Iwebema

I was not prepared for this at all. Haha Haunting

He works hard, but he is a winger in an already very defensively minded team, he simply has to offer more going forward, hold the ball up, bring the team up the field. Maybe he didn't fancy it against his old club, but he was really poor. I'm surprised he lasted 60 minutes, at least cooper did acknowledge he was having a shocker.

I said before the game leaving Ricardo out is putting a target on his back. I have some sympathy for him, we've failed miserably to give him goals, but also he seems obsessed with players that run alot rather than footballers. But there's no real style or tactical approach, it's got "just stay in the game if possible" vibes and we look like a team that feel we don't belong and aren't good enough. Got to keep the faith we can add some goals or we have no chance no matter who is in charge.

Who knew signing defensive wingers who don't score would mean we would look utterly toothless going forward. Huge week for us, we simply have to add goals.

100% this, very underwhelmed with BDR. I do expect skipp to be decent, could be seeing the end of ndidi and just being a guy we bring on to defend a lead.

No Ricardo, no party

Safety first team. Very defensive. Painful to see the lack of goals and creativity in the squad. But if we can play like the 2nd half on Monday we have a chance. Don't really understand the marginalisation of Ricardo, Cooper putting a target on his back with that one. Could go either way this one, it's one thing to get up for it at home to a top 6 side another against good mid table sides away.

I get Ipswich were right behind us, but I think we had the basis of a premier league squad that just needed a bit of depth and some quality, where as I think as good as they were they would of got (and they still may do) battered every week in the prem. Alot of the signings they made are great for them, but I dont think would improve us enough to wish we had them. However the profile of player they have targeted is something I wish we had of looked at, perhaps we still will.

I guess when you look at last season he's KDH. But he certainly makes us alot better in a crucial position now he's gone. I agree skipp will be an improvement on Ndidi. I think the biggest issue is just we lost goals and we haven't addressed it, we've sort of got to about where we were last season as a squad and we have to find a striker that could score 10+ or so goals.

They might of read this thread and thought it's probably best not to announce this one formally. Ha

Agreed, I've been saying this all off season about the need from prem experience. We already have it. It's certainly a manager signing. Which in the modern game with proper DoFs rarely seem to work out. To move it away from Leicester, Brighton signed a few players last year for De Zerbi which went against their recruitment strategy and they didn't work out. He's now gone and they are stuck with them. We will need to see where we are at the end of the transfer window on this, the reported numbers aside (which are a horrific overpay) if Ayew is one of 3 more signings and we get some exciting forward prospects, you can live with it and think he can be a useful squad player. If at the end of it he turned out to be our last signing then serious questions need to be asked.

Agreed, I am hopeful we are still in for Fotis Ionnadis, but we are having to wait for Lens to hopefully knock them out of europe, which would leave it very late, and we are not great at getting deals done quickly. But it is largely out of our control if that is someone we want. Either way, if we do not get goals into this team I just cant see how we stay up.

I think Dastro Fofana is going to be the fall back on deadline day if we can't get anything proper over the line

Certainly a risk, the only thing I would say is they essentially came up with team on a league one budget and most of the players they have bought won't be on silly wages, unless babylon John is consulting.

Like I say, very odd.

I know there are a couple of Rudkin defenders still out there. Very odd. But this deal in particular highlights just how slow we move, there's barely any competition, we've known about it for literal weeks and even with us grossly over paying, cooper said a few are basically done on Monday....and it's still not done.

If you replace Fulham with Leicester it all of a sudden becomes very believable

Especially for a team that's going to be deducted points for PSR breaches.

Mind boggling. I have no issues with the player providing his role is clear, a useful squad player. But if money and PSR is tight then 8 million is just ridiculous. Feels like we've gone "Jordan Ayew no matter what". You would of hoped that a sensible conversation has happened and said this is a chunk out of a tight budget are we sure hes the reason we will stay up? Because we will be stuck with essentially a 34 year old striker whose only asset is stamina which of all the physical traits is the one that does fade with age.

Money can't be that tight then. I can't believe any club would spend this kind of money on a player like this unless it's just a squad filler role. But then not every club as has rudkin at the wheel.

Excellent technique, hard worker aswell. Showed how important that 10 role is, gutted he's just on loan. He's going to be very important for us.

No idea where that 2nd half came from. But that is not only the way we can stay up this year, but that's the type of football that gets the fans on board. Fair play to cooper, he made the changes we needed. More organised, pressed harder and got us 10 yards further up the pitch.

It's the whole defensive shape of the team or lack of that is concerning. Spurs players unmarked, leicester players all looking at eachother wondering who should be tracking. We look like we are still in pre season, we are as under prepared as I worried we would be. On the positive side Buonanotte looks excellent, if we could be a bit more positive in our play we would get more from him. I know it's game 1 but BDR looks awful. Cooper very lucky we are only 1-0 down.

Perfectly fine with the player, my only worry is if money is tight, we still desperately need goals that he won't provide. If we can add 2 attacking players on top of this it will be a nice bit of business, if this sucks the funds so we can only get Ayew then it will be disappointing.

It's all speculation but from the outside in, they wanted a permanent sale, he understandably didn't want to move here on a permanent deal when it's very likely we will be relegated. Looked like we had the loan deal as agreed but he waited to see if a better offer came along. We are just not an attractive option for the type of players we are targetting, if only we had a DOF that knew what they were doing and had a strategy in place 🤪