QUOTE(livingmonolith @ Sep 1 2010, 12:24 PM)
transfer window shuts, now it's time to breathe a little easier without all the insane rumours flying around.
personally, i think the signings this summer has been conservative, we opted for experienced players or foreign players with enough track records, but as expected no major signing that thrills fans and club. no one to blame but ourselves, now we suffer from the tight budget after losing out on an UCL place last season.
our signings have hardly got anyone's head turned, perhaps apart from joe cole who was somewhat a surprise player. at the moment transfers have been more like direct replacements: cole for benayoun, konchesky for insua, meireles for aquilani, poulsen for masch, jones for diego. we have more players leaving than coming, and it's sad enough that our wallet is so tight that we can't even secure a signing without selling our own player first.
i can understand that we may not have any transfer kitty this summer, but we clearly made a profit and if the cash received is not made available to bolster the squad, then i guess everyone would've noticed how bad our club's situation is in now. top four is like miles away, the current squad is mediocre at best, we'll have to wait till the end of this season to judge RH, but again, personally i haven't been convinced from the day he signed the dotted lines. for me, RH is clearly chosen because he can work things out without needing a big budget (and he won't be complaining), exactly what the club's owners are looking for.
poor preseason, great game against arsenal before going back down for the next two games against city and wba. it's as though we're back to our yo-yo and inconsistent days of roy evans.
We're not only crippled by tight budget. We have deteriorated reputation too.
Give you an example, we could have signed Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
He's on loan for a year, with an option of signing him permanently at 24 million euro.
Meaning we don't need to pay millions of dollar upfront. It's a steal.
He's much bigger (in size) than Heskey & C.Cole. He's much skillful too.
Will he join Liverpool?
I heard Spurs is sigining Van Der Vaart for 8million?
Will he join Liverpool if we offer the same price?
Look, we are like "mid-table" team now.
Sad but true.