Phil Silvers Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 20 minutes ago, Nigel said: I just want to leave it out there that if you are looking to have a bet..... I'll have the max on us finishing 7th or below Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jas10 Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 Worst signing: Hogan or McCormack? The extent of the rebuilding job required in the summer cannot be overstated. All of the released players had to be discarded and none would have made much of a contribution. Our whole striking department needed replacing and improving (we only managed to get Wesley in, Samatta could be great and let’s see who else comes in), we only had El Ghazi in the wide positions. Other positions needed strengthening (Defence, MF, DM, GK) too. We had to quickly assemble a PL ready team, that’s quite a challenge. And we still have/had useless players like Taylor (crazy that he’s getting game time!!!), Hogan & Kodjia in the squad! Without the loans we would not have got promoted. I really hate FFP and we have been hamstrung by it. With our owners, we could have made some major signings but instead had to spread our limited amount of funds out across several positions just to put out a side... The only way to get into that top 6 ot anywhere close is to spend big on top quality e.g. Man City bought the likes of Toure, Silva & Aguero. Wolves managed to do some dodgy deals and integrate talent like Neves & Jota in early then added the likes of Moutinho, Jimenez & Traore (piss of with this PL experience bs, you just need top quality, no matter where it comes from). We simply did not have the capacity to do anything like that nor would be an attraction to top tier talent as we are just a newly promoted side rather than an established PL team... Honestly, I was feeling very optimistic at the start of the season (our performance against Spurs gave me some encouragement too, although I was disappointed with the final result). I do think we suffered with a run of tough games, close/controversial calls such as bad/wrong VAR calls & tough losses such as Liverpool. Confidence has been severely knocked (a huge factor imo) and we couldn’t manage with injuries to our main players (Mings & McGinn). The squad is just not that great but we can keep improving it going forwards. We just need to stay up for now and keep progressing. Hopefully we will make better signings in future windows. And no, Grealish is going nowhere and I resent “fans” that keep saying that he should go or would be better off elsewhere. He’s one of our own and loves the club, we managed to make it into the Prem and we can only get better if we stay up. We can build the side around him and compete if we get the right players in, those on the level of McGinn & Mings... (you won’t get another Grealish, ever) 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveAV1 Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 I see lots of posters complaining that we haven’t acted in the market quick enough. I know we all want players in as quickly as possible, but given the choice of a quick failed signing and a last day of the window successful signing I know what I’d choose. We’re looking for players, except for loans, that are going to sign 3 or 4 year contracts and so be long term investments. Even in the short term, have one more league game before the end of the month, surely the other 14 are considerably more important on the whole. Marry in haste, repent at leisure as they used to say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fightoffyour Posted January 21, 2020 VT Supporter Share Posted January 21, 2020 (edited) 2 hours ago, rubberman said: Given that the simple transfer of a English 16 yr old, for relative peanuts, from a club happy to lose him, to a club where his former coach works and that his family support is still taking over a week to complete, I think it's unsurprising that top class forwards / first team starters have taken a bit longer. IMO. Or the recruitment team is bloody useless, it’s still taking over a week to complete the simple transfer of an English 16 yr old, for relative peanuts, from a club happy to lose him, to a club where his former coach works and that his family support, what chance have they got of signing top class forwards / first team starters. Edited January 21, 2020 by fightoffyour Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post wilko154 Posted January 21, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted January 21, 2020 56 minutes ago, nick76 said: We've been a bit unlucky with injuries and VAR but it's hard just to blame that, we have been awful recently. But I always thought we'd be between 14th and 19th all the way through the season with 17th and 18th being the average and that's where we are now so I dont see it as problem at the moment. A couple of signings in January, a couple of nice results and things look better. Hopefully we've had our bad run (which every team go through) and we can pick up enough points to get safe. The end of the day 17th this season is a massive achievement. Think the injuries have actually hit us harder than people realise. I agreed with everything you said in terms of recruitment, we did well with the players we brought in and it was always going to take time for some of the players to adapt to the PL. The problem lately has stemmed from injuries to Mings, McGinn, Wesley and Heaton. At the time of the season you would be hoping the team would gel and start to improve we have had to adapt to missing big players in games, juggling new centre back variations, new midfield variations and playing midfielders up front. I'm hoping that after the January business is concluded we will start to stabilize and the performances and results will improve. