polegategavin

I am beginning to get worried that apart from this O'Donovan character, there isn't a sniff of another rumour today, and it is 4 days 'til the window shuts and one of those days is a match day and 2 of the others aren't normally considered "working days".

Having heard how Lallana performed on tuesday night, I see no reason why he couldn't play alongside Hammond and provide the attacking thrust we have lacked so far this season.

I cannot believe that the club would allow him to leave unless they receive an acceptable offer (there may be a minimum offer release clause), and unless he is allowed to leave then he has to stay regardless of the FFF's requests.

I agree, the key here is that due to "donations" being accept as additional revenue for the purposes of the set salary caps at each level of the league structure, for this or any other outlandish salary arrangement there needs to be some form of "guarantee" that for the duration of the contract that the donation will be honoured. I don't know whether this is the case in the Campbell situation but that to me would be the written confirmation that the football league should insist on, and if it is in place, then I don't see what more the football league can do, until there is a breach of this arrangement.

As they don't want us to know until the last minute which player is in talks with another club. Methinks it could be someone we least expect - IMHO it will either be Schneiderlin, Holmes, Thomas or Gillett, Gillett is my best bet. The club think this will upset the fanbase, by the looks of them not releasing the squad list. We shall see eh...............

It is interesting that AP says 3 or 4, and I think we are all sure that 2 of them are Rasiak/ Saga. The other 1 or 2 I think could include Gillett, it does seem strange that he hasn't been in the squad against Brentford. Is his attitude wrong?

I don't disagree with your suggestion, but I heard him on BBC Radio 5 Live the week before the Football league season kicked off and he came across as a very articulate, modest, pleasant guy. From that I would have assumed he was not egotistical like many players, and would have been prepared to drop down to League 1 just to get games. It would appear that he is training with Fulham at the moment to GAIN fitness, so maybe he has had an injury problem that clubs are waiting to see if he recovers from before looking at signing him.

My opinion in our position is clearly down to a club that had been run down to extinction, to enable admin/ liquidation to occur. AP has then arrived following a buy-out of a shell of a club, without anything in the way of a reasonable structure of coaching or scouting. He has then had to start with 2 weeks to go to the start of the season find players to replace those that had either left or sold, and build a team, rather than a group of individuals. Over the past 4 weeks he has gradually done this, despite having the worst scenarios as a club to try to sell to potential signings (who in their right mind would join a club that has been relegated 2 leagues - been days from oblivion and minus 10 points). Over the next week or two we will see IMHO 2 to 4 more players joining either permanently or on loan, and with the first team squad we now have will become a strong squad for this season. To everyone who is claiming that we are in another relegation scrap, I say wait and see where we are by the end of September, and more importantly look at our form at that stage, as I genuinely believe that by mid September will start winning most games as are team gels and our scouting network gives us more information about our next opponents and we can cater for our strengths and highlight the oppositions strenghts/ weaknesses. Lets wait and see, but cripes after 4 matches why are we panicing, there has been so many examples of teams starting with our form, by the end of the season being top 2 or 3, and there is nothing to say that once we get some momentum we can find ourselves in an unstoppable run of form through this season. Lets go and watch the team next week and the following weeks and just support the team and provide the twelfth man that will drive the team on to success.

I can't believe that Moritz Volz hasn't been signed by anyone. He is training with Fulham at the moment but is a free agent. He would be ideal to me as our right sided midfielder, good going forwarded and getting crosses in and would also know how to support Murty defensively. If we signed him and Jonathan Fortune I would feel we would have the squad to help us move up the table and would satisfy me until January.

Would be worth a try on loan definitely, perhaps this is one that AP would consider at the start of September once the Prem teams are clear who they want and who they don't....

Except that we haven't applied for a work permit yet!!

He may potential be 5th or 6th in the pecking order for CBs at West Ham this year, seeing their squad, but it would still be a massive coup if we signed him ahead of some lower Prem or CCC clubs. This really would show intent and lift the bar for the rest of the squad! Can't see it though......

I often think this is the key to a good striker, even Wayne Rooney will miss quite a number. Getting into the position to score more often means that you will score more than another player who gets into position less frequently, stands to reason really! Therefore it will appear that they miss more - Ian Wright was another classic example, many fans felt he missed far too many but look at his stats and it will only tell you how many they scored not how many they missed.

He is someone I suggested a week or two ago in the HCDAJFO thread, he is pacy, tricky and he scored 20+ goals for Gillingham last season in league two, and then scored a hat-trick on saturday. He will be in the CCC before the end of the season IMHO unless a club like ours sign him, and he can see that he has a chance of being in the Prem within 3 or 4 years.

