Sold short again

Same for me. I can't help but shake the feeling that Griffiths was brought in to aid in us completing the season undefeated, not to help very much in the Champions League. He'll guarantee more goals than Pukki and Balde but I also think that he'll hinder any development time for them and the Fridj. If we keep playing Commons up top, then we'll have Griffiths, Pukki, Balde, and Fridjonsson competing for the main center forward spot. That's no way to develop a striker corps. It just seems very short-sighted to me.

 

I guess we were sold short when we signed Hooper, Forster, Stokes, Kayal, Ledley, Izzy, Mulgrew etc in the one season too! :smiley-laughing002:

 

I'm quite happy with the business we have done this window, the only position we haven't bought in cover for is goalkeeper, in case Forster gets bought this summer.

Realistically we won't be in a place to take a punt on six million players until a couple more CL group stages are behind us.

If we can qualify again and get into a higher pot for the draw our chances of going further in the tournament will increase as will the calibre of player we can attract to play in the SPL and CL for us.

Be patient, the club is progressing and moving in the right direction. Slowly.


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TRansfer windows most genuinely do live up to the tag of being "silly season" :smiley-laughing002::smiley-laughing002::smiley-laughing002:

 

What scares me is what happens if we don't make champions league .

 

It's an absolute joke the fact that since Hooper left we've signed a handful of strikers on the cheap who just can't cut it as a replacement for him. Also the fact that only a fortnight ago Lennon was openly claiming we could afford a £6m striker for the Champions League. Total * bullshit.

 

I sometimes feel like fans want us to go out and spend £5 million on a player just for the sake of spending £5 million. I don't think alot of us consider the fact that despite, being a big club, alot of £5million rated players won't want to come to the SPL and will want a financial package that exceeds what we can offer. It also needs to be considered that Lennon and Park need to rate the player highly and believe he could genuinely make a difference to the team.

Furthermore, the player's club has to be willing to do business. Finding the right player, under the right conditions can be tough and that's why sometimes we end up with a player like Griffiths, not a top of the list choice, but a player who will probably do a job here.

We've also signed Johansen who is rated very highly in Norway and Fridjonsson, who for all we know could be an excellent acquisition. I think there has been a major over-reaction to the Griffiths signing, I didn't want him here, but now that he is, I'll back him 100%.

Do I feel let down by this transfer window? No, because I can understand that January can be a difficult time as teams don't want to part with players at a crucial time of the season, Hence why the Majority of our January signings are pre-contracts, players with 6 months on their deals or players from Scandinavia who's season is done already. We very very rarely Spend big in January. Last January our big signing was Rogic at £400k, the season before it was Lustig on a free, the season before it was Commons for £300k. So under Lennon, January has never been busy and although he said he'd like to get his squad for the qualifiers ready now, rather than later, he also said it would be difficult, as is the nature of the winter window.

I'll wait until the summer window is over before feeling let down.

 

Once upon a time I believed that. I thought that once we sold a few players for big money and got some Champions League money banked that we would gradually start looking at higher quality players. I'm not sure I believe it anymore.

Look back over the last two years at the amount of money the club has raked in, I just don't see any reason why we couldn't have bought a quality striker last summer. Even if we'd bought one today it would still be a bit like closing the gate after the horse has bolted. We desperately needed to replace Gary Hooper before going into the Champions League Group Stage this year and we didn't do it. We ended up signing Pukki at the very last minute but it was obvious he wasn't Neil Lennon's first choice and the signing had an air of desperation about it in my opinion.

I just feel like the board are always looking for that one more hit of Champions League money before they get their wallet out. I imagine them sitting in the boardroom going 'we'll spend next year.........we'll spend next year..........we'll spend next year'. The only thing is, next year never comes. I've lost faith that it's ever gonna come.

