Millenniumram

16 minutes ago, therealhantsram said:

Opta do some stats on this. Attempting to rank teams and leagues globally. According to them, the Dutch league is very broad. With top couple of teams being top 6 Premier League level, and bottom couple of teams being top-half League 1 standard.

Interesting… so we’re ranked quite significantly above Excelsior, which puts them as a mid table League One side. I really hope this guy can handle the transition to English football, but like I say, Albentosa and Te Weirik spring to mind.

3 hours ago, IlsonDerby said:

Kin’ell what would convince you? We’ve got players signing with championship pedigree. A striker who scored 14 goals for Blackpool the last time they were in this division (and went down). We’re potentially signing an unknown exciting young player from the continent. 
 

What are your realistic expectations about who we could be signing??

Osborn definitely has championship pedigree yes. Yates has had one good season at this level, and appears to be rated by Swansea fans about as highly as we rate Nick Blackman. Maybe he can hit that Blackpool form again, but I’m concerned. Jackson does not have Championship pedigree, he’s 30 and has played most his career at lower levels. This guy is a total unknown (which may not be a bad thing).

I’m not saying all our signings will definitely fail, but I am disappointed with the start to our window personally. It’s taken a while to get going and we haven’t exactly come up with exciting signings that make you think anything other than a real relegation battle is on the cards. Which goes a bit against Clowes comments of a “competitive” budget.

Things may improve of course, I’m not writing the window or our season off yet! There have been players we’ve been linked with which would impress me a lot more - exciting younger players like Karamoko Dembele, or players with real top level pedigree like Mathew Ryan.

The source just says we’d be “likely” to renew our interest - pure guesswork based on our links to him last summer I’d say. No actual link this window.

Interesting one this - I can’t help but think of Mike Te Weirik though…

Looks like a box to box midfielder, and we certainly do need to continue our rebuild in that area following the arrival of Osborn. Doesn’t seem to have pulled up any trees on loan at Excelsior though, no goals and 2 assists last season - we’d be needing a much better output from him than that.

I’m unconvinced, but glad we’re being a bit more imaginative with our recruitment and looking abroad - he may find the Championship a bit easier than the Eredivisie, it’s hard to tell what the relative levels are.

Doubt we were ever actually interested in him. We’ve already got Barkhuizen, Mendez-Laing and Blackett-Taylor - wide players aren’t an immediate priority.

11 minutes ago, Jimbo Ram said:

Crikey, I thought I was closer to half glass empty, you seem to be glass totally empty 🤣 We have just been promoted and can now sign players again. Exciting times don’t you think? All the ITK nonsense to enjoy and lots of other genuine player links. Let’s see what the squad looks like come August before we get too down in the dumps 😊

I was very excited until I saw the players were signing! Osborn, Yates and Jackson don’t exactly fill me with confidence… feels like we’re prioritising “good characters and work rate” over players who will actually provide the firepower that we need. Just a bit disappointed with our start to the window is all… hopefully it will improve as we go on, and these players will prove me wrong. It all feels a bit like we’re still in League One offering players like Jackson a three year contract.

29 minutes ago, ariotofmyown said:

Worst point ever. He didn't play 58 minutes last season.

That’s not the point. The point is that appearances isn’t a good metric of how regularly a player played. Jackson did not play regularly for Ipswich last season, that’s a fact. Whether he’s any good at football remains to be seen.

1 minute ago, AmberRamber said:

Could you have played over 17000 minutes of professional football and been s****?

Give him and the management chance my friend 😁👍

Of course not - but the point is minutes played is a much better metric of measuring how regularly a player has played compared to appearances.

42 minutes ago, MaltRam said:

Awful? Extremely harsh given the result. Waggy contributed. Ward contributed. Bradley contributed. Elder and JJ were injury write-offs.

Both contributed yes, but that doesn’t mean they were good signings. Other players could have contributed far more. The “Injury write offs” were players who had a history of being injury prone and should never have been signed. Extending John-Jules loan in January was a horrific decision which would have cost us autos had we not managed to sign Gayle.

