Happy or disappointed....

[cider-manc]

12 players in- all covered by the sale of 1 player.

This is how it needs to be if we are ever to be sustainable. 

Of course I would have loved a big name striker (Is there any time when you wouldn't!!) but I am delighted with this transfer window.

[AshtonGreat]

9 hours ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

The idea that an 18yo boy can carry the team singlehandedly (Wilbs too old, the Swede too inexperienced) through 46 Championship fixtures is ludicrous.

We better do a damn sight better in January but that transfer window feels a very long way away just at the minute.

Perhaps it will look better in the morning*. Good night and sweet dreams (of what might have been).

* Bollocks will it.

This, basically. Villa signed Kodjia and Adomah, we signed an untried 20-year-old Swede with a dubious goalscoring record. On the surface, their statement of intent is somewhat more pronounced than ours is, but let's see.

[cider-manc]

10 minutes ago, AshtonGreat said:

This, basically. Villa signed Kodjia and Adomah, we signed an untried 20-year-old Swede with a dubious goalscoring record. On the surface, their statement of intent is somewhat more pronounced than ours is, but let's see.

You can't compare us to Aston Villa. Big club, new owner, parachute payments etc

They've spent over £30 million on attackers alone this summer- We simply can't do that.

[BCFC81]

I personally think that the club have had a great transfer window, if you actually sit back and reflect on who we have brought in and also to the who we have kept it has been one of our best windows for a long time (i.e Flint, Smith and Bryan)

We got a record league fee for a striker who has only had one season in the Championship, albeit a great debut season, this time last year the majority of us didn't even know who he was, plus he no longer wanted to be here. I don't think you should ever keep anyone at the club that does not want to be there, nothing ever positive will come from that!

We have brought in a relatively unknown Swedish international to replace him, so who knows this time next year we could have a similar asset on our hands!!

People are already saying that Abraham won't last the season, who knows maybe he won't, but I for one think we have a real gem. You can already see that he has a bit more up top than we have been used to in the past, I mean by a footballing brain, and can see he has been coached at the highest level! I am going to enjoy watching him whilst he is with us.

I can I only see positives going forward, we still have a couple of injuries to come back, and Smith with be like having a new signing join. He and G O'Neil ( who I think is the best signing of the window) will provide a great midfield engine, and will allow Tomlin, Patterson, O,Dowda, Reid, Freeman to go and create/score.

I am looking forward to see what the season brings, so sit back, strap in and enjoy the ride, who knows where we could go!!

 

[Jerseybean]

As the transfer window ends it's time to reflect. In my opinion:

Having sold Kodja, there will certainly be much discussion about our options in attack. While the addition of a proven goal scorer at this level would have been welcomed, we will be OK. With Tammy, Gustav and Wilbs all competing for the central striker role, we also have goal scorers all over the pitch such as Tomlin, Reid, Browning, Paterson and O'Dowda all are creative players who can score as well as having defenders who will chip in e.g. Flint, Bryan and Magnusson.

Our recruitment strategy is working, is sensible and is sustainable 

Achieved a healthier mix of youth and experience with 33 ins and outs in total

Held onto Flint 

Those who departed all served us well and the time was right for the Club and for them to move on

Still have an option with Joel Ekstrand and Kieran Richardson

Benefited  financially thanks to a sell-on clause from Bolaise's move from Palace to Everton (for an undisclosed fee rumoured to be circa £30 m)

11 young players out on loan is really encouraging and bodes well for the future

There is a more obvious and positive link between the first team, the under 23's and the development squad

For every done deal there would have been many others which were explored

We end the transfer window in much better shape than when the window opened, with a stronger and better balanced squad  

Thank you to everyone involved!

[AshtonGreat]

6 minutes ago, cider-manc said:

You can't compare us to Aston Villa. Big club, new owner, parachute payments etc

They've spent over £30 million on attackers alone this summer- We simply can't do that.

To get promoted out of this league, you usually have to spend big. We have the money to do that.

[Jack Dawe]

1 hour ago, glos old boy said:

you said it all 12 new players ....a new team; I never liked Christmas either...a waste of money

If we continue and stay in the top half of the table then it's progress. We're going forward. Not charging or leaping forward spending wildly, but improving. That's got to be good?

[cider-manc]

Just now, AshtonGreat said:

To get promoted out of this league, you usually have to spend big. We have the money to do that.

