Nicky Forster

[Foxes_Trust]

Well if thats the case then we can wave goodbye to a promotion challenge next season. I'm not exactly impressed with the signings so far as it is. We've tightened up the defence but we're not going to score enough goals. Up front we've only got Connolly who's very hit and miss, to be partnered by Dublin/De Vries/Morris (which never worked last season) or this new kid, and if it's Forster we'll be lucky to finish in the top half.

Oh the pessimism.

Foxes Trust - By saying only one will be "signed", is there any chance Craig will bring a striker in on loan?

121959[/snapback]

Few quick answers.

- Aiming to bring in 2 centre backs

- CL much prefers permemant signings to loan players, but if he gets no success then maybe he would look at loans eventually.

- If/when Wright departs it won't change the plan of only bringing in 1 striker. Several people on message boards have correctly worked out the potential 20 man squad including 3 unknown as yet new signings.

- Only thing that would change this round is a Premiership club buying somebody currently in CL's plans, but he may judge its better to sell & bring in more players overall.

[andy peake]

Question for Fox 4 Life. How is Scott Davies doing at the Reading academy?

121911[/snapback]

Hi Mate, what I have seen of scott i have been impressed, he is a tidy player, can play in either midfield or defence and is quite creative, do you know him?

122069[/snapback]

I know his mother and have heard a lot about him from her.

[Steven]

We are well out of the running.

Sheffield United gaffer Neil Warnock looks likely to beat his QPR equivalent, Ian Holloway, in the race to sweet-talk Nicky Forster. But with talk being so cheap, he'll have to make the Reading striker one of the Blades' best-paid players if he is to capture his scrawl.

[supedaj]

Well if thats the case then we can wave goodbye to a promotion challenge next season. I'm not exactly impressed with the signings so far as it is.

I bet you were one of the people that were impressed with the signings last summer and thought we had a good chance of promotion? How you can say you're not impressed with them before they've even played their first game baffles me.

We've tightened up the defence but we're not going to score enough goals.

Weren't we the only team in the bottom half of the Championship last season with a positive goal difference? If we've tightened up the defence then that should cut out the silly goals that were turning potential victories into draws. If we add one more striker to a team that scored 49 goals last season and we've tightened up a defence that conceded 46 then in theory the striker will add another 10 goals to the tally and the new defence will cut 10 out. You can't be sure on exact figures but you said yourself the defence is tighter. West Brom got up a couple of seasons ago having scored 61 goals but because their defence was so good their goal difference was still +32. With one more striker that could bag 10 atleast and an improved de Vries I think 61 would be reachable. Also I can see us getting a lot more goals from the midfield too. Either Hughes or Williams will be making runs into the box regularly I expect. Hughes started to do it last season but wasn't as fit as he could be due to lack of first team football at Rangers.

Up front we've only got Connolly who's very hit and miss, to be partnered by Dublin/De Vries/Morris (which never worked last season) or this new kid, and if it's Forster we'll be lucky to finish in the top half.

You can't blame Connolly for being hit and miss. He rarely got service of any quality and he had so many different partners. Dublin, Scowcroft, Benjamin, Wright and de Vries all at some stage or another. I think this is where our smaller squad may come in handy. Although you need some competition, a settled starting 11 is very important and we haven't really had one for a couple of seasons. The season we did win promotion under Adams you could almost predict the team the night before a game. I think that helped us but once we got up the defence was always changing and we struggled. At the end of last season we had a settled back four and we kept three clean sheets.

122176[/snapback]

an excellent post - hit the nail on the head.

heres another fact to back this up - we had 14 different players for the back 4 through the season we went down...

consistency is a must for any team and players need to know that they wont be left out next game if they make a mistake. Under Adams it was so unreliable due to this ...