The Summer Transfer Suggestion Thread

[Albert]

What does Le Fondre offer? Well let's see, GOALS perhaps?

He's scored over twenty goals since signing for Reading (from a league two side) in fifty games, hardly poor is it?

He scored 12 goals in his big jump to championship football from Rotherham

Plenty of players can score goals, if that's all they are going offer though they're going to have to offer a lot of them, and whilst he was a pretty decent record, it was nothing spectacular in his first season in the Championship.

[eranio20]

I'd sooner have someone who manages a dozen plus goals like Jackson, Fondre or Grigg than another donkey whom is only suitable for "holding up play".

Martin, Sammon, Doyle, Vaughan, Bennett

Or

Sammon, Jackson, Grigg, Le Fondre, Bennett

tough call

[CumbrianRam]

One player that keeps getting mentioned in whispers is Dean Whithead - now I don't watch the premier league much, and i know he used to be a good player but haven't heard much of him since. 

 

I had a look on a Stoke forum to see what they were saying about him...

 

...?

Seems increasingly odd that there's no murmurs of a new deal with only 6 months left, given that he's been one of Pulis' most loyal servants.

He's only 30 - strange that he hasn't been given a new deal, just to protect the investment of £3m, rising to £5m (and it must have got very near to that figure at this point based on appearances, staying up etc

)

 

Yeh I heard similar, think is actually a genuinely decent bloke unlike the vast majority of modern day footballers. He's been a very useful servant to the club and we got our money's worth. Not needed anymore though and we should probably let him go. He'd be decent for a Reading or Southampton

Whitehead has been at least the equal of Whelan for the majority of his time here, yet one is lauded by many whilst they look sniffily at Dean. We overpaid for him but we've had some value out of him. Give be one Dean over a dozen Palacios's any day of the week.

Whitehead has always been criminally underrated in my opinion, a lot of his good work goes unnoticed by many. An absolute grafter and his tracking back is second to none. If the likes of Delap can receive a new contract i don't see why Deano doesn't deserve one.

I dont think I can ever remember an occasion when Deano has not given us as fans 150% when he is on the field. 

He certainly is one of our players who definately comes into the unsung hero category. 

I think the majority appreciate him, as yes not the most gifted technician, but certainly someone who wears our shirt and represents what our supporters want, someone with guts and fights for everything on our behalf.

If he wants to sign an extension, which of course he may not because he has first team football lined up somewhere else, then good luck to him, because i cant remember a game where he has let us down.

I have to confess I'm a massive Whitehead fan and as lots of people have said he is definitely underrated on here. Having said that I can understand why he's not currently in the team with the current form of Whelan and Nzonzi. 

I really hope that he is offered a new contract but unfortunately I think he will probably move on for first team football elsewhere if he doesn't get enough game time at Stoke. 

 

and the rest fall down a similar pattern, I think he would be a terrific signing - just what we need in the middle of the park, especially when games get scrappy. I don't think we could make much more effective signings this summer.. just hope it's true. 

Sound like the type of player I dislike, only a workhorse very little techincal abilty and the fact he can't get into the Stoke team with these qualites say it all.

 

31 too and probably demand a high wage, no thanks.

[Albert]

I'd sooner have someone who manages a dozen plus goals like Jackson, Fondre or Grigg than another donkey whom is only suitable for "holding up play".

Martin, Sammon, Doyle, Vaughan, Bennett

Or

Sammon, Jackson, Grigg, Le Fondre, Bennett

tough call

This is an odd thing to say when goals aren't the problem. If all we wanted was goals, why not just keep playing Theo.

[midtableforever]

Sound like the type of player I dislike, only a workhorse very little techincal abilty and the fact he can't get into the Stoke team with these qualites say it all.

 

31 too and probably demand a high wage, no thanks.

I guess you dislike our entire squad apart from Hughes, Ward and maybe Hendrick?  

[CumbrianRam]

I guess you dislike our entire squad apart from Hughes, Ward and maybe Hendrick?  

Well Hughes is my favourite player by a mile.

[Hans]

Have we been linked with Le Fondre?

[eranio20]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't "goals" win games? If Le Fondre scored a dozen plus a season, it's still more than any striker currently on the books at the club

And no we haven't been linked with Le Fondre (recently), he was just an example of a player who was signed from a league two side on the cheap and is now a very good striker at this level; who unfortunately due to bad management is now out of the picture at Reading.