You can get away with signing unknown players in defence and midfield(van Dijk and Wanyama prove that) but it's so much harder to pluck a goalscorer out of thin air. Goalscorers cost money and the longer we try and find another one on the cheap the more money we'll waste in the meantime. If we pooled the money we've wasted on Bangura, Pukki, Balde, Miku and Lassad we probably could have gone and bought somebody really good.

Annoyance about this has been building up in me since last summer, I think the signing of Griffiths has just been the straw the broke the camel's back.

 

Do we really need to go out and make signings this window? League is done and this squad is more than capable of winning the cup.

 

I don't think anybody would put me in the category of those who want to spend 5m for the sake of spending 5m, but I just feel like the comments by the board and then this purchase seem like a bit of a panic. To be honest, I think I actually would have preferred blooding in our other strikers more and not signing anybody this window. I think that as good as our scouts are, our player development is wretched. Absolutely wretched. We must get better on that front. And I feel like Griffiths is a stop-gap, somebody who's familiar with the league and our style of play who can hit the ground running and ensure that we finish the league unbeaten. I don't think that's what we should be looking for.

Me too, and so are most others I think. You can support him while still pointing out annoyances with how the development of our strikers has played out over the years.

 

That's all absolutely true, Zander. Two months ago I'd have been saying the exact same things you've just said.

So why did the club then feel the need to come out and start making proclamations about signing players in January for next year's Champions League campaign? It was them who opened the can of worms.

 

100% agree with the bolded part. How many 'projects' have we bought, even going back to Gordon Strachan's time in charge(Milan Misun etc), and how many of those 'projects' have ever amounted to anything?

Off the top of my head I can't think of a single one.

 

I think Neil genuinely wanted to sign more players in January, I believe he was serious about that. Unfortunately, as I said, January is a tough time to do this and it was always going to be difficult without overpaying for players.

I hope we spend in the summer, If we don't then I'll be in the same boat as you, feeling seriously short changed.

 

Usually because we seem to sign another player in the "projects" position, instead of giving them a chance to prove themselves

 

I think that some people are getting frustrated with the board for not signing enough, but that's not the argument that Marky (I think) and I are making. We'd rather see more emphasis on developing players after they come. Beyond Forster, there haven't been players who've come on by leaps and bounds (if you take away "adjustment periods"). Maybe Efe, Fisher, etc. It seems like we're quite good actually in the defense department as well. But midfielders and strikers seem to plateau very easily for us. If we keep Commons as a forward, come summer our stable will look like this:

Kris Commons, Anthony Stokes, Tony Watt, Amido Balde, Hólmbert Friðjónsson, Teemu Pukki, Leigh Griffiths. I mean really, what's the point of it all? We're too impatient with our forwards. The Griffiths signing I think is short-sighted.

 

A couple of windows where we sign a few decent players. We always seem to be in a position of strength and position to build on what we have and rather than do that we let our best players go and generally reinvest in the cheaper options. Always coming out with comments like we're trying to do this and trying to do that, we can spend this much but we couldn't find the right guy etc. Happened in more transfer windows than it hasn't, particularly when season book sales are down. Twenty years was an exaggeration maybe but as long as i can remember i've felt more let down in the transfer window than pleased.

 

Indeed. And that's something I can't blame the board for, that one's on the manager.

We've just done the exact same thing today by signing Griffiths. Where does that leave Amido Balde? We're a country mile ahead at the top of the league, surely if we want to find out if Amido is going to be able to fit in here then now is the time to do it?? If he's so bad that he can't even be trusted to play when we're 18pts clear at the top of the table then why was he brought here in the first place???

I really don't get that.

 

Only transfer windows I can genuinely remember feeling let down by in the last twenty years is the year after Seville and the transfer window where we only signed Willo Flood.

 

I agree, I said before we signed Griffiths that I'd rather see other players given a chance.

 

Me neither. As much as I want Forster to keep his clean sheet record going, I couldn't care less about the undefeated mark. I wish we'd lost one near the beginning of the year so that it wouldn't have been a factor. We're not developing our players as we should right now because that's in the back of Lennon's mind I think.

That was * awful.