Wes

Luke Shaw is a future England left back. I don't see him moving anytime soon but when he does it'll be for big money. I can see Baines going to United and then Shaw taking over from him in a couple of years. It would be silly for him to move from Southampton currently as he's making rapid progress there.

And you can remove the centre back de Vrij from Feyernoord from my list. He's just signed a one year contract extention at Feyenoord.

By the way the kid Arsenal are signing from Auxerre in Ligue 2, the striker Yaya Sanogo, is one heck of a player. He's had some long layoffs with injury so there's a bit of risk there but Arsenal can afford to try such risks. There is as much talent in Ligue 2 as there is in the Championship - the difference is the French kids are likely to be about 3 or 4 times cheaper.

Yes, Valon is a really good player. I would actually try to swoop for his little brother as well, Veton. Both of them have huge potential imo.

If Delph hadn't of improved in the final half of the season I would've said Magnus Wolff Eikrem too from the Tippeligaen. I'm not sure we need another player of his ilk in the squad right now though.

Wes - Your knowledge of the transfer market is truly phenominal. I feel like I'm witnessing the 8th wonder of the world when I read your posts. Truly amazing!.

It's all speculation, same as any other post in here. I just like looking at data

I think there will be a similar budget to last season which was aprox £20 million net. What Lambert got with that £20 million is now a £10 million right back, a midfielder who's on par with Joe Allen's first premier league season who went for £15 million a decent centre half and a striker I wouldn't sell for less than £30 million. Not forgetting he resigned Guzan that's and Sylla looks decent towards the end of the season that's not a bad strike rate. I still think KEA and Bennett could come good also. Only Holman looks totally average and McLeish signed him.

So a couple of £7-8 million signings and a few £2-3 million signings by the looks. Totally going forward with the Borussia Dortmund model.

I think you're exactly right with the values of players we're going to go for.

• A good centre back can be had for £5m. I like Kjaer (Wolfsburg), de Vrij (Feyenoord), Ecule (Lorient), Okore (Nordsjaelland)
• There's some left backs out there who could compete with Bennett for £2m. - We're absolutely not going to spend a lot of money in this position. N'Sakala from Troyes who just got relegated from Ligue 1 I think could be good.
• An attacking midfielder I think will be our biggest outlay and most important signing. Like I've said before I really really like Van Ginkel (Vitesse) if Ajax don't take him. Will Hughes (Derby) I personally think is a better prospect than the often talked about Zaha but he'll cost probably too much than we're willing to pay. Praet (Anderlecht) is a gifted, nimble passer. And one probably not on anyone's radar,
  has 6 goals and 12 assists in his first season in Austria and has been playing first team football for 3 years - he's only 20.
• A versatile winger/striker is what I feel is our last need. Someone to spell Gabby and Weimann if they're not in form and what not. Thievy Bifouma (Las Palmas), Nacer Chadli (Twente) and MArius Alexe (dinamo bucharest) are all guys I see moving this summer.

Do we need a backup GK? can't we promote Siegrist? No idea if he is good enough or not but if we can save money that might be an option.

You need three keepers. I don't doubt Siegrist can be the back up keeper to Guzan but you need someone to keep pushing him too.

I'm a big advocate of having a #1, a keeper for cup competitions and a promising youth keeper.

With Given being shipped out and Marshall's contract up I expect next season Siegrist will get promotoed to that cup/reserve role. It would depend on how well the other reserve/youth keepers are rated if they bring someone else in or not.

The only players who would interest me are James McCarthy from Wigan and Andros Townsend from Spurs (on loan at QPR) although I think the amount we would be quoted for both would be ridiculously high compared to their true worth.

I think one thing we might see this year is a particularly bumper January transfer window throughout the league. The TV money trickles in throughout the season I believe so mid way through the season you could see a lot of teams spending some a bunch of that to secure their place in the league.

Not doubting he knows more than most Villa fans, myself included, but £20m + sales of those players would've been the guess of most reasonable people around the league anyway. He's not revealing much in that specific regard.

I've gone with 5.

• Reserve Goalkeeper competition for Siegrist
• Centre Back
• Left Back competition for Bennett
• An attack minded central midfielder
• A versatile forward/winger

I think the biggest purchases will be Centre Back and the Centre Mid.

For those of you who seemed to like my last post on how Dortmund built their team and the similiarities to how Lambert is building the side I'll have another lengthy post coming soon.

I know people like to float a lot of names in the transfer forum over the summer so for a bit of fun on my part and hopefully for the rest of you I've composed a list of players who could interest us from around some of the European leagues. (Trying to get ahead of the game and find the next Michu for my fantasy team next year)

Been holding off on posting it until now as I didn't want to tempt fate!

I'd rather continue our ideology from this year of not taking other teams castoffs who would demand high wages but continue to sign talent on the rise and those with experience from the continent.

I see and hope for continued progress, Lambert now being able to spread his wings a bit further and better place his imprint on the club. Safe midtable and the youngsters growing in confidence and ability would be just fine for me.

WE DID IT GUYS!

Lewandowski is in the final year of his contract which is why his market value is so low compared to player's of equal ability. Dortmund are stuck in a Catch 22 situation in that they want to keep Lewandowski but they also don't want to let him go on a free.

