LOCKED: January 08 Transfer Window

I'm not sad to see Davis go. I didn't care for him because a)he never showed any intensity/desire and b)he never shot the ball.

i may be crazy, but arent those two things required to succeed in the BPL?

I also dont care much for Stalteri, Litmanen, Kallio, et al coming in because THEY ARENT CLASS PLAYERS. We already have enough also-rans. In fact, thats all LS gave us. So why is Hodgie doing the same?? Yes, we were in a different position, but Cookie got friggin' MONTELLA to come here.

I dont mean to be ungrateful, but after the past summer transfer window I aint got no expectations on anyone.

 

Boro have signed Afonso Alves from Heerenveen for a fee rumored to be around 12M pounds. Unless something breaks in the next half hour, that's clearly the biggest pickup by a club in the relegation battle in the run-up to the deadline.

 

No but they are required for success in the EPL... :wink:

Any word on Cousin yet??? I reaaaaaaaaally think he will add a lot to our attack...oooooh please oooooh please FIFA you bunch of d-bags.

 

No word on Cousin. Whoever it was that said that FIFA wouldn't make a decision until it was too late for RH to line up another option was right on, though.

 

FIFA could decide on Cousin next week and he'd be allowed to play for us. That's what happened with Mascherano, he didn't play for Liverpool until a couple weeks after the transfer window closed.

 

True, but if they decide he's not allowed to play for us, it's too late for Hodgson to pick up someone else.

 

Well my complaints aside, what do you think is the biggest surprise transfer?

I gotta say Benjani going to Citeh. TOTALLY didnt see that coming.

 

Benjani to City was out of the blue, but I guess came to be because Spurs were willing to offload Defoe finally (who seemed to want to stay according to the papers).

City also picked up a young Ecuadorian guy from FC Basel.

The problem with Fulham is that it looks to go down and apparently doesn't have the cash to spend a large fee on one class player, like Alves or Defoe.

 

I thought this deal didn't get done. He was too late getting to Manchester or something. Anyway, If I was Pompey, I would not want to lose Benjani. He is quailty.

 

According to Sky the Defoe deal was completed but Benjani to Manchester City was not.

 

Here's some reason why I am not happy with this deadline day wheeling and dealing.


A- While Boro got Alves and Bolton got Cahill, we go out and get a 37 year old who probably will be crap, a 29 wingback that nobody has even seen play and another wingback that sucks big time in this league. For all I know Kallio and Stalteri might tear it up, but I am not gonna count on that at all. Kallio has just now got into the Finnish national team full time. That means it took him 12 years or so of professional football to finally break into his national team. Finland is not even that good and I have not noticed a wingback from Finland that has tore it up either. Stalteri was decent for Bremen, but that is Germany and not England. With Spurs he shows that he cannot defend all that great against players from this league. Fuck, we should of just kept Volz out there and moved him to RB again.

B- We did not address our glaring need for another forward. I do not care if we already brought in 2, it was obvious that we needed another forward. EJ is short on match fitness and Nevland has not played in this league ever(Did he ever get a game with United?). Again Boro got what they needed and we did not. We should of really splashed the cash on a forward. If FIFA was so-so on the Cousin deal then we should of not waited and went right after another player. We did not do this and I would not be surpirsed if we keep on our goal scoring pace for the rest of the season.

Overall this window was not that good and we failed miserably compared to a couple of the other teams. I hope we have good support next season while we play Sheffiled United and QPR.

 

A few weeks for the Cousin deal to be decided on? We don't have a few weeks! I thought the FIFA spokeperson said they had "deadlines" they had to consider when announcing the decision...shit FIFA you d-bags. Sorry to use harsh letters.

Anyways, hopefully FIFA will allow it after jerking us around and hopefully that happens in time to coincide with McBrides return to the lineup...

How quickly our problems up top will be solved with a lineup that looks a little something like this...

-------------------Niemi-------------------


Stalteri--Hangeland--Stefa--Konchesky

----------------Andreasen--------------

Dempsey--------------------------Davies

-----------------Bullard--------------------


--------McBride----------Cousin----------


Bench: Keller, Bocanegra, Bouazza, Nevland, Johnson

 

I think we're actually ok in terms of how many players we have. We have McBride and Diomansy returning, as well as Nevland, Johnson, Healy, and Litmanen. Come to think of it, I don't think we've had this many strikers on the roster in a long time.

 

Couldnt agree more. I'm so g'damn frustrated. In total it looks like they had around 12 million pounds in transfer fees to spend. I would've used it all on one proven striker.

Is the problem that a proven striker wont come to FFC?

 

Cousin is still coming, but won't be here until next week!

 

As i've said before, "reality is a terrible thing." The question now is, Can Roy turn this NIre-Fin-USA-et al collection of futballers into a real TEAM. Grit, hustle, and taking advantage of opportunities are the ways lesser talented teams have always prevailed. So can Fulham! IF THEY WANT IT BAD ENOUGH AND ARE MANAGED PROPERLY FROM HERE ON

 

Can you really say that Alves is proven though? He scored a boatload of goals, but it seems like a lot of them came against really bad teams. Diomansy can do that. If we had bought a £12m striker, we would still be without a decent CB, a defensive midfielder, and we would still be stuck with only two strikers. No way we'd be better off.

We've seen two of the signings so far and they have both looked good. I think this bodes well for the rest of them.

 

I'm yet to be convinced Hangeland is any better than the CB's we already had and the same goes for the other signings. The point is Roy signed more players in the same price range, if not less, than Sanchez. In fact, all of them except for Hangeland went for less than Baird. I assume there is a reason why no one was willing to pay anymore for these players than for the players Sanchez got. If I'm wrong then it means a lot of professional football clubs were wrong also.

 

One match played with two of the new guys. Let's give the new crew perhaps a few more matches before we start holding up the magnifying glass.

One thing I would note about Roy's signing, more players he has gotten us (yes, in a similar price range to Sanchez's siginings) came from or played at one time with good clubs.

I think/hope we are heading in the right direction, up.