sharkyvilla

Can't see anything past relgation for us to be honest. Our form is dire, real relegation form. I honestly can't see where our next win is going to come from. A decent signing or two in this window and the club would've had the shot in the arm we needed. Alas we've spent next to nothing on lower level players and have in my opinion resigned ourselves to relegation and are starting to prepare for the league below.

 

Thanks for nothing Randy. Time to sell up and hand the club to someone who is actually willing to spend a £ or two. He's blatantly got bored of it now, time to get someone with new ideas and enthusiasm in... 

Once again though, who to?

I'd definitely take Palacios on loan, even if Sylla turns out to be our defensive midfield saviour it would be prudent to have another one at the club as our midfield is so dire.  Let's hope it's a busy 4 hours or so

I just find it odd that someone would have 3 types of fruit lying around.  Surely nobody has that much fruit for lunch?  It wouldn't leave much room in a lunchbox for crisps, cake or sandwiches.  He must have put some effort into this, I'm guessing it's Iniesta as I think he has eaten an apple, banana and orange in his lifetime.

Well he needs to hit the ground running and have more of an impact than the majority of Lambert's signings.

If he's a bruiser then hopefully it will make Westwood and El Ahmadi's jobs easier.  Benteke, Vlaar, Guzan and Lowton have all had a decent impact.  Excited about this other signing now.

6ft black French-African defensive midfielder, perfect.  Don't care if he can't pass for shit.

True he doesn't have the squad Houllier had but even so he was capable of arresting an alarming slide around Christmas 2010 yet Lambert has not been able to do this. In fact things have only got worse, and tactically I don't think I've ever seen anyone as inept as Lambert.

Houllier was allowed to spend £24m on Bent and £6m on Makoun, plus bring in Walker on loan, and had Young and Downing all season!  If Lambert could do that then I'm sure he would arrest our decline too.  I'm sorry but I just don't see how Houllier possibly did a better job than Lambert when the latter had less to spend on buying 8 players to fill an already terrible squad than Houllier spent on one player to supplement a squad that finished 6th the year before.

Houllier had a vision and style of play that needed time and had the contacts to get us exciting players.

He just couldn't cut it in the dressing room or on the touch line.  You could tell that he just wasn't up for it.  He still had O'Neill's squad minus Milner plus about £30m to spend in January and had us in a relegation battle, which I think is worse than McLeish and Lambert achieved.  I was very supportive of his appointment but in hindsight wish it was just as a director of football with a young and hungry first-team coach.  It was a missed opportunity for the club.

McLeish is tactically smarter than Lambert.

 

Just let that sink in for a moment.

That is going a bit far.  I sympathise with Lambert for the squad he inherited and he has at least tried during the season to play football as well as go direct, also try different formations.  With no wingers at the club other than Albrighton and N'zgobia, who I'm sure he would have expected to be half-decent, there is little other option than to play narrow.  There is no excuse for Heskey on the right wing, however.

Just read something on Twitter saying that our net spend since O'Neill left has been £1.25million.

I don't really have a problem with that, plenty of clubs can operate on a sell-to-buy method.  We just haven't invested in the right players.

Just get him in the side and hope his goals keep us up, screw the rest of his contribution, it won't matter come May.  At the moment we'd be selling him at his lowest value in his entire career when he's still only 28 or something.  Stick Benteke as a defensive midfielder if you have to...

£20M and most of it on players who aren't good enough?

 

Benteke = 7M

Westwood = 3M

Vlaar = 3M

Lowton = 2,5M

 

They are all good enough and that is most ot the 20M right there

 

Doubts over KEA and Bennett granted and Bowery at 200K well,  even though we are not even spending that much now it is hardly a waste

 

The real issue has been on players here,  not players he has signed.

 

Bent,  Ireland ,  Nzogbia (until the last game and a half),  Bannan,  Gabby, Delph, Dunne.  These are all players who for one reason or another, have not helped this season.  Sum total of all of those players ? 50M in transfer fees alone.

I agree totally.  Lambert's biggest task this season was as a coach to get the best out of the players he inherited and that just hasn't happened.  His signings should have filled holes that needed filling and to be fair to them have largely been successful for the money spent, but it's not made a difference to the team's performance because of how shit the likes of Ireland and N'Zogbia have been.  They really have let the team down and this is where I have sympathy with Lerner and Lambert.

Is there something wrong with me that I find half of those names hilarious?  I love the Dutch

True, Delph's idea of protecting the back 4 is to kick someone about 30 yards from goal. Absolutely horrifying that he is in our central midfield and part of the reason our defence is so shit

and me.

Lambert as the manager is the easy target, the wrong one but the easy one.

We are in this state not just because of this season but because of lerner's ineptness. Sure there have been mistakes and criticisms that are justified of the manager, like all managers. The difference is other managers have the time and space to make those mistakes, with lambert because of the state of the club every decision has to be spot on, he can afford no mistakes. Well no manager is that good to make no mistakes.

I still believe he is the best manager we could get. What he needs is support and backing , just the thing he isn't getting.

When Lambert took over I expected us to be flirting with the bottom 3 in Jan before picking up in the second half of the season, and a cup run would be a bonus. I know it's easy to feel utterly depressed at the moment but I really think it will only take a couple of players to make us safe assuming we are lucky with injuries. If Lerner wants to keep Lambert then he has to give him some backing, not a massive amount but he has to stick by his man and the best way to do that is to get a couple of heads in sharpish. If Randy can't do that then Lambert is on a hiding to nothing, I can't believe he would have taken the job on in the first place if that was what was offered.

