Players in

[samo II]

13 hours ago, cityred exile said:

How many of the 15 players  on loan are due back in January ?? Also what about Gus ?  decision time ?

Out of interest; anyone know if we could sell/loan Engvall even if he played for us in Jan?

As I understand it; players can only play for two clubs in a season since emergency loans were done away with, but wasn’t sure if this covered only English clubs.

Reasoning being; if we are possibly going to see one of Djuric or Diedhiou back mid-to-late Jan, might it be the coaching team see Engvall as almost a ‘stop gap’ player for ties like the FA Cup away at Watford, and maybe a sub for the January league games, but perhaps one to be loaned/sold come the end of the window?

Personally; I’d like to think he might finally get his shot - his style certainly fits with the way we are currently setting up, and could see him lining up next to Bobby in the Taylor role.

Having watched him for the Swedish under-21s, he set up next to/in front of Cibicki, who often did similar to Bobby, in dropping off to link midfield and attack; hopefully Gus could slot in to the way we play now more than previously.

Whatever happens, we ‘technically’ have another striker immediately in the door once the Wolves game is done - is this perhaps why LJ makes no mention of wanting a new forward?

[Ciderstreet]

Three players required in January 

Liam Walsh central midfielder from Everton 

Jack Marriott striker from Peterborough 

David Lloyd-Mcgoldrick wide player from Peterborough 

 

 

[Robin101]

Interesting point about wage structure needing to be roughly in line. I imagine it’s true. Perhaps no coincidence the likes of Brownhill are signing improved contracts...

Also, the club is in a far better place than 2008. Perhaps it’s naive to suggest it, but think we’d be as strong next season. 

[bcfcredandwhite]

I think we should look at key players we have got and can’t afford to lose (Flint, Baker, Pack,  Bryan) and ensure that we have decent cover for their positions if (when) they are injured or banned. 

Our injured players may be available soon, but we have seen with Pisano in particular that they can be vulnerable to more injuries. Besides, they won’t be match fit and to throw them straight into a hotly contested promotion battle would most likely send them straight back to the treatment room!

[Davefevs]

25 minutes ago, Robin101 said:

Interesting point about wage structure needing to be roughly in line. I imagine it’s true. Perhaps no coincidence the likes of Brownhill are signing improved contracts...

Also, the club is in a far better place than 2008. Perhaps it’s naive to suggest it, but think we’d be as strong next season. 

Twitter suggests that Reid in new contract talks also.

[Lanterne Rouge]

12 hours ago, GrahamC said:

Very interesting.

Even though none of these players can feature until after the Villa game (Engvall aside) I wonder if it is worth keeping a few of them with us for most of January as we are down to bare bones and now also have concerns over Baker & Paterson.

It also allows us to see just how the injury situation is panning out.

I'd certainly get Moore, Morrell and Engvall back & around the squad until it was a bit bigger.

The only slight worry with this is that if we played any of them it would limit who we could loan them to afterwards with the two club thing - take Taylor Moore  for instance, if he played v Watford we could only then loan him to Cheltenham again when it may be that we would like him to go to league 1. Joe Morrell and Freddie Hinds have already played for us so could only go to Cheltenham anyway so that`s not quite as important.

[JamesBCFC]

3 hours ago, samo II said:

Out of interest; anyone know if we could sell/loan Engvall even if he played for us in Jan?

As I understand it; players can only play for two clubs in a season since emergency loans were done away with, but wasn’t sure if this covered only English clubs.

Reasoning being; if we are possibly going to see one of Djuric or Diedhiou back mid-to-late Jan, might it be the coaching team see Engvall as almost a ‘stop gap’ player for ties like the FA Cup away at Watford, and maybe a sub for the January league games, but perhaps one to be loaned/sold come the end of the window?

Personally; I’d like to think he might finally get his shot - his style certainly fits with the way we are currently setting up, and could see him lining up next to Bobby in the Taylor role.

Having watched him for the Swedish under-21s, he set up next to/in front of Cibicki, who often did similar to Bobby, in dropping off to link midfield and attack; hopefully Gus could slot in to the way we play now more than previously.

Whatever happens, we ‘technically’ have another striker immediately in the door once the Wolves game is done - is this perhaps why LJ makes no mention of wanting a new forward?

He already played for us this season so although he could sign for someone else, he cannot play until next season if he does.

[JamesBCFC]

2 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Twitter suggests that Reid in new contract talks also.

Good.

I'm unsure if he just had an insane purple patch this season of if he is just really missing Diedhiou right now, but his overall play this season has been great, even if the goals have slowed down lately.

[Davefevs]

27 minutes ago, JamesBCFC said:

Good.

