DJ Barry Hammond

I think this one will hold out until close to the end of the window - with Zaha having to make a choice on whether he wants to play regularly back in England or continue to accumulate in Turkey with less pitch time. Hopefully by then we’ll have seen a positive result against Fulham (that’s the big game this month, the other two being relative free hits) and can be seen in a much more positive light.

I would suggest what we’ve been linked with shows we’re trying to be financially responsible. The suggested structure of this deal - and the loan to buy for Hlozek looked pretty good value if they’d come off (Zaha still might of course). I get the frustration with what’s gone on (or hasn’t) so far - but if you choose to take the positives, the profile and position of the players we’ve missed out on seem solid and in areas of need. Even with the Okoli deal - signing a central defender with both presence and pace makes sense when you consider our other central defenders.

One additional to this - Zaha has been named in Galatasaray’s Champions League squad for their playoff against Young Boys. I do believe, however, amendments to the full squad can be made after the qualifying rounds.

Loans tend to be sorted at the later part of the window - plus we don’t know how many of these kids we might need to keep on hand yet!

Not in Galatasaray’s squad this evening - they’re 1-1 with Konyaspor at halftime. Yunus is on the bench.

Comments from Marco Silva on Fulham’s transfer business… "I would prefer to have the players that we need during pre-season, but the Premier League is tough on and off the pitch and sometimes we have to be patient. "The board are pushing, working hard and hopefully they can sign the players we need and we are working all together to achieve it. "The squad is far from completed. We lost players like Tosin, Tim Ream, Bobby, Joao, Willian, these were starting XI and crucial players for us. We have to rebuild again like last season when we lost Aleksandar Mitrovic."

He’s first team squad material, no doubt about that. If Cooper wanted to change the mood on Monday he could always stick him in the starting lineup.

Well that’s a clue as to why we didn’t touch him.

Well John Textor is looking for a Premier League / Championship club to become a majority stakeholder in. He has a share in a host of clubs through ‘Eagle Football Holdings Limited’, including Lyon, Botafogo and a 45% stake in Crystal Palace - and is reportedly looking at Everton. He would have to offload his Crystal Palace stake before getting involved with another English club - but is this the sort of guy you want taking over?

Falling short you say

I don’t know. Everyone knows Spurs are going to push up to our own six yard box with the high line they play - so does Cooper have the nouse to setup to take advantage of that. You know, maybe have a way of defending that allows Mavididi and/or Fatawu to cheat on the defensive duties a little, so that they can take advantage of absent fullbacks?

Ultimately it’s the forum (Mark) that has liability for everything posted on here - so if something is deemed a risk, I have no problem in a post or thread being deleted. We as individuals have plenty of other avenues to voice our opinions on matters.

Ah, that Bolton game - that was such a crashing feeling that day.

@Foxhateram - I think your bus needs a serious service!

I couldn’t find the old house, so I’ve constructed a new and improved one because it seems likely it will be needed this season. It’s easy to find - it’s the house by the bus stop for foxhateram's Optimistic Bus! Feel free to come by and enjoy some peace from the outside World when needed - we have plenty of biscuits 🍪 Strictly no Rudkin’s allowed!

So… who have we realistically got that could conceivably play a part this season. It seemed clear to me from the bits of pre-season action Alves got that he should be highly involved with the first team this year. I’ve not seen enough of Golding to be able to take a view. Ben Nelson looked decent when he played last year. There’s McAteer and Wanya who - yeah, not exceptional. I wasn’t convinced by Brandon Cover or Arjan Raikhy from the bits we saw last year. I know there’s some hope from a few in here around Braybrooke. And Jakub - but we have Mads, so, not so much an issue there anyway. Is there anyone I’ve missed off that might have enough about them to grab an unexpected chance and surprise us?

Meaning Panathinaikos will want to keep him longer… mind you Sporting are rummored to be interested so we may not stand a chance here either!

Forest were paying inflated wages to get those deals done - and didn’t they have a super agent involved with a lot of their deals?

Whilst I agree - I would assume the concluding conditional transfer would still need to be formalised and relevant paperwork confirming the deal at that point signed - and that a player could potentially hold out their signature (not withstanding at the risk of being in breach of contract).

£200 million was just the debt King Power wiped off into equity on the last set of accounts. It’s likely that much deeper pockets would be needed to buy the club at this point - even with a willing sale.

Well - our academy will be getting tested at this rate. Who knows - could that end up being a blessing disguise?

Last season was an easier sell - Enzo was an interesting appointment and of course he’s going to speak to incoming players about what he wants from them. I can’t imagine the same sort of chat with Steve is going to go down the same. There might also be a clue here as to why Fawatu took so long to announce too - because whilst the fee was an obligation I guess you still need to finalise and agree personal terms at that point. Maybe he/his agent wanted different terms to what was provisionally agreed at the start of the loan?

I’m going to say Cooper has a small part to play in this. Clearly our ‘project’ is a dubious one - trying to survive with a point deduction hanging over us - and Cooper isn’t exactly a manager players are going to be excited to play for. That meant he really needed to show something with the players he had in pre-season to make the idea of joining us that bit more exciting. If we had a couple of 2 or 3 nil wins, we at least look that bit more attractive for anyone looking to come in - and so perhaps should have treated the games as a bit more than just a run out.

They have haven’t they - the question would be do we even dare try and compete here at the risk of getting another rejection?

No, they’ve sold a striker that scored 16 goals for them last season and have European football I believe - so their need of a replacement is obvious and this looks like a sensible target for them. Additionally Hoffenheim is about 3 hours away from Leverkusen - so you can kind of understand why he might consider this a better offer for him. Final point - I believe it’s the German Supercup this weekend and he’s probably in the squad for that, so I wouldn’t expect a definitive move either way until after the weekend.