Agree he's been awful at them for ages but then he hit an absolute beauty for the Dennis goal at Brentford. So we should be due another good corner somewhere near the end of his contract...
Sam Johnson has fallen out with West Brom again… still got 3 days left. Did Roy work with him at England as back up to Hart?
Johnstone is actually 28, so not too young at all, but I don't think his first call up was until last year, was it?
So we're actually done with the recruitment? If Rose is not going to be involved can't we terminate his contract? Same result.
I doubt we're going to be able to shift any of the todd left in our squad. To get it down to 25 we'll probably spend the next few days negotiating mutual termination agreements with Nkoulou, Rose and Gosling.
We wouldn’t have to get them off the books to not register them in the 25 (though if they’re not going to play a role and will accept lesser payouts it might be worthwhile). I don’t think it’ll be too tricky to get Gosling a loan either.
Yes but if they're going to find new clubs in the second half of the season they'll need to be released this window. I wouldn't put it past the club to keep players here while not being registered in the squad though.
There are occasions where it would make sense to keep an unregistered player around (eg I wouldn’t want to pay off Gosling for 1.5 years just because he’s unregistered as he’d probably be worthwhile having around next season should we go down or an injured/unfit player you think could still come good).
Bamba Diang of OM being mentioned Either complete BS which I believe or Gino whispering in their ear saying I can make the whole transfer embargo disappear if you give me him for nothing.
I suspect we will pay Gosling off, and then re-sign him on a new 3 year deal in the summer, along with Rose, for next year in the champo.
He's also been linked with West Ham, Palace, Newcastle and Burnley in recent days. Isn't he also more of a winger than a forward? If so would already jump ahead of new signing Kalu in the pecking order. Plus he's currently at the Afcon with Senegal and Sarr. Wouldn't say no, not least to stop other relegation rivals maybe getting him, but would be surprising. Bizarrely, one report I read claimed Marseille are interested in signing Deulofeu to replace him - can't see the Pozzos accepting that, wherever Dieng ends up. https://www.getfootballnewsfrance.com/2022/marseille-now-open-to-selling-bamba-dieng/
To be completely honest I've never heard of him. Just saw the the article and put 2 and 2 together! Didn't even realise he was at the AFCON.
Post above from Jan 2021. Armstrong has subsequently struggled a bit at Southampton, while Brereton has been smashing them in for club and country and looks set to comfortably beat Armstrong's goals tally from last season. Would have been a decent buy for someone last Jan or summer, but would cost a bomb now and has been linked with West Ham. https://wfcforums.com/index.php?threads/january-transfer-window-2021.57870/page-4#post-2947123
Yeah - Blackburn's system does tend to make strikers look very good and I think the asking price for Armstrong was probably always a little bit steep. Maybe one to keep an eye on as a loan option when we go down. Brereton (before his transition to Brereton-Diaz) looked like a very mediocre championship striker. Don't think anyone could possibly have foreseen what has happened to him over the last few months. Would be like if Ashley Fletcher went on loan this month and bagged 15 goals before summer despite all evidence in his career to date showing he wasn't capable of it.
Wouldn't go that far - when we played Blackburn not too long before I made the above comment I thought Brereton looked as much of a threat as Armstrong. It's true that I wouldn't have expected him to kick on quite as much as he has this season, but the talent and potential was there - don't forget he was only 21 last season (and still 22), and had 19 England youth caps. I just think he'd shown enough already last season that a bigger club might have taken a gamble on continuing to progress. Yeah it wouldn't be a huge surprise if Southampton were open to loaning out Armstrong next season, though a newly promoted Prem team might be more likely. Plus it could depend on them being able to keep Broja, which might be tough.
Before this season he had 20 goals in 6 seasons, with a decent chunk of those coming 4 + seasons ago. There wasn't really a great deal of development - he went almost overnight from a pretty poor championship striker scoring a goal every 15 or so games to suddenly scoring 20 in 27 games. If you forsaw anything like this I would want your lottery numbers. I still see them as being down in and around the bottom 6-7 clubs next season. Would be brave to loan out a striker to a potential rival. Yeah there does seem to be some traction on the Broja move for them, but I suppose it will depend on how he does until the summer.
The interesting thing about Brereton is that Blackburn fans I’ve seen seem to fairly universally suspect he won’t have anything like the same impact wherever he goes when he does move, because his explosion is down to the system that Mowbray plays at Blackburn that always utterly prioritises the striker and makes them look like a world-beater - as it did Armstrong last season, and whoever it was the season before that. Obviously, I can’t speak from a greatly educated perspective either way, having watched him more for Chile this season than for his club, but it will be very interesting to see if that concept of theirs is fully borne out when the time comes.
Brereton was highly rated at Forest was he not? Went to Blackburn for quite big money at the time. Seems like maybe he’s just developing late on in his youth (if that makes sense) and is actually now fulfilling the promise some believed he had. Was a similar case for Harry Kane I think. Either way, Blackburn will get £20m+ for him in the next 6 months you’d think. And not from us.
Wasn't he more of a winger/inside forward last season? Now that Armstrong has gone, he's their main man, and it's really paying dividends, but that's not to say he was poor before, seem to recall he was actually quite good without scoring tons of goals last season
I can see the press release now… Watford FC has come to realise that Rafaele Riva also forged Gueye’s signature and strongly suspect he may have something to do with Mogi Bayat’s recent accusations. The club has since distanced themselves from Riva, who denies the allegations and lives freely on anonymous cash payoffs that are completely unrelated to the club.
Just perusing LouOrns before before bed on Twitter and in response to the question from Lou “why have we not made an investment in a centre back” the response comes back: “Probably because there isn’t one available who wants to come to us. It’s not rocket science.” It’s amazing these people exist. They actually think there isn’t a single CB in world football better than old man Cathcart who wants to join a premier league club. My mind boggles at some of our fans. There is no hope.
I see Calum Chambers has gone to Villa on a free from Arsenal. Would he have been the new Craig Cathcart? Sadly we will never find out, as Gino has suddenly ditched the grab a free defender policy.
Arsenal fans I've seen say he's too poor in the air to be a decent centre back, and nowhere near mobile enough to do the defensive work as a right back, alongside being nothing like creative enough to be deployed in central midfield. So, yes, I'm absolutely shocked we didn't try and hijack that - seems written in the stars.
And yet, if all that is true, we would likely all genuinely agree that he would still comfortably be our best defender.
I hope Scott and Gino have some loans/sales in the pipeline or they need to get some lumberjacks in as there is a lot of deadwood to sort out!
Have to admit it's surprisingly quiet and indeed worrying! I can't honestly see this squad capable of a complete turnaround in 18 games.