HarvSFC

Good to see we have some pull once again and looks like we beat Leeds to the signing of Lavia. As I said earlier in the week, I'm all for the Colwill signing. Southampton lad, impressed in the Championship at Huddersfield last season, isn't the finished article and will make mistakes at this level, but the starting blocks are impressive. Guehi and Tomori both left Chelsea last summer and have come on leaps and bounds. If we lose Tyler Dibling, it's a shame, but it's a move for the money and £6k-a-week is a senior first 11 League One players wage. We also now seem to be targeting some of the best youth prospects in the country, who are more career focussed, than money, otherwise they wouldn't leave Man City or Chelsea for us and we could find better than Dibling in the coming windows.

Even when Dan Sheldon leaves, he can’t get away.

Wilson’s like an excited 5 foot child when it comes to transfers. Ramsey and Diallo being the most recent costly disappointments.

A bit more on the Rooney situation, his agent was linked to Kirchner.

Him and Garner were the standout midfielders from the play-offs. I like the idea of Collwill as well, should Bednarek + one of Stephens/Lyanco go this summer. Unfortunately, we were a year too late on Guehi, but he’s progressed magnificently after leaving Chelsea for Palace in a year.

Never really heard of Downes, but Swansea fans rate him and think he has the ability to step up to the Premier League.

It'll be interesting to see how Rooney gets on without Liam Rosenior, who was his highly rated assistant at Derby. Nobody expected Rooney to be a good manager, because he's as dim as they come alongside his off pitch activities. However, he did well at a club with no expectations and he could be a surprise. But, then it could also be another Paul Ince/Ray Mathias situation.

Both Livramento and Bella-Kotchap highlighted in their signing interviews that they had had good conversations with the manager before signing, . Livramento, as we know, looked nailed on to go to Brighton at the time also. So, can't be that bad. 🤷‍♂️

If the Watford link is true, perhaps we can include Armstrong in a deal for Dennis.

Last summer it looked like we had missed out on Brandon Williams, if reports were true. He ended up at newly promoted Norwich, got relegated and we ended up with a much better player in Tino Livramento. Hopefully, it's a repeat scenario.

JWP's skillset is irreplaceable for us. World-class free-kick taker, meaning they're always a threat and saw him finish as our top scorer. Ever reliable, never misses a game and never hides away and he won us the game against Tottenham away last season with two quality assists, showing that he's capable and it's perhaps the lower quality forwards which are the issue. Additionally, we've seen in years gone by, Tottenham pissing up the Bale money, us pissing up the VvD money and most recently Aston Villa pissing up the Grealish money and regressing, despite netting £100m and making good signings on paper with reports a year later of them looking to sell Ings and Buendia, while Bailey was also disappointing. So, there'd be a huge risk and we'd need to replace 10 goals, which aren't going to come from anybody else currently in the squad, so the new signings would need to be a success. Of course £75m would be a massive windfall for us, but in the long run we could end up losing £100m+ if we weren't to get the signings right and lost our Premier League status, so that's the gamble.

He lasted 38 matches at Stoke, one Premier League season, won 6 matches, drew 15 and lost 17, spending relatively big money on dross like Afobe, Woods, Batth and Vokes. I'd avoid him at the moment. He's the main man at Luton and it works for him and he's got them punching well above their weight, but he was well out of his depth at Stoke. There's definitely better out there and our manager's one of them.

I remember in my teenage years being on the BBC 606 forum. I think the poster's username was 'RocketSwain' and he would pretend to be itk each transfer window and I was fully sold on believing him and thinking we were signing Matt Holland, Sam Sodje, Wade Elliott, Brian Stock and Sam Vokes every summer. Elliott's now the favourite to take over at Cheltenham, so give it a few years and the cycle can recommence.

If we can hold onto JWP, KWP and Salisu this summer with the help of selling players such as Bednarek, then I'm all for it.