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MachoFantastico Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 1 hour ago, Jas10 said: Worst signing: Hogan or McCormack? McCormack, at least Hogan wasn't a piece of trash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jas10 Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 3 minutes ago, MachoFantastico said: McCormack, at least Hogan wasn't a piece of trash. How about in terms of contribution rather than personality? Both worked out as bad as each other I suppose... we have signed so much dross and wasted so much money over the years. Hopefully that’s all going to change and we will clear the rest out asap... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichiBoi11 Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 Hogan tried his best, and he's also desperate to try and get first team football somewhere to rebuild his career. He wasn't good enough, but it wasn't for lack of trying. The same can't be said for Ross... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphinho123 Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 I personally think Hogan was a worse signing than McCormack. McCormack was a proven scorer and regardless of his issues, was a talented footballer. You could see when he played that he had a bit about him, he just had some serious off the field issues, probably depression as well as potentially being an alcaholic (pure speculation on all fronts). The club signed him with the best intentions and it's hard to legislate for what he eventually turned into. A poor signing, don't get me wrong, but you can almost feel for the club. Hogan was an out and out abysmal signing. Spending 12m on a player who had only had 6 decent months of football at that level was a huge risk. I doubt any scouting was undertaken before signing him, he was just a bloke who seemed to be scoring a few goals so they brought him in, no matter the cost. I remember watching him on several occasions and i've never known a player touch the ball so few times in a match. When he did touch it, it seemed to bounce off him. A very poor player who will plummet through the leagues in the next few years. That's my view anyway. To think we made them both multi-millionairres is sickening really. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazrim Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 I think having the talent and mugging us off is worse than being a poor player. So McCormick is definitely the worse of the 2 for me 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted January 21, 2020 Visiting Supporter Share Posted January 21, 2020 I think Bruce was quoted somewhere in the rags stating that he had tried to buy Hogan prior to becoming manager at Villa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teale's 'tache Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 3 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said: I personally think Hogan was a worse signing than McCormack. McCormack was a proven scorer and regardless of his issues, was a talented footballer. You could see when he played that he had a bit about him, he just had some serious off the field issues, probably depression as well as potentially being an alcaholic (pure speculation on all fronts). The club signed him with the best intentions and it's hard to legislate for what he eventually turned into. A poor signing, don't get me wrong, but you can almost feel for the club. Hogan was an out and out abysmal signing. Spending 12m on a player who had only had 6 decent months of football at that level was a huge risk. I doubt any scouting was undertaken before signing him, he was just a bloke who seemed to be scoring a few goals so they brought him in, no matter the cost. I remember watching him on several occasions and i've never known a player touch the ball so few times in a match. When he did touch it, it seemed to bounce off him. A very poor player who will plummet through the leagues in the next few years. That's my view anyway. To think we made them both multi-millionairres is sickening really. Agree with most of this, the McCormack transfer made perfect sense at the time, he was one of if not the best forwards in the Championship and had been for a good few seasons, he should of been as safe a bet of a transfer we could of made, but it didn't work out that way for whatever reason, sometimes it doesn't. I remember when Wolves signed Roger Johnson last time they where in the Premier League (before this current stint), he seemed like the perfect signing for them, experienced strong central defender was what they lacked at the time, looked a perfect Mick McCarthy signing, but it didn't work out, barely played and again rumours of alcoholism. The only thing you can maybe do is research their character a bit more to see if you can spot any weaknesses, but then how far do you go? