BigJim

You never know, he might turn out like that other Spanish striker Swansea had a few years back...

(where's that clutching at straws gif)

Looks quite competent on youtube. I trust Suso on this one.

13 minutes ago, villabromsgrove said:

Isn't he just a left footed clone of Anwar El Ghazi? 

I'd say he's more of a rich man's Conor Hourihane.

1 hour ago, thabucks said:

Wonder what the situation is with Gaston Pereiro at PSV ... That one has gone quiet. 

Very tidy-looking player. For 6m? seems too good to be true.

9 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

We had roughly 12 out so 12 in, roughly £10-12m each which is relative peanuts for Premier League standards these days.  I suspect most of the players will get better over the next few years like Gueye, Veretout, Amavi, Ayew etc have made decent fists of become top division players all across Europe despite getting relegated with us.  Just right now it's touch and go as to whether this lot will keep us up and not helped by a few season-ending injuries to key players.

Overall I quite like our recruitment process, it sounded like we had 4 targets for each position, some which Dean came up with, some Suso did along with his scouts.  It's then a case of getting players in though the door which doesn't always mean your first choice as there are loads of factors involved, some of which you can't control.

IIRC these players had a better reputation when we signed them than most of those we signed in the summer - i.e. a bit less of a risk. And with the exception of Veretout I though they did quite well for us.

5 hours ago, TRO said:

For such a long time now we have had a very hit & miss success rate

 

This has been puzzling me for a long time. I remember when MON signed Reo Coker. Having hardly heard of him I turned to Youtube. In two minutes anybody could see that he would never be able to hit a pass to save his life. I have experienced the same reaction several times when looking at our new players, and it is rare that I change my mind after watching a few performances live.

Now you obviously can't make decisions based solely on video clips. But while attributes like price, experience, fitness, character, temperament and availability are all important,  I do sometimes feel that when we sign players we don't give enough consideration to pure footballing ability. 

4 hours ago, OxfordVillan said:

Big test for the owners, do they dig deep and get us a forward that we can reasonably say is tried & tested (think Mitrovic) or do they continue with the buy potential template? We have to get our next CF signing right, ditto CM. We must seriously improve the spine of the team through the middle. 

Someone like Diallo doing well in France would fit the bill for me, provided we get at least one new winger. One without the other will not work.

I'm not going to write Trez off yet, he can improve with time. El Ghazi, on the other hand, has reached his level of incompetence I think.

56 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Today is all Smith this and Smith that but I think we need to look again at the summer transfer window. That was a crucial window as we had to build a new team to survive in the premier league in about two months. Other than Heaton who has premier league experience none of the new boys have looked consistently ready for this division.   We look naive and lightweight  throughout the whole team. Only getting in Wesley was crazy as well. At the moment it does not bode well. Sad face.

Have to say I agree with this and have had doubts about most of them from the off. Overall, a pretty poor recruitment effort, no doubt about it.

1 hour ago, Awol said:

Never seen him play and wiki had him down as a midfielder, but wide forward makes more sense. Just read Deano’s latest on Wes (Villareport) and he’s pretty clear we don’t want another striker in Jan’ - his main criticism is of the defence.

 

Probably just to keep Wes's spirits up, we've still got a few to play before anyone else can start.

Even if he doesn't want to replace Wes as the main man, it's hard to see how he'd turn down the chance to bring backup in at the very least.

Bit disappointed with Jack who couldn't get hold of the game and let his frustration get the better of him  - was lucky not to see red, even if his booking was unfair.

I’ll be honest and admit I was expecting to lose by at least 3 clear goals and I have to say I was pretty pleased with that performance, first half at least. People going on about how poor Arsenal are, please give us some credit for putting them on the back foot for decent periods of the game.

And before complaining about substitutions please consider the quality of the players we had on the bench. Lansbury and Hourihane for McGinn and Marvelous, had they come on earlier, would have kept Arsenal out? Do me a favour.

The one big message I think the coaches need to get across is this: it’s all good and fine keeping your head and trying to play neatly out of defence in the early stages of the game when you’ve got plenty of energy and time to put things right if you screw up.  But later in the game when you’re under the cosh, just blast it into the stands ffs.

And when we did play it long the delivery was terrible for the most part.

When our two dominant cbs get into the box we need to make the ball count. We are going to be relying on them for a fair few goals.

Given that we shot ourselves in each foot so early, I thought we showed good strength of character to fight our way back into it.  The players are still getting to know each other so will surely get better with time...whether this will happen fast enough is a tough question.

Our set piece delivery was really poor today and this is what we are going to rely on for half our goals so that has to improve quickly. Jack obviously didn't have his boots on today but still had two of our best chances and should have at least hit the target with both. Wesley showed a lot more today than last week - I think he will come good - but AEG was a let-down again, don't know what other options we have there.

8 minutes ago, alreadyexists said:

- we played a very good team

- we scored

- they beat us because they were better

- we don’t play a top four side every week

+++

- several key players not up to speed yet

12 minutes ago, andym said:

Big difference was how much pace and power Spurs had in the middle compared to us with Ndombele and Sissokho - it took its toll on us 2nd half and opened up things for Erikssen and Kane.

Hopefully Luiz or Marvellous can provide the same sort of thing for us when they are up to speed

Absolutely. If we could have started that game with a fit and assimilated Douglas and Marvellous it might have been a bit different.

The only disappointing thing about that half was that my bottle opener snapped under duress

47 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Today is upon us.

Let battle commence.

He which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart…

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say

This is the day we battered the Spuds

1 hour ago, VillaChris said:

As good as this window has been, feels to me like we're a CB heavy and striker like.

Really suprised we didn't get a frontman in today (not too fussed on another wide player). Guess we'll see how first few games pan out for Wesley and Kodjia against premier league defences and if needs be dip in for Sturridge or some other free agent.

Not ideal and a surprise to me given how effective we've been at doing deals this summer. Wonder if we missed out on anyone last few days?

Share your surprise, and worry that missing this one item threatens to ruin all the excellent work done in filling out the squad elsewhere.

Now I know we have a lot of players who have shown they have "goals in them" in other leagues, but scoring in the PL is a very difficult business and I'd have preferred to get another specialist on board for peace of mind.

1 hour ago, privateer said:

TBF, from the admittedly little I've seen of Nakamba we should run a sweep on which of him and SJM gets to the ban threshold first, how many bans they get and the individual number of reds and yellows they accrue across the season.

I've a worrying feeling that Wesley will take up that particular challenge as well.

5 minutes ago, hippo said:

Convinced kjodia can score goals at this level.

Let's hope he has to wait a good while for his chance and when it comes, he proves your point quickly

5 minutes ago, wilko154 said:

The idea of Wesley and Davis is that they hold the play up and bring the attacking midfielders into play to take the goal-scoring burden.

We have Grealish, McGinn, El Ghazi, Trezeguet & Jota to all aid the striker.

Not forgetting the goal-scoring CBs

6 minutes ago, rbcuk said:

Good business this window, but needed another striker

Absolutely. Reminds me of when TS failed to sign Adebayor.  We all know what happened after that.

Great to see so much confidence on here.

I'm fully confident about the season in general but feel we are just too unprepared going into this one. The new players have not had enough time, Luiz hasn't had any time, and I'm sure there will be still more new faces before Thursday night.  It's going to take us weeks to get into our stride.

I hope we can compete but fully expect a bit of a battering.