I'm unsure if he just had an insane purple patch this season of if he is just really missing Diedhiou right now, but his overall play this season has been great, even if the goals have slowed down lately.

Even if he scored at his current (since Cardiff) rate of 1 in 4, he’d bag 5 or 6 in the remaining 22 league games.  That’s 16/17 league goals, a fantastic effort for someone who is not an out and out striker, who is important to the style we play.  If he gets going again with Diedhiou, then could hit 20.

[JamesBCFC]

2 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Even if he scored at his current (since Cardiff) rate of 1 in 4, he’d bag 5 or 6 in the remaining 22 league games.  That’s 16/17 league goals, a fantastic effort for someone who is not an out and out striker, who is important to the style we play.  If he gets going again with Diedhiou, then could hit 20.

You could see him and Diedhiou clicked straight away in pre-season.

Famara coming back will be a big boost to our season.

[cidered abroad]

I agree with so much of what has been said in this thread. We must not, under any circumstances, ruin what is clearly a very good team/squad spirit but recruiting players on very high wages or with the wrong DNA.

I suspect that the Club, from Lansdown, Ashton and even Johnson, are a tadge surprised at the league position that we now find ourselves in. Most of us in the summer, anticipated/hoped for a finish around 8th to 14th; in other words a "safe" season. It's possible that the Club also thought the same but like most of us, secretly hoped we'd do better and maybe flirt with play offs.

But we are now at this moment, in the driving seat. We are second behind Wolves and we have 22 more games to ensure that we stay there. A tough ask but SL/MA/LJ must now be fully aware that it's ours to lose. We have some very hard away games with six out of the top nine, to play on their patches.

In view of where we are now, I expect to see maybe, three or four new signings. Permanent or loans? But I do not see us breaking with the way we've recruited in the last eighteen months. No big time Charlies, nobody who will upset the wages policy. Players with a future and the capacity for development. I don't believe that Lansdown and Ashton will allow the prize to pass us by without a good attempt at promotion. It's too good an opportunity!

[Davefevs]

17 minutes ago, cidered abroad said:

I agree with so much of what has been said in this thread. We must not, under any circumstances, ruin what is clearly a very good team/squad spirit but recruiting players on very high wages or with the wrong DNA.

I suspect that the Club, from Lansdown, Ashton and even Johnson, are a tadge surprised at the league position that we now find ourselves in. Most of us in the summer, anticipated/hoped for a finish around 8th to 14th; in other words a "safe" season. It's possible that the Club also thought the same but like most of us, secretly hoped we'd do better and maybe flirt with play offs.

But we are now at this moment, in the driving seat. We are second behind Wolves and we have 22 more games to ensure that we stay there. A tough ask but SL/MA/LJ must now be fully aware that it's ours to lose. We have some very hard away games with six out of the top nine, to play on their patches.

In view of where we are now, I expect to see maybe, three or four new signings. Permanent or loans? But I do not see us breaking with the way we've recruited in the last eighteen months. No big time Charlies, nobody who will upset the wages policy. Players with a future and the capacity for development. I don't believe that Lansdown and Ashton will allow the prize to pass us by without a good attempt at promotion. It's too good an opportunity!

Agree, think LJ has pretty much said as much.

The injury situation can make us think a bit knee-jerk, but you could also look at some of those coming back as not having the burden of an intense winter period of games.  That is a bonus.  Imagine the likes of Gary O’Neil, coming back fit.  His experience, if only on the bench and around the training pitches will be invaluable.

[JamesBCFC]

1 minute ago, Davefevs said:

Agree, think LJ has pretty much said as much.

The injury situation can make us think a bit knee-jerk, but you could also look at some of those coming back as not having the burden of an intense winter period of games.  That is a bonus.  Imagine the likes of Gary O’Neil, coming back fit.  His experience, if only on the bench and around the training pitches will be invaluable.

Yep, I do think some people are a bit hard on O'Neil.

His form at the start of last season was very good for us. But everything went tits up when he was wrongly sent off away at Wednesday.

I think his injury flared up on his return as well? He wasn't back for long before being out again.

[samo II]

2 hours ago, JamesBCFC said:

He already played for us this season so although he could sign for someone else, he cannot play until next season if he does.

Thanks for the info - does this apply only to English teams or all countries?

I only wonder as elsewhere someone has mentioned they believe he’s going to the Dutch top division in the window, but part of me wonders that if that was the case, we could have sold him as soon as he was back from Sweden, so he could at least train with his new team.

Personally I hope he ends up making a good go of it here; I could understand him going out on loan last year when we were desperately fighting relegation, had Tammy in form, and the lad needed games to make the under-21 euros, but unless he’s an absolute write-off here, cannot imagine a time we needed him more.