With Alan Pardew as our manager, and his influence to convince good quality players that we are going places and have the financial clout to back it. Many times have I seen the richer clubs in lower divisions pulling off real coups with signings as they can show progression. If players believe we will be in this division for one season only then there is every reason they could come here, and with Pardew's contacts I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a few Charlton, West Ham and Reading players making the move in the near future, especially younger players with ambition but on the fringes where they are or older pros who respect Pardew. Interesting week or two ahead I believe.....

Haven't seen his name mentioned, apologies if I have missed it. What about Simeon Jackson - was fairly prolific for Gillingham last season, and he is quick and tricky, just what I would have thought we need for a striker?

This doesn't equate to the OS report, where he is quoted as saying he doesn't know where he will end up, and he's keeping an open mind, and he apprecaites Saints giving him the opportunity to train with them whilst his agent sorts things out.

I think some realism is required. We are a League 1 team now, saturday's friendly is against a potential Champions League team, who themselves will be in the early stages of pre-season. We have 3 more weeks after te Ajax game before the season starts, and pre-season is all about getting the fitness levels up. Almost all teams don't find their feet until 4 or 5 games into the season, irrespective of their pre-season build up, purely because there is no substitute for competitive matches which won't start until 8th August. Even if we do lose heavily on saturday, it won't affect anything. The year we got to the play offs are pre-season was hardly world shattering but we still performed when it mattered. We will be playing League 1 teams, who will not be as strong as the teams we played in CCC, therefore many of our inadequate squad last season, which was not helped by all the off field issues, will be capable at this level, and with a few new signings we will be one of the most competitive teams in this division even with the 10 point deduction. Let's start having a bit of faith, our new owner has already indicated that he will spend money on signings so lets just enjoy the ride and create a fantastic atmosphere at SMS and get behind the team. COYS

Chez I understand your points above, and when he played as a sub this is what he would do. When however he would start a match he would be lazy, he wouldn't chase any balls into the channels and wouldn't make himself available for the ball to feet, back to goal, like the likes of John would do. I wonder whether he felt that he needed to 'pace' himself through a whole match, and because he didn't start with the same intensity as when he was a sub he would not be able to up his commitment levels once the game got going, and so appeared less influential. It has been a shame, because on odd occasions, such as Wolves at home 2007/08, he looked a class player, but he has never been consistent with it.

What about Mark Fotheringham, he played for Derby as a trialist at the weekend, released by Norwich. We were linked to him a few seasons ago when he went to Norwich, good central midfielder IMHO.

I think reading Markus Liebherr's statement on the OS that Wotte will only be in charge for the short term and will be replaced, as the article quotes him as saying that "We will assemble a strong management team at every level, we shall act rapidly" and then the article says he implied that an announcement of the management team will be made in early August. This indicates to me that someone is lined up to take over with their own team of coaches. In my opinion I think Wotte should have been given a season to see how he would cope and reward him for his loyalty but I don't think this will happen in reality.

This for me is the key concern/ confusion. I take it from this decision that he really isn't considered as an option for the first team, otherwise he is desperately in need of match fitness yet he isn't being given that opportunity. I'm really confused why we haven't made every effort to offload him on loan again, if we aren't gong to use him.

Having only seen the 3 live games on Sky, it has appeared obvious from those games that our full backs are being exposed with sickening ease and they aren't able to stop crosses coming in from the byline. We have the same problem from either freekicks or most clearly from corners where we appear to be a sixes and sevens every time. My worry is that JP and his coaches think that if we encourage one/ two touch flowing attacking passing football this will overcome the frailties we have defensively. Saturday's game sent alarm bells ringing in my head that we need to sort out our defence quickly otherwise this season will be a real struggle as any team with any nouse will review our match videos and use wingers to cause us constant problems. From listening to the Norwich game we were lucky that Davis was outstanding and that if Sibierski had found the inside of the post rather than it rebound out off it we would have lost that match to IMHO. It is so clear for any neutral watching let alone a fan, I worry why we have ignored it and keep signing midfield/ forwards on loan rather than full backs. It almost feels like deja vu, with Burley and his centre back problem. Do these 'coaches' have a blind spot or something?

What puzzles me slightly is why you don't feel the same animosity (get a kick out of, enjoy the suffering of) a certain Mr Redknapp when his efforts with our great club were far more damaging and pathetic than Burley's were. They both had the same sort of attitiude to the media, and allegedly seemed to have the same lapse attitude to the players and training, yet it's only the Scot that you revel in his struggles...

Funnily enough I have just seen this story on the BBC website and immediately thought it related to Skacel too.....