Well I'm still on Lambert's side, the squad is so poor and he really is trying to sort things out against the odds. He just needs some frigging money to spend on a defender and midfielder, at least. I think there has been enough encouragement from the front lads recently to suggest we can win games if we stop shipping basic goals.

For me, playing long balls to Benteke is useless unless he has someone to flick it onto eg Bent or Andi. Almost every time that the ball is smashed forward towards Benteke he is our furthest man forward. The only thing he can do is either try to knock it backwards or try to bring it down and hold off the defender. If he had someone further forward to try to flick it onto it would give him more options and probably more space because opposing defenders would be wary of someone running in behind. I hate that we often revert to playing long ball, but if we are going to then at least give Benteke as much help as possible when doing so!

The problem with playing 2 up the top is that we haven't got the midfielders and wingers to play conventional 4-4-2. That leaves the option of the diamond midfield which we've tried and didn't really work or the 3-5-2 which has clear flaws too. I'd love to see someone like Robbie Keane up front with Benteke, I think he has the nouse to really get the best out of him but we would still need an entirely new midfield in order to make it worthwhile.

People keep saying he wouldn't come here. Why?

He joined Galatasaray for £8.3m and £120k / week wages. He didn't want to go there but was forced out of Inter and the wages helped soften the blow.

If we gave Inter the same £8.3m tx fee and gave Sneijder £60k / week wages with a £2m signing bonus, then when he has to choose between the Premier League or Turkey, why would he not choose us?

Give him a 2 year contract with a release clause to allay any relegation fears and he's sorted.

I fail to see your logic apart from a simple dismissive 'he wouldn't come here'.

I would love to see him here but that deal you describe would cost the club £16m and he'd be available on a free transfer in 2 seasons' time. I just don't understand why other clubs who are playing Champions League football aren't going for him, let alone us.

We need to do what it takes now.

If lambert had been backed properly in the summer then maybe we wouldn't be in a desperate situation now.

Again we spent about £20m and had an offer for Dempsey accepted...

It saddens me to see a player of the quality of Sneijder signing for Galatasaray.

I believe he would have preferred the Premier League to the Turkish league.

Short-term contract with release clauses and a signing fee to keep wages sensible.

I think he would have been the box to box quality midfielder we needed. In total it would have cost us c. £10m. The feel-good factor, the statement of intent, the increased ticket and merchandise sales, the positivity around the players, and the much higher chance of staying up were easily worth that.

Massive opportunity missed, to me.

There was zero chance of him coming here. I don't know why neither of the Manchester clubs are going for him, probably because a deal would be financially ridiculous even for them so would be a no-go for us

It's January. Other clubs are strengthening. Pay what is required to get the types of players we NEED to move away from the relegation zone.

It's not that simple though. If we signed Sissoko today we'd probably have to give him an extra 20k a week than if we signed him in 10 days' time. I'm starting to think we should have a 2 week winter break and the transfer window is only open then

Applying logic to the way the club is being run at the moment then I agree with the opening post, it is going to be a slow start to the rebuild before a pretty steep upward curve. This is assuming that Randy isn't just saving money for the sake of saving money but is simply trying to correct the mistakes of the past. He's got a young manager in who to my mind has the intention of playing good football with young, hungry players on much lower wages, although it is an incredibly tough juggling act at the moment. This is achievable as the likes of Benteke, Lowton, Vlaar and Westwood illustrate. They are Lambert's big successes for me and once we stop losing the £200k a week on Dunne, Warnock, Hutton, Ireland etc and reinvest it in players like the four I listed (probably with lots of spare cash left over as well) then the team will improve with a decent pre-season. We need to sign players with sell-on value or if we do need the odd short-term addition to fill a hole they need to be cheap and above all reliable. That's the only way of the club getting back to where it should be.

Vlaar - Dunne - Clark/Baker would sort our defence out I'm sure if we persist with 3 at the back. Vlaar + Dunne's leadership would also be vital I'd imagine.

I agree but I think it's unlikely that Vlaar and Dunne would both make it to the end of the season without missing games, so signing another centre-half would still be a good idea even if they are a cheap lump.

Whilst it would be incredibly shit to get relegated we could easily lose a fortune by gambling on the wrong sort of players to keep us up. Getting relegated would make it easier to get rid of the players that have been a disgrace to the club whilst most of the squad would be forced to take a pay-cut. I'm pretty sure Lambert would take us back up again at the first attempt if we did go down though there is obviously no guarantee of that. I'm still hoping that Randy is looking long-term at correcting the mistakes of the past 5 years but still gives Lambert a bit of backing for the right players this January so we can avoid it.

I see Curtis Davies might be available for a cut price deal. Wouldnt be a bad shout.

I really liked Davies until he did his shoulder in, I've never quite understood why his stock is so low on here but I don't get to see us week in week out. Obviously never a £10m player and that weird thing about not playing him as we would have had to give him a new contract was another example of our over-indulgence with money, but for £1.5m, solid and still at a good age I would welcome him back.

So, do people find it likely that he'll come here?

Depends on which club caves into his demands first, as VillaCas indicates. Sissoko really could just wait until the summer and run his contract down if he wanted if nobody stumps up the wages now. He'd also have a better idea of who didn't get relegated. That's one of the reasons why people need to keep things in perspective when it comes to doing deals in January.