People who have suggested Will Grigg are clear the lad scores goals, would Conor Doyle or Bennett score for fun at League one/two level? I doubt it, therefore personally in my "opinion" Will Grigg is better than our current crop of strikers, or at the very least as the potential required to be a good striker in this league.

But no doubt someone will quote this saying "how do you know he will be good enough for this level?"

Not a bad suggestion at all

[Albert]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't "goals" win games? If Le Fondre scored a dozen plus a season, it's still more than any striker currently on the books at the club

And no we haven't been linked with Le Fondre (recently), he was just an example of a player who was signed from a league two side on the cheap and is now a very good striker at this level; who unfortunately due to bad management is now out of the picture at Reading.

People who have suggested Will Grigg are clear the lad scores goals, would Conor Doyle or Bennett score for fun at League one/two level? I doubt it, therefore personally in my "opinion" Will Grigg is better than our current crop of strikers, or at the very least as the potential required to be a good striker in this league.

Not a bad suggestion at all

No, goals aren't what wins games. You can have 30 goals in a game, but that won't win you games unless you concede less. Even in the Championship this season alone it's readily apparently that goals aren't the be all and end all. The fact that we're 7th in the league for goals scored whilst Hull are 15th says it all really. Hull have only scored one more than bottom placed Bristol in fact, and that's even with 12 goal Steve Davies in their side.

Also, why on Earth are we talking about Bennett as a senior player now. He's 16 years old!

There are good options out there, and I hope we look into them, but at the same time can we stop banging on about strikers, that isn't the damn problem and anyone who has spent even the smallest amount of thought to how this season's gone should be able to realise that. A true goal scorer would be nice, but the cold hard fact of the matter is that it's hard to sign the right player, and the vast majority of clubs don't. For every Jordan Rhodes are Huddersfield there's an Ismael Miller, Simon Cox, Billy Sharp, Marcus Tudguy and so forth at Forest. In fact, there's a damn sight more than that against. Just because one club can pull off a coup doesn't mean that it's either easy or likely.

[eranio20]

Attack is the best form of defence.

The likes of Sammon, Doyle, Martin and Bennett aren't good enough for a side looking at breaking into the top six.

You say we don't need a striker? The attacking options on the bench this season have been absolutely dire; Legzdins/Fielding, Bennett, Jacobs, Doyle, Gjojak, O'Conner, Freeman..

Where's the goal threat? Who on that bench inspires you when we are in desperate need of a goal? You've just said yourself Bennett is just 16 years old!

So lets just take our chance again on Sammon, Martin and Ward and hope they fire us further up the league next season.

How many as Vydra scored? And where are Watford in the league?

Woods? Nugent? Murray? Deeney?

[Albert]

Attack is the best form of defence.

The likes of Sammon, Doyle, Martin and Bennett aren't good enough for a side looking at breaking into the top six.

You say we don't need a striker? The attacking options on the bench this season have been absolutely dire; Legzdins/Fielding, Bennett, Jacobs, Doyle, Gjojak, O'Conner, Freeman..

Where's the goal threat? Who on that bench inspires you when we are in desperate need of a goal? You've just said yourself Bennett is just 16 years old!

So lets just take our chance again on Sammon, Martin and Ward and hope they fire us further up the league next season.

How many as Vydra scored? And where are Watford in the league?

Woods? Nugent? Murray? Deeney?

Let's start with this:

You say we don't need a striker?

No, no I didn't.

Also, why do people cherry pick out one or two teams so readily thinking that's "evidence". But where to start here.

Firstly you just repeated a point with nothing new to add. You didn't mentioned Vydra, an in excess of £3 mil striker and how his team was going well. You of course didn't mention that Rhodes' Blackburn are below us and have spent much of the closing period of the season close enough to the relegation spots to cuddle them.

Oh dear... you've mentioned Murray. Go look up how many he scored last season. I'm sick of repeating this point.

Anyhow, rather than waffling on about specific examples, here's some graphs to make this point a bit clearer. All of the graphs are produced from the Championship tables of 1997-98 to 2011-12. Here's the first, goals scored against league position for the last 15 seasons:

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There is a trend on average, but when the relegation places just about overlap automatic promotion, it's a bit hard to declare it a definite point. I'd again at this point like to mention that we are 7th in the league for goals scored.

For extra comparison, here is goals per game against points scored:

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Again, there's a correlation, but it's a mess.

