Unbelievable Jeff

He was also a midfielder then...

He's been pretty good pre-season.

'Inactivity' I can see as a mistake - I have admitted that. I don't have the faith that others have that we will bring someone in of sufficient quality and that would be negligent. Yes, I realise that using the word negligent may be extreme, but if you believe the result to be the same in 25 days time, then surely I can use that word now - I just didn't realise people would react like this! Seems a very extreme reaction. Maybe people are bored and it's entertainment for them to react in a hysterical way?

Fair points.

To be fair though, he's debating it properly. Everyone is entitled to their opinion (I assume) and if that's his opinion fair enough, who am I to say it is wrong?

I don't disagree that Wanyama is a good player, and he will be excellent, I just felt up front was a more pertinent issue. Please note: this is how to debate a thread properly. Big respect to Smirking Saint for playing nicely.

I don't mean our targets, but players who I deemed should be targets. Perhaps I should replace targets with players.

Schneiderlin and Cork played a combined 65 games for Saints last season, so we needed cover for one player on 11 occasions last season. I think those players mentioned can fill in those games sufficently. I assume you don't? Having Davis and JWP play those games is not a 'key role'. A 'key role' is a starting spot, surely? What you are describing is a replacements role, that although important is not key.

I don't disagree, but the striker needs to be good, not someone of J-Rods level, someone with more ability.

I also love it when people write 'with the utmost respect', and then write something disrespectful. Really classy way of putting an argument together. It's like people saying 'No offence, but you're a massive nob'. I think that is called an oxymoron is it not Village Saint?

Really? Why is negligent not correct? Due to poor researching and over-estimating our pulling power we have missed out on decent players this Summer? As directors of a company if we now do not sign a decent striker due to these reasons surely that is negligence?

We needed Lovren, but not sure I agree we needed another CM with JWP and Steven Davis able to play as back up. It's not really about panicking, I just think we needed him in before pre-season. This seems to be overlooked so often when purchasing players.

Fingers crossed, although this was all meant to happen when Cavani moved, or more recently Soldado. The problem is all you need is for one part of the chain to fail and it all falls to pieces, especially the further up the chain you are. That would leave us in trouble.

There do seem to be a lot of angry and unreasonable people on here...

To be fair Barry I am a big fan of Cortese, he has done a cracking job here, I just think he has made a mistake in not getting a striker in on time...

It's just a lack of due care, attention and research to go for players out of our reach. Now if the agents have encouraged the bids then it makes a difference (and this may well have happened to encourage other bids), and perhaps a bit of naivity is more the charge.

I think I have come across in the wrong way here/under-estimated how much you can't have an opinion that strays from the norm. All I wanted to do was spark debate, not draw hundreds of insults. Let's forget this ever happened.

I couldn't really afford it either. Had a Twitter campaign to raise it for me...

Swansea, Liverpool, City and Norwich haven't struggled...

I've already saI'd 'inactive' may be the wrong word.

Negligent is bringing in nobody due to aiming too high. Imagine you can out of school with no qualifications, then went and applied for a job as an actuary. That would be negligent.

Where did I say they're doing nothing? I'd prefer it if I didn't have to use my posts clearing up rubbish that others speak. I feel it's been negligent trying to buy players that are quite blatantly out of our reach as a club. We've been knocked back by them all so far and as far as we can see they have no plan B in place (evident by the lack of rumours about other strikers - and don't say we wouldn't have heard rumours, there has not been a previously unreported purchase for years now). That is negligent, and there is no doubt about that.

BlIvey, I really cannot fathom the vitriol on this thread for criticising the fact that we haven't bought a striker. Perhaps 'inactivity' was the incorrect word to use, but surely you lot cannot deny that the way we have gone about looking for a striker has been bordering on negligent. Hopefully it will pick up soon, because we do desperately need to bring someone in. Real shame we weren't interested in Bony at Swansea.

On 2 players, only one in a position that needed improving. Both will turn out to be good players for us as well. However... IMHO we NEED another striker in. Rickie cannot do it all by himself, Jay Rod is really quite profligate. If we don't sign someone we will see more points lost in games we dominate like last season and Celta Vigo the other day. We had hoped to have players in by now, evidenced earlier in the Summer by the MoPo quotes. Our style of play is pretty specialist, it needs time to get to know the system, which means we will struggle to integrate new players into the team if we don't sign some soon. We've seen teams like Norwich do good, early business, whilst we chase unrealistic targets. We need to take advantage of our early season fixtures, or we could come unstuck when the more difficult stages of the season hit us. It's no good people saying 'there's 25 days left' or whatever, it'll be too late for it to effect our early season.

I know the Summer isn't over, but with no new winger and no second striker, and further to that no credible rumours at the moment, but I am worried that our business will be too little, too late. I would like to know who bears the responsibility for this. For me it has to be Cortese, he should have learnt from last Summers delayed business, and if he believes we can kick on to challenge for top 8 with this squad I think he will be sadly mistaken.