Since signing for us he’s played 34 games (split between for us and his Swedish loan team) and scored 8 goals - basically one-in-three in Sweden, and will only 21; be great if he could get close to that here.

[JamesBCFC]

8 minutes ago, samo II said:

Thanks for the info - does this apply only to English teams or all countries?

I only wonder as elsewhere someone has mentioned they believe he’s going to the Dutch top division in the window, but part of me wonders that if that was the case, we could have sold him as soon as he was back from Sweden, so he could at least train with his new team.

Personally I hope he ends up making a good go of it here; I could understand him going out on loan last year when we were desperately fighting relegation, had Tammy in form, and the lad needed games to make the under-21 euros, but unless he’s an absolute write-off here, cannot imagine a time we needed him more.

Since signing for us he’s played 34 games (split between for us and his Swedish loan team) and scored 8 goals - basically one-in-three in Sweden, and will only 21; be great if he could get close to that here.

All countries I believe, I think Ben Arfa had an issue when moving back to France because of it.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/14/hatem-ben-arfa-limbo-clearance-fifa-nice-newcastle

[Guest]

On 27/12/2017 at 08:20, BobBobSuperBob said:

Unless LJ , MA are bluffing well  I think people are going to be dissapointed if they think we are going to spend 'big' in January or bring in 'names' (Unless loan)

 

I think history shows us they bluff very well. Only in June this year Lee Tomlin was still a player we were going to build around. Then we sold them and many were complaining they were liars- incapable of understanding they were playing the market. I see this as akin to us saying to Preston 'we aren't going to go mad for hugill and we are preparing our fans if we walk away, which we will'. Everything the comes out of our club is a bluff one way or another, rhetoric for agents, and not for fans anymore. 

I wont be disappointed, but I honestly expect LJ to be given reign to break our transfer budget again if needs be. As said, I think we are going to be very big spenders this window. 

[JoeAman08]

I don’t think there is a real dilemna here. The club have a type of player they sign and will stick to it. Think most they sign they envision will make the step up to the premier league and I think they have recruited well in that regard. 

Paterson, Baker, Wright, Diedhiou, O’Dowda, Brownhill, Djuric and Eliasson all have premier league potential with many being ready now. Does not mean they will be star players in that league but can hold their own against the bottom 12 which is where promoted teams need to get their points from. Add players like Reid, Bryan, Flint and Fielding to that and it is already a decent squad. 

Point is, keep recruiting the same and by the time we are 6/7 transfer windows into the LJ era we will have a player ready to go at every position when someone is sold. I guarantee they have a list of targets if they are promoted and imagine they will look to them in January to see if anything can be done. Otherwise, keep doing what we have been doing. Do not let the fear of failure to be promoted to cloud judgement. I doubt LJ and MA will. They are very practical and will do their best to make this a promotion side but will not sacrifice 3 years from now for the sake of appeasing fans who think they should spend 15-20 mil in this window. 

[REDOXO]

If we are looking for known DNA and forward power then I could see a possible bid for Matt Smith. AGAIN!

[Phileas Fogg]

6 minutes ago, REDOXO said:

If we are looking for known DNA and forward power then I could see a possible bid for Matt Smith. AGAIN!

Highly unlikely 

[Lanterne Rouge]

1 hour ago, JoeAman08 said:

I don’t think there is a real dilemna here. The club have a type of player they sign and will stick to it. Think most they sign they envision will make the step up to the premier league and I think they have recruited well in that regard. 

Paterson, Baker, Wright, Diedhiou, O’Dowda, Brownhill, Djuric and Eliasson all have premier league potential with many being ready now. Does not mean they will be star players in that league but can hold their own against the bottom 12 which is where promoted teams need to get their points from. Add players like Reid, Bryan, Flint and Fielding to that and it is already a decent squad. 

Point is, keep recruiting the same and by the time we are 6/7 transfer windows into the LJ era we will have a player ready to go at every position when someone is sold. I guarantee they have a list of targets if they are promoted and imagine they will look to them in January to see if anything can be done. Otherwise, keep doing what we have been doing. Do not let the fear of failure to be promoted to cloud judgement. I doubt LJ and MA will. They are very practical and will do their best to make this a promotion side but will not sacrifice 3 years from now for the sake of appeasing fans who think they should spend 15-20 mil in this window. 

This is the crux of the matter really and IMO is non-negotiable. We have learnt so much from Tomlingate and we will not go down that route again whilst the current management are here (and rightly so).

Let`s stick to doing it the right way - if we succeed, brilliant, if we don`t, then we will be in a very good place to go again next season.

I for one am proud of the way we`re running this club at the moment - fans of clubs like Sunderland must look at us and despair. If success doesn`t come instantly I can live with that.