Do City as a club have the money? - Our owner has the money. What if SL had splashed huge sums of money and we had failed to get promoted? We could end up in a similar situation to Forest or worse like Bolton (or even worse like pompey).

SL tried throwing money at it before and it landed us with aging/average/god awful players on long term, big money contracts that eventually got us relegated. That was before the days of FFP, it would have been an even bigger mess if FFP regulations had been in place at the time.

I for one am glad that we are trying a different route.

[AshtonGreat]

1 minute ago, cider-manc said:

Do City as a club have the money? - Our owner has the money. What if SL had splashed huge sums of money and we had failed to get promoted? We could end up in a similar situation to Forest or worse like Bolton (or even worse like pompey).

SL tried throwing money at it before and it landed us with aging/average/god awful players on long term, big money contracts that eventually got us relegated. That was before the days of FFP, it would have been an even bigger mess if FFP regulations had been in place at the time.

I for one am glad that we are trying a different route.

We made a fortune on Kodjia, so there is money to spend. 

[cider-manc]

10 minutes ago, AshtonGreat said:

We made a fortune on Kodjia, so there is money to spend. 

I never said there wasn't any money to spend.

You compared us to Aston Villa- We cannot spend like Aston Villa.

[Olé]

16 minutes ago, AshtonGreat said:

To get promoted out of this league, you usually have to spend big.

Unless you're Burnley (twice), Bournemouth, Hull (twice), Norwich, Blackpool or Swansea - all in the past 5 years. Other than that, a really valid point.

Off the top of my head the £10m we've spent this summer is more than any of those, and probably many other recent Championship promotion sides.

New foreign owners, parachute payments, and Villa and Newcastle, two of the bigger Premier League clubs, has distorted your memory of spending.

Derby County is a way more interesting comparison. A perennial favourite for promotion, look at it's transfer spending this summer compared to ours.

[cidered abroad]

I'm not unhappy that we did not get Grabban, if we in fact were trying for him. He seems like a player who has lost his way a bit and would have preferred another younger one like Engvall.

But hey ho, we've managed to put together a squad that will improve with time, with the vitality of youth rather than the indifference that we had to endure and a state of mind that got us relegated in 2013.

I don't see us in the relegation dogfight and neither in the promotion battle. However if we are around eighth to twelfth on January 1st, a couple more good signings could see us make the pray-offs. An interesting season ahead.

[Mamballs]

Disappointment last night has gone in the light of day and now I'm quite happy.

[1960maaan]

1 hour ago, AshtonGreat said:

This, basically. Villa signed Kodjia and Adomah, we signed an untried 20-year-old Swede with a dubious goalscoring record. On the surface, their statement of intent is somewhat more pronounced than ours is, but let's see.

and last year they got roughly £60m in prize money etc, this year it will be £40m , add an owner with money and we are not playing in the same league.

1 hour ago, AshtonGreat said:

To get promoted out of this league, you usually have to spend big. We have the money to do that.

SL wants us to be self sufficient , he also wants success , this means a steady build and not throwing money at the team and failing anyway. I seem to remember he tried that before and failed , also got slaughtered for it on here, no win situation ! LJ said 3 windows and this is  a brilliant start. Yeah would have been nice to have to have to juggle 4 forwards for one spot but there's always January (if we're challenging ?  )   We now have, not just a squad with options , but a squad full of potential. Remember every interview about transfers we are told about getting the right characters , a forward who wants out is not that. Add to that,  a good profit and it makes sense, the business we have done ( plus sell on's etc ) probably means there is money to spend , but last minute panic buys usually mean paying way over the odds for someone .  As I say, if we need to I'm sure something can be done in Jan.

[AshtonGreat]

1 hour ago, Olé said:

Unless you're Burnley (twice), Bournemouth, Hull (twice), Norwich, Blackpool or Swansea - all in the past 5 years. Other than that, a really valid point.

Off the top of my head the £10m we've spent this summer is more than any of those, and probably many other recent Championship promotion sides.

New foreign owners, parachute payments, and Villa and Newcastle, two of the bigger Premier League clubs, has distorted your memory of spending.

Derby County is a way more interesting comparison. A perennial favourite for promotion, look at it's transfer spending this summer compared to ours.

Er, Burnley spent £9million on Andre Gray last season.

[AshtonGreat]

10 minutes ago, 1960maaan said:

and last year they got roughly £60m in prize money etc, this year it will be £40m , add an owner with money and we are not playing in the same league.