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brummybloke Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 We knew we weren't signing 6 or 7 stats in this window due to losing 13 players. While some of our players haven't been great, that's down to them just as much as the recruitment in some way. Some players like luiz have not achieved what was predicted of them so far, same could be said for targett, mings, trez, wes, engels. More was expected of them, no one expecting them all to be awesome but good enough is what was expected. Mings, engels, targett and even to a point, wes have on occasion, played how we expected and hoped but not with the consistency required, in fact all our signings have had good moments or games, just not the consistency required. That shows there is something there in them, it just needs to be more consistent. Where I think we went wrong is not signing 1 middle to top player for the centre forward, centre half and centre midfield to make our core solid. Then some of these players who have not played consistently have someone to look up to and gain confidence and motivation from when things are not going well. That's what we need this transfer window. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacketspuds Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 Current Rio Ave manager Carlos Carvahal just been on SSN talking about Medhi Taremi. Apparently Sporting, Porto and Benfica have enquired. Name dropping is a good way of driving the price up. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maqroll Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 Who are we in for then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M_Afro Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 4 hours ago, Jas10 said: Worst signing: Hogan or McCormack? The extent of the rebuilding job required in the summer cannot be overstated. All of the released players had to be discarded and none would have made much of a contribution. Our whole striking department needed replacing and improving (we only managed to get Wesley in, Samatta could be great and let’s see who else comes in), we only had El Ghazi in the wide positions. Other positions needed strengthening (Defence, MF, DM, GK) too. We had to quickly assemble a PL ready team, that’s quite a challenge. And we still have/had useless players like Taylor (crazy that he’s getting game time!!!), Hogan & Kodjia in the squad! Without the loans we would not have got promoted. I really hate FFP and we have been hamstrung by it. With our owners, we could have made some major signings but instead had to spread our limited amount of funds out across several positions just to put out a side... The only way to get into that top 6 ot anywhere close is to spend big on top quality e.g. Man City bought the likes of Toure, Silva & Aguero. Wolves managed to do some dodgy deals and integrate talent like Neves & Jota in early then added the likes of Moutinho, Jimenez & Traore (piss of with this PL experience bs, you just need top quality, no matter where it comes from). We simply did not have the capacity to do anything like that nor would be an attraction to top tier talent as we are just a newly promoted side rather than an established PL team... Honestly, I was feeling very optimistic at the start of the season (our performance against Spurs gave me some encouragement too, although I was disappointed with the final result). I do think we suffered with a run of tough games, close/controversial calls such as bad/wrong VAR calls & tough losses such as Liverpool. Confidence has been severely knocked (a huge factor imo) and we couldn’t manage with injuries to our main players (Mings & McGinn). The squad is just not that great but we can keep improving it going forwards. We just need to stay up for now and keep progressing. Hopefully we will make better signings in future windows. And no, Grealish is going nowhere and I resent “fans” that keep saying that he should go or would be better off elsewhere. He’s one of our own and loves the club, we managed to make it into the Prem and we can only get better if we stay up. We can build the side around him and compete if we get the right players in, those on the level of McGinn & Mings... (you won’t get another Grealish, ever) Worst leader Trump or BJ. Kind of irrelevant. A tit is a tit! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinRichardsonsMoustache Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 11 minutes ago, M_Afro said: Worst leader Trump or BJ. Kind of irrelevant. A tit is a tit! Leading with BJ is kind of how it’s done isn’t it? Or have I been watching to many films? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphinho123 Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 Samatta isn’t enough, we probably need two wingers as well. God, our recruitment has been so, so bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeyAnty Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 3pts could be difference in a couple of great signings and average signings Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M_Afro Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 13 minutes ago, HeyAnty said: 3pts could be difference in a couple of great signings and average signings Yep. The league table looks so much better for that last minute goal! Had we lost/drawn it would have been so hard to convince players to come but it looks so much better now! We don’t play again until 1st Feb. The other teams who do still play all have tough fixtures. There are no guarantees but hopefully there won’t be any surprises. Therefore the table should be pretty similar come the end of the transfer window. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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