switters

conceded 4 in the one before..

he definitely needs a loan spell 'cause I doubt he's even going to be getting on the bench here unless we have several injuries. Derby sounds a good option. Perhaps should be looking to loan Bowery & Gardner too (as long as we have recall options in case of injuries).

Helenius also said that, or rather he was disappointed that he wouldn't get to work with Benteke when he handed in his transfer request, indicating it was a reason for him to join. I wouldn't read too much into it He's one of the hottest talents in Europe at the minute, I'd assume a lot of young, up and coming players would jump at the chance to join his team and just get to work with him in training, especially the strikers. plus if Kozak has the workrate, there's a chance he's competing with Weimann for a spot and could be in team with Benteke without it being 442. same goes for Helenius. after all Lamert used Bowery in that position at times last season.

I think that is only if they've been released since the last transfer window (i.e. if we released Hutton tomorrow, he couldn't register for someone else til Jan) but if someone was released before the end of the window, they'd be free to sign for anyone & play straight away.

there's a loan window for lower league clubs (Championship downwards) which opens in a week's time & runs til November. I'd expect Hutton to be loaned out somewhere, as he was last season & Given may well be one of first ports of call if any decent sized club hits a GK injury crisis. maybe others like Albrighton, Bowery, Johnson could get loaned too. you can sign free agents at any time.

wonder if there'll be times where we try and totally bully physically smaller teams and play a front three of Helenius-Benteke-Kozak I don't see that Kozak will just be Benteke backup - need pressure on Gabby & Weimann too, and he and Helenius should provide that.

Welcome. let's hope Lambert's got another transfer coup.

maybe that's why Blackburn fell through..

I assume he'll be in as competition for all of the front 3, along with Helenius. certainly don't think it would be a bad thing to have five proper forwards on our books (all capped internationals for good European countries) considering we're starting with three most games and there will inevitably be injuries/suspensions/times when players need resting.

you know you're in the depths of deadline-day madness when someone is assessing the facial hair of a random guy in a car who is probably one of our own youth players!

They spent £8m on 20 year old Dutch international Marco van Ginkel this summer. Kevin De Bruyne was a similar price a couple of years ago, as was Lucas Piazon. Clubs like that do look at higher price brackets but not exclusively.

Exactly. Lambert clearly loves a last minute bargain yup. it may well be that the intended strategy for this summer was do 90% of business early and then wait around to see if we can get some late bargains when clubs are more desperate to sell than we are to buy. which also means we may end up not signing anyone else, 'cause late deals are always a risk, but I reckon we'll pick up at least one player on deadline day.

seems Liverpool want him. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/aug/29/liverpool-brendan-rodgers-shay-given

They've yet to sign a single player good enough for the top 4. Fwiw, we have at least one. Paulinho and Soldado are both top 4 quality for sure. as are Vertonghen and Lloris. sorry, misunderstood. shouldn't jump into conversations I haven't read properly

You might not think Bannan played well, but he didn't play badly, other wise we would not have won so many games when he played. Given the number of times we lost last season, we could not afford any slackers, and the fact when Bannan played we were more likely to get a positive result shows he wasn't a slacker. He's not in the team because his style doesn't fit Lambert's system and that's that. That "open goal" sounds like a description of Delph's miss against Fulham (?). Bannan did well here and don't forget we scored from it. Balls to it, I'll bite. This is ridiculous. You include the video as tho it substantiates your point when it does the exact opposite! It was a terrible miss and yes, 10x the miss versus delph's. Delph should have scored but it was nowhere near as glaring as this. You live in lala land mate, really hope you follow bannan to wherever he goes it's not a terrible miss. it was an instinctive shot with very little time to adjust position, hit the inside of the post and was clawed off the line by the keeper.

Great win to start the season. We had some luck with 50-50 decisions, but took the chances and Guzan kept us from conceding more. He'd be my MOTM though Gabby was key in winning the two penalties, and Delph & KEA put in v.good shifts. kept pressure on Arsenal midfielders which didn't allow them to settle & they couldn't get Walcott/Cazorla/Ox in the game. also Clark deserves some credit considering the response on the matchday thread when he was brought on was akin to welcoming the apocalypse. bit ropey distribution, but we didn't concede while he was on.

I think it's much less transfer fee than wages. I'm fairly sure we'd pay 8m+ for a good young player as long as they are not asking for crazy wages. for all the transfer failings over past few years, board can also look at successes like Young, Milner, Downing and look around the league and see that sometimes 10m gets you a player worth 25m in a year or two. I don't think they'd have a problem making a big initial investment on a player if they think it's a good long-term investment. but certainly transfers like Luke Young are not going to happen anymore, ultimately what hurt us most was having way too many players on top flight first team wages, e.g. at the end of 2010 season we had L.Young, Warnock, Shorey, Beye, Dunne, Collins, Cuellar, Bouma & Davies all on the books! that's 9 established defenders all on probably 40k+ a week. utter insanity. those lot probably averaged around 5m mark transfer fee - expensive but not crazy money in football terms - but having all the 4 year contracts on 2-3m a year simultaneously was the killer

how much longer contract does Delph have? has he signed an extension since he joined?

Nice to see lots of different players getting on the scoresheet, can only be good for confidence.

It's perfectly possible that it's not about money, anyway. Blackburn have been a complete car-crash ever since Venky's took over - how many managers they had in last 3 years? this is a big move for Bannan and I wouldn't blame any player for not wanting to go to a club that changes manager every 6 months.

Next up for the bomb squad, I'd imagine. I think he'll be given a chance at some point as he had injury problems a lot of last season and I think he could be a Lambert-type player - maybe not in position but in attitude & work-rate. but certainly this is make or break season for him. maybe needs a loan to get some game time & find form

I think villa-revolution is going to miss Bannan more than Con. He seems even more obsessed.

Cisse only got 8 league goals last season. after that they've got Gouffran (more of a winger, not prolific) and, er, Ameobi. they got Ben Arfa & Cabaye who can score from midfield, but still think they look lacking for goals overall.

doesn't make a great deal of difference with someone like Fonz. it's probably the case that no-one else wants to pay him as much as he's currently on & he's got a year left with us so our choice is either pay him off (which will cost most/all of the year's contract), let him go to another club for free (but presumably have to pay some/most of his contract anyway, 'cause he won't have requested transfer) or loan him out (and probably split the contract with loaning club). I don't think the club is stupid - if we were able to make money selling these players we would, but seems we're mostly having to look for least-bad option.

wish him well at Blackburn. never deserved to become the hate/joke figure he seems to be for so many on here. some of our more derided youth players like Hogg and Osbourne have gone on to do alright in Championship & others like Whittingham thrived (and is now deservedly back in the Premier League). of course there's also many examples of players who drop down and then keep dropping so only time will tell on this one.