SL wants us to be self sufficient , he also wants success , this means a steady build and not throwing money at the team and failing anyway. I seem to remember he tried that before and failed , also got slaughtered for it on here, no win situation ! LJ said 3 windows and this is  a brilliant start. Yeah would have been nice to have to have to juggle 4 forwards for one spot but there's always January (if we're challenging ?  )   We now have, not just a squad with options , but a squad full of potential. Remember every interview about transfers we are told about getting the right characters , a forward who wants out is not that. Add to that,  a good profit and it makes sense, the business we have done ( plus sell on's etc ) probably means there is money to spend , but last minute panic buys usually mean paying way over the odds for someone .  As I say, if we need to I'm sure something can be done in Jan.

An owner with money? Last time I looked, Steve Lansdown was one of the richest owners in the league

[1960maaan]

16 minutes ago, AshtonGreat said:

An owner with money? Last time I looked, Steve Lansdown was one of the richest owners in the league

and he wants the club the be able to pay it's own way, he's paid for the ground , written off debts and sanctioned unprecedented transfer fees.

Villa start with £60m from last year and a guaranteed £40 income this year and next, they can afford to gamble without their owner dipping into his own wealth. That's even before FFP raises it's head. 

[Red Exile]

Delighted with the business done. For the first time in a long time we have depth in our squad. Replacements in all departments. Clearly it would have been ideal to have another striker...but who knows what's happening with out of contract players...Mark Ashton impressively calm on Radio Bristol this morning.

Kodjia was a remarkable deal. Virtually paid for a whole team of up and coming youngsters. Shed loads of cash gifted us by a desperate club. I'm glad I'm not a Villa fan! Kodjia had one good season. No guarantee that there would be a second.

I've not been uncritical of the leadership in the past. I think Spudski hits the nail on the head with his observation that running a football club is a marathon....in truth it's a never ending process of renewal. You never stand still. There are some harsh and disappointed comments in this thread but I'm not sure that the process could be much better managed than it's being managed at the moment. Not perfect of course, but in my opinion pretty decent, and better managed than most years in the past few decades.

[Stortz]

This thread proves beyond doubt that you could give a large section of our support a bag with a million quid in...

And they'd moan about the ******* bag.

[Olé]

43 minutes ago, AshtonGreat said:

Er, Burnley spent £9million on Andre Gray last season.

And we've spent £10 million this summer. So what is this 'spending big' that you talk of that gets clubs out of this division?

I guess your point isn't about spending £9 million. It's about not spending a much bigger number. If we'd spent all the Kodjia money yesterday and taken our summer spending to £20 million, would that have made you happy? A number which would put our spending at a level with 4 Premiership clubs?

You can't throw out statements that imply we've underspent, when many clubs in the past 5 years have gone up only spending what we have spent this year, and then throw examples at me of people spending what we've spent. Or did you want us to buy just one big-price player and have a squad of 15?

[RedM]

In a nutshell. I think if Tomlin had returned to Bournemouth at the end of last season and their signing of Wiltshire on loan allowed Tomlin to come back on loan in the final few seconds we would have all been delighted.

As it is we have done the bulk of our business relatively early ( as did ManU for example) so our transfer window has been deemed  unexciting or unsuccessful by some.

[Sir Leigh of Somerset]

Stortz has hit the nail right on the head. Some of the negative posts on here late last night and this morning certainly reinforce the adage "you can please some of the people, some of the time ... etc". 

After 50+ years of supporting the City, this has to be one of the most exciting periods I've experienced in all that time so let's just chill a bit and enjoy the ride ahead.

[downendcity]

3 hours ago, cityboy said:

How anyone can be less than happy with this transfer window boggles my mind.

There are posters on here that weren't very happy when we got to Wembley for the play off final!

[cidered abroad]

1 hour ago, AshtonGreat said:

An owner with money? Last time I looked, Steve Lansdown was one of the richest owners in the league

But as we have all realised, just pouring money into a football club without that club having the correct youth development structures and a solid financial base.

Above everything else, a group/squad of players who are all pulling in the same direction by helping each other, lending support to the team and club when they are not chosen to play in the side and when they are chosen doing their best every time they go on the pitch.

We can understand them being out of form and making mistakes but not giving 100% at Bristol City is a heinous crime and an insult to all supporters. In just the same way, fans must support and not audibly complain at the first misplaced pass or missed scoring opportunity.

It is a team game from SL to the youngest supporter and without teamwork, the only sure thing is failure. So, come on City, let's go places for a change. We've got the tools so it's up to all of us.

