learn that much in the lower leagues, and a good Chumps side will be wanting to be building permanently from their defence, not from loanees. A League Cup run would have been useful.......

Stooby Doo 2002 wrote:With  Collins, Tomkins, Reid and Burke coming through I guess they decided they didn't need any more CB's.....Hardly top drawer I know but solid enough on their day..........I just don't know how the club can win....One minute everyone is begging us to get strikers in and creative midfielders.....We do that...Then they say they want at least one good defender in etc.....How much money do you think we have for wages? Nobody wants our players.........We can't get them off the books! We've signed Zarate, Amaltifano, Song, Poyet, Valencia, Cresswell and Sakho this summer That's without any youth or developing players we have signed.......7 players of which 4 of them are bloody half decent....Just no pleasing some people

You hear all kinds of figures quoted, but I'm almost certain each club gets something like 50-80 million a year just from being in the premier league, an amount that went up this season. We didn't invest that much of this money on players clearly...