Looks like an easy clicks article to me. West Ham interested in £75m player, every West Ham fan is going to click. The article then says West Ham are unlikely to actually be able to sign him. We'd probably be "definitely interested" in Rice too. West Ham get linked to everyone with a pulse, only way they'd be able to afford JWP on top of the new CB and reportedly Broja is if they sell Rice and if they lose their star player then they're in the same bracket as Aston Villa were last summer when they were unsuccessful in getting JWP. When the top 6 get linked, I'll worry.

First time I've seen that 4-0, and we signed Keller after that? 😮 Even if it was an emergency.

Yep, first transfers of the last nine years: Theo Walcott - (July 1st 2021) Kyle Walker-Peters - (August 11th 2020) Che Adams, Moussa Djenepo, Danny Ings - (July 1st 2019) Stuart Armstrong, Mohamed Elyounoussi - (July 1st 2018) Jan Bednarek - (July 1st 2017) Nathan Redmond - (July 1st 2016) Juanmi, Cedric, Maarten Stekelenburg - (July 1st 2015) Dusan Tadic - (July 8th 2014) Dejan Lovren - (June 14th 2013) So, there were many July 1sts in there, but of course they were just the first transfers. For example, Livramento, Armstrong, Lyanco and Broja all came in August last summer. Livramento played 45 minutes of a pre-season friendly before the season, Armstrong and Broja joined four days before the season's start and Lyanco joined two matches into the season. So, essentially, only Perraud and Walcott got a pre-season of our new signings last year. It's a difficult task asking players to adapt to the Premier League in normal circumstances, but we've been putting them right in at the deep end and looking for them to sink or swim. Livramento and Broja swam, while Armstrong sunk. This summer, it looks as though we're acting like a football club again. We've got football people at the top now, which again is against the norm, as usually football owners are disengaged businessmen these days, so we've gone from one extreme in Gao to the other and I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. New coaching team, a new head of recruitment and from the outside looking in it very much looks like we've got a list of targets this summer and we're going out and getting them in, early, which is the polar opposite of what we've been seeing as fans for the last how many years. Get the young players in, give them a full pre-season to learn their teammates and what systems we want to play and allow them to thrive. This is the start of a new era and hopefully it's a successful one, even though it never is simple when Southampton's involved.

It’s weird signing players who come with very high reviews (Bazunu and this centre-back). I’m too used to Lyanco esque signings, where we get to read all about how nobody rates him. Exciting start to the summer for sure. As I said yesterday, this is the first summer in nine years where we’ve signed players before July.

Was the centre-back he picked up from us last summer any good? If so, bring him back too!

At his best he looked like a complete Premier League striker and was only going to get better with him being only 20, running at defenders at every opportunity, beating them for pace and skill, scoring goals that he created himself. But, at his worst, he was a waste of a shirt, couldn't win a single aerial duel, couldn't hold the ball up the field and wasn't particularly effective at the press, which Ings was underrated for. Ings scored a couple of goals through closing down the goalkeeper, whereas Broja would just stop and give them all the time in the world to pick out a pass. With that inconsistency, I guess it's the risk you get with signing a 20 year old and we simply didn't have anyone else to take him out of the firing line, whereas West Ham can fall back on an Antonio, who may be pushed back into a squad role as he isn't firing as much these days. Thought Broja had scored more than six league goals to be fair, but West Ham and Craig Dawson in particular saw the best of him. I wouldn't be surprised if David Moyes improves his aerial game, either. Certainly a loss to us and one that needs replacing.

He doesn’t drop kick cats.

The previous time we signed a player before July 1st and prior to this summer was Dejan Lovren (14th June 2013). Surely, we can’t make it three? 😮 Forget no holds barred, this is unprecedented to give new signings a full pre-season.

The biggest selling point is that he bottled an FA Cup quarter-final because Poland were playing the week after. No excuses for that. He's going to want to stay fit before the World Cup too and with it coming mid-season who knows what matches he'll be available for.

It’s new to us, signing players with no hope of making our first team, and it is a bit of a shame not getting excited by a new transfer, but Man City, Watford and Brighton have been doing this for a few years now, it’s normal for a group led club.