...of course there's always "the best form of attack is defence":

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As it turns out the only real trend there is that teams that concede less tend to score more. It's a right mess though. While we're talking clichés though, why not "strikers win games, defenders win silverware"?

Anyhow, enough of that. I don't even understand what there is to debate here, we're up with the top 6 for goals scored, Ward has scored at a rate up with the best of them and whilst it would be nice to get a "true goalscorer" in, surely the priority should be elsewhere. Trying to build a striker zoo is only likely to get us out of this league in one direction, and I doubt it's the one people want.

[G STAR RAM]

Haha. I have said this to many people, let us sign 2-3 lower league players who have a good goal scoring record and see what happens. In no way is that a suggestion we just pick them out of a hat. Someone like Grigg would cost what £500,000 to buy and would be on let's say a 3 year contract for £5000 a week. Or we can snap up players who's previous contract was with a premier league club, but they never played because they were not good enough for the PL, have a bad - average goal scoring record, but luckily for us we only have to pay them £10,000 a week because they were technically an ex PL player. Cost of lower league player over 3 year contract plus transfer fee = roughly £1.25m cost of ex PL player over 3 year contract plus no transfer fee = roughly £1.5m. We could also then include money raised from a sale. 

 

Sorry but that whole paragraph has no substance at all.

 

Think you miss my point too.

 

Absolutely anybody can look at a goal scoring chart and see who is top and say we should sign him but that there are so many other things to consider. For instance a 6'7" forward at Stoke may score 20 goals in a season, would he be a good signing for us? No because our crossing is poor etc etc etc

[Hans]

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/scotland/22384393

Sign him sign him sign him!would be better than Vaughn, could get him on the cheap (ish) around £600k, proven goal order, but of course we would rather buy an injury prone player that hates derby.

[G STAR RAM]

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/scotland/22384393

Sign him sign him sign him!would be better than Vaughn, could get him on the cheap (ish) around £600k, proven goal order, but of course we would rather buy an injury prone player that hates derby.

 

What attributes would he bring to the team?

 

Also why does Vaughan hate Derby?

 

Probably like most professional footballers who do not care who they play for as long as they get paid. Unlike Russell who has stated that he wants to stay at Dundee United.

[Ramchope]

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/scotland/22384393

Sign him sign him sign him!would be better than Vaughn, could get him on the cheap (ish) around £600k, proven goal order, but of course we would rather buy an injury prone player that hates derby.

Agree, signing Johnny Russell would actually make me a excited. Think that just about sums up the position we are in at the minute...

[Hans]

What attributes would he bring to the team?

 

Also why does Vaughan hate Derby?

 

Probably like most professional footballers who do not care who they play for as long as they get paid. Unlike Russell who has stated that he wants to stay at Dundee United.

Because last time he played against us he was being a mardy little **** and I don't want that type of arrogance playing for this team. Russel is double bluffing,

[G STAR RAM]

Because last time he played against us he was being a mardy little **** and I don't want that type of arrogance playing for this team. Russel is double bluffing,

 

Fair enough.

 

Don't see what is wrong with a bit of passion but agree that arrogance is a bad attribute.

 

Back to Russell, what do you think he would bring to the team?

[Ramchope]

Fair enough.

 

Don't see what is wrong with a bit of passion but agree that arrogance is a bad attribute.

 

Back to Russell, what do you think he would bring to the team?

Creativity, ability to shoot and not afraid to take long shots on, he can finish, pretty nifty, calm on the ball, doesn't appear injury prone

[Scott129]

Fair enough.

 

Don't see what is wrong with a bit of passion but agree that arrogance is a bad attribute.

 

Back to Russell, what do you think he would bring to the team?

 

Pace, skillfulness and a pretty good finish on him. A more polished Jamie Ward would be my immediate comparison.

[Hans]

Pace- now that Robinson and Tyson are leaving we have no pace upfront, he's a great sprinter, and he has great agility and balance

Proven goal scorer- albeit in the SPL, but he does look talented, and our goals have to come from somewhere, its evident that Sammon isn't the answer to our striker problem. (scored 13 in 28)

He scores penalties!!

He's only ever player at Dundee, and would fit our squad mentality because he works hard and fits Nigel's ethos, and he is from a small club in a small league.

His career has only gone on the up and has scored more goals every season.

He's just coming back from injury and would be fit for August.