Crouchie's Lawyer

Please bring in a #9 before the end of the window then I think we would have got all areas covered and I think it would be a pretty solid window. Can't rely on the Loch ness Drogba this season. He will be a Brucey Bonus if he a) returns to full fitness and b) is able to perform at Prem level given he has in essence jumped from L1 to the Prem. Without the option for a Prem loan now, and without shifting any of the deadwood it's unlikely to be a purchase at this late stage so would leave the prospect of it being a foreign loan or a player who is currently or will shortly be without a club... Can't see it happening but still holding out hope something comes about late on

To be fair, with the seeming lack of alternative options, given a sensible package which protects us against paying him a small fortune to sit on our physio table if/when he gets crocked, I'd take Ings back as that central striker, focal point I think the team needs. I can see him thriving off the kind of through balls Fernandes and Dibling were playing against Cardiff and him and Archer would provide good competition for that role. If we do get Cornet too, he would be a replacement for Edozie who may go out on loan and assuming he can stay injury free, would probably offer a better goal/assist contribution than Edozie too.

Just got a Google news ping on my phone about Saints lining up a 'double swoop' from West Ham in Cornet and Ings... Not seen any recent links to Ings (aside from some posters on here mentioning it) so thought I would share A separate article on Givemesport actually says triple swoop and includes JWP as one of the 3 but we know that's not happening with him seemingly off to Forest.

Never normally ITK but Fraser on a flight from Newcastle to Soton. Mate is on the same flight and just told me. Could be nothing, could be something

Wow, his non pen xG looks pretty terrible for a Striker at 0.24 and that pie chart thing has his goal threat really low too. Chance creation isn't much better and goal efficiency only slightly better too. Still ball retention is pretty decent which will fit in well with our sideways and backwards passing style... Despite what that Saints Brazilian poster has said and his goal scoring stats which to be fair look ok, I'm still not convinced by this signing but I guess we will have to trust in Russ and the scouting team if they genuinely think this is the guy who will hopefully be that focal point up top we so desperately need.

I appreciate we cannot loan from Chelsea and their small country population sized squad but there must be other options from other Prem teams for brink strikers looking to get game time?! Or even similar types of players from big European teams. You'd think there is more chance of a player playing in one of the big European teams perhaps being able to speak English better than someone who has spent the majority of their playing time in South America and there is also the climate too. Moving from South America to the UK would take a bit more acclimatization than say Germany or France. Personally I would take something like that over a loan for someone who seemingly has the ability to earn £250 from You've Been Framed every time he steps on the pitch going by that bloopers reel we have seen of Alberto.

If the advantages of shared scouting lead us to conclude this Brazilian, who their own fans seemingly do not want is the best option in the whole world for what we need right now then I don't think their scouts are up to much cop either

Arma just looks like a little kid playing against men. May be a bit quicker than some but doesn't have what it takes to beat a player and has no chance physically either

I guess it depends on how we are looking to play attacking wise but it seems to me that we will either be set up in a similar fashion to last season where we will be playing two wide forwards (BBD and Arma) with a central attacker (likely to be Archer) or how we initially set up on Saturday with BBD and Arma occupying the two attacking roles with 3 CM's (Downes, Aribo and Smallbone on Saturday) with Suga and KWP playing the wing back roles with a back three. There is a lot of clamour for wingers but I'm not really seeing the dire need perhaps in comparison to that out and out striker we have been begging for (I think Archer may perhaps be more suited to a wide forward role from what I have read). If we play with the two attackers like we seemed to have set up with on Saturday then we don't really play with wingers as Suga and KWP kind of do that side of the attacking and assuming we hold on to KWP then they will be nailed on to start in my opinion (was surprised to see Suga get subbed at half time on Saturday as I felt he was one of the better players for us in that half). I believe Russ switched to a three pronged attack given how dominant we were in the game and he felt it was perhaps a little wasted having (technically) 5 defenders (two of which were wing backs) so opted to bring on Edozie to switch to a more conventional back 4 with the 3 in the middle then the 3 attackers with BBD eventually being replaced and Archer coming on. Archer is a different kind of player to what Che was and for all his flaws at not perhaps being the most prolific, what Che did have was physicality and the ability to hold up the ball. Whether BBD can do that job, I don't know. He is certainly built similar to Che physically, albeit perhaps a little taller. I do still think we are missing that out and out striker though, not one who can play anywhere across the front three. I know that having those types of players does give us a bit of flexibility but I would rather a 'specialist' than a jack of all trades as I think we have those boxes ticked with Arma and BBD who both appear to prefer the wide attack roles than the focal point up top. if we do bring in a winger then if it is a player who is a walk-into-the-first-11 quality player, it will leave a question over where he plays and in what system? It wouldn't work for how we were set up to begin with against Newcastle and if we go with a three pronged attack as we did with Edozie coming on at half time on Saturday then that would mean one of Arma or BBD would not play in that wide attacker role as the winger would surely occupy that, they would have to go central. As referenced above, that central role is neither of their preferred positions as I understand and we all know Arma in a central role just does not work as well as him being out on the wing so I'd personally prefer we focussed our efforts (and funds) on a proper striker who can play as one of the front 2 if that's how we set up (with BBD or Arma taking a bench space) or the main central guy if those two play as the wide attackers. We have Edozie, Sam Amo and Sulemana (hopefully he gets sold as it simply hasn't worked for him here though) who can all play a winger role (Edozie and Sulemena preferred on the left with Sam Amo preferred on the right) on top of BBD (left) and Arma (right) so it's not like we are desperately short of those positions. Archer can even play that wide attacker type role too. I'd even go as far as saying a clear upgrade on Aribo (who, to be fair I think played quite well on Saturday) may be a better use of funds but that could be Fernandes. I guess its the unknown regarding these younger players from abroad that's the problem here and that's where we have to place our trust in Russ and the scouting team. He could be the next Bruno Fernandes or he could be the next Sulemana who looks exciting but fails to deliver and doesn't improve us.

