Did we spend our transfer money wisely? We're they Adkins choices?

[Dibden Purlieu Saint]

I keep on seeing in other threads people complaining that players need time to settle into our team (even though some of us feel this is what pre-season is for), so how long should we give them to settle? From what I can see our most disappointing player (JRod) has been with us for most of pre-season. Surely these are players who should be able to settle quickly being quite expensive and highly paid players? Should our scouting team have possibly looked at whether they take time to settle with previous moves before signing?

 

How long can we give them until we can reasonably justify them as being bad purchases?

[supersonic]

We obviously should have spent more on the defence. To spend £30mill in the summer and end up on Saturday with a back 5 of Fox, Fonte, Hoover, Yoshida and Gazza is not too clever.

 

I think how much say Adkins had in the transfers will determine how likely he is to keep his job.

 

Results on the pitch will have more of an impact, hence why the pressure already on him

[Bucks Saint]

I keep on seeing in other threads people complaining that players need time to settle into our team (even though some of us feel this is what pre-season is for), so how long should we give them to settle? From what I can see our most disappointing player (JRod) has been with us for most of pre-season. Surely these are players who should be able to settle quickly being quite expensive and highly paid players? Should our scouting team have possibly looked at whether they take time to settle with previous moves before signing?

 

How long can we give them until we can reasonably justify them as being bad purchases?

 

zzzzzzz

[tajjuk]

 

Was Ramirez a good signing @ £12 million? Possibly not. I'd rather have spent the £12 million on 3 £4 million defenders. At the time I thought it was a vanity signing and although he looks to be a great player I still think he might be just that - and I'm not sure at all that he will make the difference enough to keep us up. Whereas 3 quality defenders might well have done.

 

I have seen this comment and numerous other similar about Ramirez and how the money should have been spent on two defenders.

 

However each person seems to have missed some massive points about this:-

 

1. We does everyone assume that we had £ X million to spend and spent £12 million of it on Ramirez. Around the time of the window closing there were a lot of rumours linking us with lots of defenders, which was after we had completed the Ramirez signing. There seems to be an assumption that we were out of money, when activity, or at least rumoured activity seemed to be saying we put £6 million bids in for several defenders. I suppose we won't completely find out until January.

 

2. Value for Money, see this statement - "he looks to be a great player I still think he might be just that - and I'm not sure at all that he will make the difference enough to keep us up. Whereas 3 quality defenders might well have done." is very odd, how can he look like a great player but then not make a difference? And where are these quality defenders for £4 million? Buttner went for £4 million granted but then he went to Man Utd, plus we don't know the 'other' fees involved. Bassong went to Norwich for £5.5 million, he's already been dropped by Norwich and they are as bad as us defensively. I think Mbia to QPR was around the £6 million mark and again QPR have been all over the place defensively. Mariappa who to me is very much a championship defender and no better than what we have went to Reading for £3 million. The only one who I can think of is Collins who cost West Ham £2.5 million and I still think he's a pretty average defender. Who are we supposed to have signed? £6 million wasn't enough for Scott Dann and he's not doing well by all accounts in the Championship.

 

Also remember that Matt Jarvis cost West Ham £12 million, Adam Johnson cost £10 million plus add on plus he's probably on a £100k a week. Both are in their mid twenties, Gaston is 21, rated as one of the best prospects in Europe, is already a full international and in my opinion is already better than both Johnson and Jarvis.

[Alanh]

No we did not make the correct choices. Adkins had a fixation with JRod and £7m could have been used to sure up the defence.

 

We scored more goals than any other team last season, which tends to suggest there isn't too much wrong with our strikers, yet we spent £22m improving the attacking parts of our team, and £2.8m + compo on 4 defensive players.

 

What's the famous phrase, something about paying peanuts and getting monkeys...

 

Disagree completely.

 

Our strike force last season was Lambert, Sharp, Lee, Barnard, Connolly. How many of them would you have been happy for us to rely on in the Prem? Knowing that Connolly was leaving and Lee was injured, Barnard IMO no where near Prem quality that leaves us with Lambert and Sharp to start the season. How can it therefore not make sense to spend about a third of our total spend on Mayuka and Rodriguez?

 

We brought in 2 keepers and 2 defenders so half of our total recruits in the summer were defensive. How can you say that the defence wasn't shored up?

[Rebel]

I have seen this comment and numerous other similar about Ramirez and how the money should have been spent on two defenders.

 

However each person seems to have missed some massive points about this:-

 

1. We does everyone assume that we had £ X million to spend and spent £12 million of it on Ramirez. Around the time of the window closing there were a lot of rumours linking us with lots of defenders, which was after we had completed the Ramirez signing. There seems to be an assumption that we were out of money, when activity, or at least rumoured activity seemed to be saying we put £6 million bids in for several defenders. I suppose we won't completely find out until January.