 

[BCFC_Dan]

The trouble with doing business early is that come the end of the transfer window it's easy to forget about the start of it.

The season has already started and it's easy to forget that fully half of the starting XI were new players, so quickly have they settled. The temptation is to think "we've got a good team here, if we can just add a few players on deadline day we'll be well away".

If one thinks back to where we were in June, it's a remarkable turnaround. With Baker and Matthews departing, and Flint linked with a move away, we could have been without 3/4s of the back 4. Our central midfield was little more than Pack and Smith and Smith was injured. Tomlin had gone back taking the attacking spark with him and we'd have been reliant on Freeman and Bryan to support Kodjia.

The only negative is that we've lost guaranteed goals in Kodjia but selling players like him for a profit and replacing with well-scouted prospects is how the club should be run. It's what we've been calling for years. This time last year Brentford sold Andre Gray, but they replaced him with Lasse Vibe who actually scored more goals than Gray. So long as the replacements are suitable then it's a win-win situation. Everything about City's recruitment since January suggests that if Engvall is not suitable it won't be for a lack of research and scouting.

[The Dolman Pragmatist]

2 hours ago, Sir Leigh of Somerset said:

Stortz has hit the nail right on the head. Some of the negative posts on here late last night and this morning certainly reinforce the adage "you can please some of the people, some of the time ... etc". 

After 50+ years of supporting the City, this has to be one of the most exciting periods I've experienced in all that time so let's just chill a bit and enjoy the ride ahead.

I do think this talk of negative posting is a little unfair.  I was certainly concerned last night, and still feel that the club would have done another deal in the market if they had been able to (Ashton admitted as much this morning).  The business we have done has been exciting, though a number of the signings are unproven so it remains to be seen whether they will be a success.  I think several people are still concerned that we may be lacking cover in some areas and experience in others, but this is not the same as being negative.  The business we've done has been good, but its just a shame that we didn't achieve the additional signing (or two) which the club, and many supporters, seem to have felt we needed.

[EstoniaTallinnRed]

15 hours ago, hodge said:

Only window that can rival this is our promotion season, some fans will get angry about not bringing in a big name to replace Kodjia and forget the rest of the window. Did these fans really expect the club to allow itself to be held for ransom? Clubs will have had the Kodjia money fresh in their minds today for anyone we tried to buy and probably upped their bids accordingly considering the fee was made public. We now have time to scout and identify players to target for January.

I don't think it was the transfer fees that was the stumbling block, it was probably the over inflated wage demands of our targets.

[downendcity]

7 minutes ago, EstoniaTallinnRed said:

I don't think it was the transfer fees that was the stumbling block, it was probably the over inflated wage demands of our targets.

If we are talking about Grabban, then according to a post on another thread it was not wages that was the stumbling block.

The poster says that a deal was agreed with Bournemouth but the player was not prepared to come here - he was only interested in a move back to Norwich or to Derby.

Reading between the lines it also sounds like he would not have been a good fit personality wise, and this seems to be an issue that LJ and MA take quite seriously as they only want to bring in players who will fit in with the rest of the squad.

 

[EstoniaTallinnRed]

1 minute ago, downendcity said:

If we are talking about Grabban, then according to a post on another thread it was not wages that was the stumbling block.

The poster says that a deal was agreed with Bournemouth but the player was not prepared to come here - he was only interested in a move back to Norwich or to Derby.

Reading between the lines it also sounds like he would not have been a good fit personality wise, and this seems to be an issue that LJ and MA take quite seriously as they only want to bring in players who will fit in with the rest of the squad.

 

Yes probably Grabban, but notice I did say targets, so reading between the lines Grabban was probably not the only striker we made a bid for.  You know our negotiations are almost always kept close to our chest and especially now, in view of the fact that other clubs knew how much we got for Kodjia.

[mjd]

I am happy with how it's turned out,  maybe a centre half and a striker would not have gone  amiss . As lee Johnson , I believe has said he would only bring in players who  are better than we have. So grabban as reported to be in for did not fancy coming to Bristol . The French player  from Lille seems not to have happened and  mason from wolves as reported in the e p , who we thought 5 million was  enough, but they did not.  So I believe some deals just fell through , for what ever reason .I believe we still have the foreign centre half who trains with us and is good enough, might sign for us.  We have a good looking squad of player s who  I believe will do well  this season and if needs be the January window will be open . Listen to what M A said ,interesting . Looking forward to the season . C o y r.