2 minutes ago, Andicis said:

29 appearances. Sure he was used off the bench a lot, but that's still "regularly" isn't it?

Not really, I could’ve come off the bench for Ipswich for 2 minutes 29 times and they’d have probably still got promoted… doesn’t stop me being s**** at football

33 minutes ago, Ram a lamb a ding dong said:

Disagree. Nelson, Nyambe, Wilson added much needed quality.

Add to that a small contribution from many to get us up. Even Bradley came good eventually. 

Overall a good 7/10

Nyambe was the other one who did well (but joined after summer I think?). Wilson has potential, but everyone else was pretty poor. You’ve gotta have a much better success rate than that - I’d have given the window a 4/10.

27 minutes ago, S6 boy said:

You're confusing the words 'objectively' and 'subjectively'.

The object of the season was to get promoted, which we did, therefore it is not possible to conclude that the recruitment was objectively awful.

As I’ve already explained, we achieved our aims but that wasn’t because of good recruitment last summer. They are two completely different points. To be honest Warne did well to get us promoted, given how unsuccessful most of our signings were.

20 minutes ago, Andicis said:

Playing regularly in a side that got promoted to the Prem isn't really to be sniffed at. He clearly has plenty to offer. Unsurprising to see the snide comments from posters about a player they've probably never seen play mind.

He played a total of 959 minutes for Ipswich last season… I’d hardly call that “regularly”

42 minutes ago, S6 boy said:

Is that the terrible recruitment that got us promoted without spending a penny?  

We got promoted because of good recruitment the previous summer. Players like Mendez-Laing, Collins and Wildsmith were some of our most important players. Only Nelson played a key role in our promotion - most of the rest of last summers signings were failures for various reasons - Waghorn, Elder, Ward, John-Jules, Bradley… the list goes on. Our recruitment was objectively awful and we need to see a lot better this summer.

Hmmm, I’m really not convinced about this one as well as the Jackson deal… Sounds like it’s likely to be a reasonably expensive loan, and 9 goals last season doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that he’s going to provide the firepower that we so desperately need. 

He’d need to get his confidence back pretty quickly after his Swansea nightmare, and hopefully return to something more like his Blackpool form - or we could be in for a really battle at the bottom with him and Jackson up front.

Really? A 30 year old striker on a three year contract who’s only ever scored 6 goals at this level in his entire career?! Jesus if this is the standard of our recruitment we’re in for a long season… I really hoped we’d see an improvement on last summer, but the signs ain’t looking great so far.

Just hope he’s got something more about him than his stats show. At least we’re likely to sign another couple more strikers this window I’d think, given it’s been a position of serious need for a year or so now.

Can’t see there being anything in this one. Championship would be way too much of a step up for him, and we’ve already got Wilson and Nyambe at RB… defence is probably our strongest area currently.

Welcome back home Ben… one of our own! 

Took a while to get going, but looks like our summer business is about to get properly underway. Decent start to the much needed rebuild… although interestingly I get the impression from what I’ve heard that he wasn’t one of our first choice signings. Not sure who we missed out on, as far as I’m aware no strongly linked targets have gone elsewhere yet… just hope it doesn’t mean that what I heard about Adams being too expensive to sign permanently is true…

Expect us to sign another 3 CMs this window, let’s hope Adams is next!

10 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

A post coincidentally timed just after the Football Insider 'Exclusive'?

I thought it was slightly before?

Well well well, we have a new ITK

6 minutes ago, Joedya92 said:

Evening all, long time viewer and thought I’d contribute

 

1 of the 2 strikers signing tommorow, can’t say too much more at this stage but I think people will be pleased 

Collo new 4 year contract #simmoram

4 minutes ago, RamFan13 said:

9pm announcement incoming?👀

No

22 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

They found out Villa would be giving us 2.8 million in add on'.

True! Looks like the fee has just gone up 😂

Just now, Reggie Greenwood said:

Lots of conflicting info I’ve been told the deal is all but done ? Who knows 😅 no doubt the next week or two will tell us. 

Maybe something has changed compared to what I last heard, here’s hoping!

Told this one is unlikely… too expensive 😔