Dara O'Shea

Defo had a release clause for relegation apparently it's just over £8m

 

We didn't even put a bid in, that's the issue.. asked for their valuation and entered our usual state of paralysis for anything over 5m.

 

Inexcusable if we haven't even tried at that price.

 

If he was a target and we weren’t willing to pay £7m or £8m then I’d agree with you.

If we were willing to pay the fee and he chose to go elsewhere though, what more could we do?

 

For me it is find that out and move on quickly. Liam Scales was a stock gap who ended up a first team regular because we didn’t replace Starfelt well. This was a priority position, we need to have more than one target.

 

Aye, that's different.

But he's obviously available at that price and we were first linked probably over a month ago.

 

I agree with you, but quite often we seem to line up players who want to wait and see if a “better” offer arrives. We seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place with regards to waiting on the quality Rodgers craves or moving on to lesser targets.

We seemingly have a horrible habit of filling our squad with players who aren’t good enough, whilst also having a horrible habit of wasting time on players who are, but ultimately don’t want to come here. It’s a * of a knack and one we need to figure out, quickly.

 

And in that time there’s a very good chance we’ve agreed the bones of a deal, but he/his agent is biding their time wondering if a better one will come along.

Should we be waiting on Rodgers’ first choice “quality” target, or moving on to lesser players? My biggest concern there is that the drop off in quality recently between our managers knowing a guy and our scouts identifying one is insane.

 

Fanciful thinking, in my opinion. Based on the history of our board, it's more likely we're not wanting to spend that sort of money on both fee and wages if it can be avoided. £7m and £30k-£40k on wages is easily doable for us to sign a player of his calibre.

And if we did have a bid accepted and he was fannying us about then move on and go for someone else. It's pretty simple.

 

My worry is Rodgers is so fixated on the market down south and it's going to leave us chasing our tail late in the window.

We have the money for these players but either the board don't want to pay it (very likely) or the players want to stay down there.

O'Shea is a good player but there's players out there in Scandinavia, Belgium, Netherlands, Craotia etc that will be every bit as good or on the way up. Our clowns just can't identify them.

 

I’m not so sure. I genuinely think we’ll spend that kind of money on the “right” player. Finding someone deemed good enough by both manager and board who is willing to come here appears to be the issue.

Genuinely, it usually takes weeks for any transfer deal to be concluded, so it’s not necessarily a case that he’s fannying us about. The notion Football Manager gives off of hitting space bar a few times and a few days elapsing and it being done is a thousand miles from reality. There are so many moving pieces and the player is well within his rights to weigh things up.

I agree there comes a point where we need to be forthright and set a deadline or move on though.

 

I fully understand that. But as you say, there has to come a point.

The season has now started and we're stuck with Scales at centre back and dross behind him in the pecking order. We need two centre backs, so taking over a month to even get close to signing one just isn't good enough.

 

I agree with you, but the reality is we also can’t really justify signing two centre backs without first getting rid of at least two or three (Lagerbielke, Kobayashi and Welsh/Nawrocki).

Somehow we’re just as bad at getting people out the door as we are at bringing them in.

 

I take it you think or know our interest was strong @McGrory1888 agreed with shelby aign the guys we want then offload. It's costing us time and time again

 

If i saw nicholsen or lawell i certainly wouldn't be hanging out of window offering pints or posing for selfies.
Id spit in their * faces... at the very minimum.

Absolute * ghouls.

We should've been all * over this. Obviously loan to buy has failed, or we were never in for him in the first place.

 

If he was our top transfer target or Rodgers I mean, then surely we would have got the bid in early doors and secured his transfer before Brentford even came knocking?

It’s not like the club doesn’t have money, so to me something is quite right.

There has been no official bid from us so I would even say wanting to assess options was there at all.

By the looks of it the club has let Rodgers down a bit with a 7 million pound transfer like the did the first time for that right back.

Or maybe I’m just reading into it a bit much?

 

As I’ve stated, I’d bet alot of money that the player has known for weeks exactly what we are offering and has chosen to weigh up his options rather than committing.

Transfers don’t work how you are suggesting btw. It’s almost always not a case of us sending an email with an official offer for the club to accept, then us speaking to the player and trying to agree personal terms. In the vast majority of cases, we go to the agent and query the demands of both the player and club, then we’ll informally put an offer forward to the agent regarding personal terms, negotiate and if those are agreeable then we approach the club.

 

I imagine the board sanctioning the bid/move was dependent on us shifting Kobayashi and/or Lager, possibly Nawrocki given what was said about the Welsh move being rebuffed. * poor if true.