Bayern want him but they're huge rivals and they just sniped Gotze away from them via a release clause so they will definitely not be willing to sell him to Bayern. Dortmund's ideal trading partner is Chelsea. They like De Bruyne and want him plus cash in exchange for Lewandowski. De Bruyne wants to go to Dortmudn too but Chelsea don't seem particularly interested as they want to keep De Bruyne on their books and would rather loan him out to Bayer Leverkusen.

All a bit of a soap drama really.

One thing is for sure though is that Dortmund are cash rich right now. You can only trigger a release clause with an upfront cash payment. So they've got the £30m from the Gotze sale plus however much their annual transfer budget usually is, anything they get from an eventual Lewandowski sale plus a big injection from the champions League final.

In short they could easily make a play for Eriksen AND Benteke if that's what they wanted. It would be different to their modus operandi thus far but they see Bayern spending big and they may feel they have to spend a little more than they would typically do.

Georginio Wijnaldum would be an amazing signing from PSV, or Nacer Chadli at FC Twente! really think we could do with a midfielder who can chip in with a few goals because relying on the front 3 for 95% of our goals is not going to enable us to push on! Pity Holman isn't a better player really

Yes. I like them both. Good shouts there.

Yeah sounds like a misunderstanding! We all make them though. We have no hope in getting Soldado.

I have done my own bit of research of my own (just to pass the time) in to cheaper/younger players who may be on the move this summer and one of them happened to be linked with us in an article today - although it's from a banned speculation source on this site.

The guy is Thievy Bifouma. French U-21 20yo. Left footed left sided winger predominantly but can play more centrally (probably behind someone as he's quite slight). From the clips I've seen he seems to have a decent first touch, hard worker (key Lambert attribute) and very composed.

Why would he be available? As the artical states he's currently at Las Palmas in the second Spanish division after being loaned out by his parent club Espanyol; where he's got 11 goals and 9 assists in 31 appearances. Espanyol are heavily in debt and are going to have to sell some players. Would probably go for under £3m I would guess.

Another left sided player I liked the look of is 21yo Steven Zuber, from the Swiss club Grasshoppers. More of a traditional crosser of the ball than the shot minded Thievy. Has been a regular in their first team for 4 seasons. Chips in with a half dozen goals and assists per season for them. He may not be dynamic enough going forward for Lambert though. I imagine he'll be off somewhere else this summer though.

Is it sad to see him leave the club? Sure, as it is for all promising talent but there could be any number of reasons that he has chosen to leave. Personal/Family or Footballing. Frankly, I wish him well in all his future endeavours.

If he goes on to become a success and have a good career then all power to him. Whenever he's mentioned in the media there'll always be a reference to his training at Villa's academy. Something to be proud of and show to future potential players we want to sign scholorships with down the road.

Sunderland would stay up on goal difference barring a Stamford Bridge style meltdown from ourselves even if they got beat would they not?

Ah yeah good point. To be honest I was calculating and typing them out so fast my head got confused with all the goal differences.

Are Southampton exempt from this relegation malarky?

Yes their GD is too good.

Permutations

Wigan

If Wigan lose against Arsenal they are relegated.

If Wigan draw at Arsenal, Aston Villa are safe.

If Wigan win at Arsenal and win against Villa, Wigan are safe.

Aston Villa

If Wigan win at Arsenal, Villa lose to Wigan and Sunderland don't lose to Spurs, Villa are relegated.

If Wigan draw or lose at Arsenal, Aston Villa are safe.

If Wigan win at Arsenal and Villa don't lose to Wigan, Villa are safe.

Sunderland

If Wigan win both games and Sunderland lose to Spurs, Sunderland are relegated.

If Wigan draw with Arsenal and win against Villa, Sunderland are safe

If Wigan lose against either Arsenal or Villa, Sunderland are safe

As it stands it's between Villa, Sunderland and Wigan for the drop. Everyone else is safe.

Fair play to them, they put some of the magic back in to the cup with that win and they were the better team on the day.

Hopefully they'll be out on the town celebrating tonight.

Silly play and yes it did cost us, although it was his brilliance that had us in with a shout in the first place.

Yep. Whilst it's far from ideal it's hard to get overly annoyed with him. He's got us more points in the past than he may have cost us today.

As always there's some quality research there Wes. Fancy a job scouting from B6?

Sure, if they have an analytics department

If he took a big pay-cut and we got him at a reasonable price, would anyone accept Barry back?

I remember being told a year or so ago that he would like to come back to Birmingham at some point, because he has a lot of friends in the area.

Are the bridges all burnt for some people? Or is it pure fantasy?!

I wouldn't say the bridge has been burnt down, just that neither of the two have any need to cross it again any time soon.

1 - Guzan

2 - Lowton

3 - New LB?

5 - New CB?

7 - Weimann

9 - Benteke

 

That would be my best guess.

I'd go along with this too.

I think Benteke will be given the choice of taking 9 or sticking with 20 - much like Van Persie in the past week (he stuck with 20).

I'd probably give Bennett the #3 shirt in the hopes that it gives him a boost in pre-season and he comes out a better player the other side of it. We'll still bring in another LB but just because Benett has the number 3 doesn't mean he'll start for us. Don't give him the #3 though and I think the lad might just take it as another knock against him.