 

2. Value for Money, see this statement - "he looks to be a great player I still think he might be just that - and I'm not sure at all that he will make the difference enough to keep us up. Whereas 3 quality defenders might well have done." is very odd, how can he look like a great player but then not make a difference? And where are these quality defenders for £4 million? Buttner went for £4 million granted but then he went to Man Utd, plus we don't know the 'other' fees involved. Bassong went to Norwich for £5.5 million, he's already been dropped by Norwich and they are as bad as us defensively. I think Mbia to QPR was around the £6 million mark and again QPR have been all over the place defensively. Mariappa who to me is very much a championship defender and no better than what we have went to Reading for £3 million. The only one who I can think of is Collins who cost West Ham £2.5 million and I still think he's a pretty average defender. Who are we supposed to have signed? £6 million wasn't enough for Scott Dann and he's not doing well by all accounts in the Championship.

 

Also remember that Matt Jarvis cost West Ham £12 million, Adam Johnson cost £10 million plus add on plus he's probably on a £100k a week. Both are in their mid twenties, Gaston is 21, rated as one of the best prospects in Europe, is already a full international and in my opinion is already better than both Johnson and Jarvis.

 

 

Ramirez will probably turn out to be a great player for Saints - if we stay up and he stays more than one season. He certainly looked like it for parts of the game against Villa.

 

I'm not assuming we spent all the money we had as there were rumours of substantial bids in for other players like Boilesen at Ajax. But it looks like we've borrowed money to spend now on transfers against our TV revenue/payments from later in the season and the security of our parachute payments ifvwe go down which suggests otherwise.

 

So far we've spent £30 million on transfer fees - and our probably going to be paying out the best part of another £20 million in wages. Our revenue for this season - with the the premiership TV money is probably going to be around £60 million. So unless the Liebherrs are going to put some more money into the club - which they probably arent as we have borrowed money instead - it suggests we have pretty much spent all our money for this season.

 

I guess January will tell us for sure if - as if we've got it we'll surely spend it.

 

At the moment we don't seem to have too many problems scoring goals - but we seem to be completely unable to stop teams scoring against us. So Raimrez at £12 million will probably help us score some more goals - but we'll keep conceding more than we score unless something changes. Maybe 2 or 3 defenders - bought with the same money - who made the difference when it came to keeping a clean sheet or even just reduced the amount of goals we concede might have been a better investment.

 

Granted buying any player is a risk - Ramirez is going to be out for a while it seems with a leg injury. But I can think of a couple

of defenders we could have bought in - Douglas Franco Texeira was supposedly up for grabs at £4.5 million, Niklas Moisander went for £3 or £4 million to Ajax - and the two of them were rated as two of the best defenders in the Eredevise lady season. You could add Mateo Mussachio at newly relegated Villareal - highly rated despite his lack of height - and we'd have probably got him for a couple of million.

 

Dann, Johnson and Davies at £6 million or whatever are all overrated as they're English.

 

To be honest we haven't really seen enough of Gaston to know fir sure yet - but at 21 and with the flashes of potential we've seen he probably was great value compared to Johnson and Jarvis.

[Toadhall Saint]

Probably one CB light TBH. That will no doubt be rectified in the next transfer window.

[david in sweden]

Clearly Ramirez is a great signing, but it's also equally clear that having spent so much well-publicised time and effort on negotiations with Bologna, Cortese had to seal the deal.

 

However, many of us also questioned the final absence of any defensive cover. Thankfully we did sign Yoshida - and that was a good (and relatively inexpensive) deal by comparison, but in retrospect I think a number of factors blurred the management vision (and mine too).....and didn't alert us to potential problems.

 

Clearly we had to replace Jaidi, but having loaned out Aaron Martin (who should have be getting game time instead of bench time at Palace)..and sold Dan Harding (a good move for him) and the uncertainty surrounding Dan Seaborne's future...... things seem to have fallen onto Luke Shaw's shoulders and having seen the £4 million to Arsenal hype in the summer we all expected to see another emerging Gareth Bale, but it came at a time when Shaw clearly wasn't ready and he sustained a minor injury and was later ill, and is probably still short of full fitness.

Of course we may never know the full details of the " non-signing " of Buttner, but clearly Cortese wasn't happy with the double-dealing rumoured to be going on behind the scenes... and so it didn't happen.

 

Now without Martin, and Clyne and Richardson injured we are in the s****t, but the final question has to be ....Were there any suitable top class CB candidates that we really wanted to sign - and didn't get?

 

Looking around at the time it was difficult to see any "available " player who'd be willing to come, or whose club was willing to sell ....who everyone agreed would have been the prime candidate?

 

In retrospect we've been unlucky with injuries / loss of form..... but we may have better luck finding the right men in January.

Edited 13 October, 2012 by david in sweden