THB and Downes weren’t ours to lose. I get what you’re saying in that the team would no longer have them but they wouldn’t be asset stripped from us as they weren’t our assets. We lost Stuey and Adams anyway, even though we went up. I’m talking saleable assets which hurt to lose because they are so good but you get a decent wedge for them. KWP I’ll give you and potentially Arma and Bednarek too. Although we may have been able to hold onto Arma perhaps given his ropey Prem track record. Aside from the last few games where, granted he was a rock, Macca didn’t do anything all last season and the same can be said for Alcaraz who featured even less. Any money we would have pulled in from sales of all of the above, especially Alcaraz you’d have liked to have think would have been pumped back in to replace the real losses to the team at CB and in midfield. The majority of the money we would have potentially made would have come from fringe players who didn’t feature as much, if at all for us, like ABK, Alcaraz, Tall Paul and you could possibly even say Mara and Sulemana too. Sam Amo and Dibling coming into the team would have given us a decent couple of additions too without the need to sign anyone. Most of our asset stripping took place when the vultures originally circled when we went down, losing Tino, Lavia and JWP. When I look at the Leeds team, I see more individuals who shone from time to time like Summerville, Rutter and Gnonto. We just seemed to have a better sum of parts output than they did whenever we faced them which led to us getting the better of them on multiple occasions. Had we both stayed down (impossible I know) we’d have lost more players than them but they’d have gained more money from sales than us this summer I’m pretty sure.

Would it? granted we’d have lost Downes and THB but neither would have been ours at that point anyway. I guess KWP would have been picked off but I’d have thought he’d have been gone by now anyway yet he still remains here with no obvious suitors currently. Perhaps we would have been forced to settle for a much lower fee had we missed out on promotion though. Who else would we have been stripped of? Leeds have saleable assets, Summerville, Rutter, Gnonto, perhaps even James. I can’t really think of any of our squad who would have been that appealing to bigger clubs right now?

This is what I think too. I know every club has their forgettable signings but we seem to get it wrong, more than we get it right. It may be because I don't follow them and therefore don't know about all their signings but Brighton seem to have what appears to be quite a decent record at unearthing a few gems which they turn over for massive profits only to replace them with the next unknown gem which they sell for massive profits. Kind of like what we wanted to be a few years ago when buying replacements for our best players. Can't we go to what we perceive to be one of the better scouting teams and just offer them significantly higher wages to come to us as a new project? Surely scouts' wages aren't significant compared to player wages and transfer fees. If we forgo one low to medium transfer and bring in a better scouting network/team who will unearth better players at cheaper costs then it could pay huge dividends at a later stage. A better medical team would probably be a decent idea too so we don't end up signing crocs like Stewart!

Pretty fucking pointless questions today. Do they just round up the dim Saints fans who will only ask nicey nicey questions? Questions about whether we need the app, why a pint of cider has gone up by 70p, whether Russ has drilled the team to play with 10 players in case we get sent off... Where are the questions everyone wants to know about like what's happening with MOR now, is there likely to be a new striker coming in, are there any players potentially close to leaving, is there anyone potentially coming in before Newcastle and how does Lucy Pinder look naked etc?

He scored roughly 1 in 2 for Espanyol last season but for Barca (a team you'd have thought most seniors over the age of 70 could score goals for) he only managed 5 goals in 44 appearances and 6 in 24 for Leganes before Barca. Ignoring his latest season for Espanyol where he was nearly a 1 goal every 2 game player, he has typically been a 1 goal in every 4-5 matches player. I still think we should be going for Brereton-Diaz. I'd love to try and make a statement signing for Callum Wilson though if there was any chance of that but I think a) wages and b) injury record may be the issue there.

I'm in the 'No' camp for Broja. Looked a good prospect for half a season on loan with us a few years ago then seemingly lost his way with us and was fairly ineffective for the second half of the season. Could have fallen out with Ralph, could have been something else but just didn't look interested. When he went back to Chelsea at the end of that season and featured in a few games in their pre-season, looking pretty decent with a better team around him, I thought that could have been his break through season until he suffered that nasty injury. Since then, he has done relatively nothing which could be to do with the injury having taken some of his pace/power away, which was his main strength. Didn't pull up any trees on loan at Fulham and didn't stand out in the Euro's (albeit against Italy, Spain and Croatia, that perhaps was a tough ask). I'd take him as a loan for the season with an option to buy, but not as our main target. I think we need someone who we can be more confident will do the business with him as a back up. If he still has it, he will prove it and force his way into the team and go from there. If he ends up being second half of original season long loan Broja then we don't have to buy him and we haven't wasted a load of money. For me, I think our target should be Ben Brereton Diaz. Looked handy in the Championship a couple of seasons ago scoring for fun, got a move to Villareal which perhaps didn't work out as expected but someone else took a punt on him last season on loan in the Prem for the second half of the season in Sheff Utd and he did a decent job for them, scoring a decent amount of goals in a team who went on to be relegated. He has proven he can do it in the Prem and wouldn't be the most expensive striker to obtain. He is ahead of Broja, Ings or re-signing Che for me.