So how about a nice optimistic ‘we’re staying up’ thread?

Nothing’s guaranteed - but I think a draw v Cardiff and Mr Rigg can start preparing the clubs PayPal account for serious business.

For me, we need two central midfielders, a winger, a right back, a left back and a striker. I can see Ward, Vydra, Crouch, Wells, Lennon, one of Bardsley/Lowton, one of Pope/Hart and one of Gibson, Long or Dunne leaving We may want to move on Defour and Brady but it’s unlikely anyone will be trying to take them off us with their injury records, so I’ll assume they will be in the 25.

Leaving us a squad pre-purchases of:

GK: Heaton and Pope or Hart
RB: Lowton or Bardsley
LB: Taylor
CB: Tarkowski, Mee and two of Gibson, Long and Dunne
CM: Cork, Westwood, Defour
Wing: McNeil, Brady, Gudmundsson
Striker: Barnes, Wood
Utility: Hendrick

I might be an optimist but I predict big business this summer, I think it’s a must when you look at the squad. We have bags of quality but we are threadbare when one or two are out of form or injured. One or two I feel ‘realistic’ targets I think would be good for our squad and meet the more youthful model that Rigg has mentioned is the target:

Alan Browne (Preston) - CM - Young, Irish central midfielder who has impressed me everytime I’ve seen PNE over the last few years. Box to box but has really added goals to his game getting double figures this season, and broke into the full ROI squad.

Tom Cairney (Fulham) - CM - Has had a pretty in and out season at Fulham but I feel was a huge victim of their ridiculous spending spree. This is a player who West Ham wanted last summer (Fulham rejecting a £20m offer) and someone I have long thought would be a great signing. Might be at a decent price following their relegation and is hitting his peak age.

Anyone got any other potential targets?

Trippier - could play rb or rm, 10-15 mill plus pope. Offer bonus to make up for wages.

A decent cm . Mooy,cairney,billing, will Hughes (wishful thinking)

Cover for lb . Koiki from u23s or another young player

If vydra is not going to be used we need another striker. Could agyie be given a chance ?

My mate who is a Preston fan says brown is alwaz on the lash not for me

very little value in the Championship, I would hope we look further than West Brom

Reece James on loan from Chelsea or Jack Stacey from Luton.

I’m not convinced about Mooy and he would cost a pretty penny.

Che Adams again for me.
Bogle if Derby don’t go up. Reece James was touted as being a loan target from Chelsea if we stay up.
Harry Wilson looks a real talent from Liverpool.

We neee to broaden our horizons however and I’d like to see us pluck a few signings from abroad this summer, perhaps a few under the radar types who can uses us as a stepping stone for a couple of seasons and help us generate cash at the same time

Jay,Lansbury and Defour will be like a new signing.

Would love to see us look just slightly further afield than the Championship. For example, Kenny Lala at Strasbourg, 27 year old right back who is out of contract at the end of the season. Topped the assists charts in the league (9) and even chipped in with 3 goals. If we are going to let Bardsley go then this guy sounds like he would be more than good competition for Lowton and we should be more than competitive wage-wise than his current club.

James from Swansea was the one I couldn’t remember yesterday - they are in financial trouble and this guy is lightning quick - would be something completely different for us. Was in the verge of joining Leeds before Swansea pulled the plug at the last
Minute in January

jedi_master wrote:Tom Cairney (Fulham) - CM - Has had a pretty in and out season at Fulham but I feel was a huge victim of their ridiculous spending spree. This is a player who West Ham wanted last summer (Fulham rejecting a £20m offer) and someone I have long thought would be a great signing. Might be at a decent price following their relegation and is hitting his peak age.

Been getting some slatings this season because of his unwillingness to work hard. Saw them on TV last week and they were conceding goals because Cairney wasn't doing his defensive work. Playing like that, he's the last player Dyche would have in a team.

ClaretTony wrote:Been getting some slatings this season because of his unwillingness to work hard. Saw them on TV last week and they were conceding goals because Cairney wasn't doing his defensive work. Playing like that, he's the last player Dyche would have in a team.

That has been obvious for quite some time and was why Ranieri didn't like to start him - no passengers for us

jedi_master wrote:So how about a nice optimistic ‘we’re staying up’ thread?

Nothing’s guaranteed - but I think a draw v Cardiff and Mr Rigg can start preparing the clubs PayPal account for serious business.

For me, we need two central midfielders, a winger, a right back, a left back and a striker. I can see Ward, Vydra, Crouch, Wells, Lennon, one of Bardsley/Lowton, one of Pope/Hart and one of Gibson, Long or Dunne leaving We may want to move on Defour and Brady but it’s unlikely anyone will be trying to take them off us with their injury records, so I’ll assume they will be in the 25.


Leaving us a squad pre-purchases of:

GK: Heaton and Pope or Hart
RB: Lowton or Bardsley
LB: Taylor
CB: Tarkowski, Mee and two of Gibson, Long and Dunne
CM: Cork, Westwood, Defour
Wing: McNeil, Brady, Gudmundsson
Striker: Barnes, Wood
Utility: Hendrick

I might be an optimist but I predict big business this summer, I think it’s a must when you look at the squad. We have bags of quality but we are threadbare when one or two are out of form or injured. One or two I feel ‘realistic’ targets I think would be good for our squad and meet the more youthful model that Rigg has mentioned is the target:

Alan Browne (Preston) - CM - Young, Irish central midfielder who has impressed me everytime I’ve seen PNE over the last few years. Box to box but has really added goals to his game getting double figures this season, and broke into the full ROI squad.

Tom Cairney (Fulham) - CM - Has had a pretty in and out season at Fulham but I feel was a huge victim of their ridiculous spending spree. This is a player who West Ham wanted last summer (Fulham rejecting a £20m offer) and someone I have long thought would be a great signing. Might be at a decent price following their relegation and is hitting his peak age.

Anyone got any other potential targets?

A left back? As back up?

Stayingup wrote:A left back? As back up?

Yeah, we need a backup as I assume Ward is going.

Taylor has been phenomenal since Christmas, undisputed number one in that position but we need another if Ward is going.

Hedontplayforyou wrote:James from Swansea was the one I couldn’t remember yesterday - they are in financial trouble and this guy is lightning quick - would be something completely different for us. Was in the verge of joining Leeds before Swansea pulled the plug at the last
Minute in January

exactly, but I would imagine half the PL will be in for him

ClaretTony wrote:Been getting some slatings this season because of his unwillingness to work hard. Saw them on TV last week and they were conceding goals because Cairney wasn't doing his defensive work. Playing like that, he's the last player Dyche would have in a team.

agree 100%, everytime I've seen him play in the PL I've thought he was a soft touch

Che Adams - lightening pace and an eye for goal, I think we'll go back in for him.

Harry Arter - gritty, works hard and has a good pass on him

Jayden Bogle - highly touted young right back, very athletic

Murphy from Cardiff

I’d be tapping Liverpool for Harry Wilson, whether Derby scrape up or not. Left footer plays on the right, or anywhere across the midfield. Probably a season too soon to get into the Liverpool first team squad and a step up from Championship for him.

James and tripps would be great for us.

If we could find our own buendia in midfield that would make me more than happy. Love watching him play for Norwich. And someone that can smack a shot from midfield like vaulks at Rotherham for the bench

James from Swansea would be great
Tripps - long shot but would be fantastic
Ward-Prowse...if saints go down
Holgate - Everton seems out of favour this season
Bryan - competition / cover for Taylor
Wilson (not if we got James)
Bogle
Che Adams

If we could get 3 or 4 of them i’d be happy.

Holgate is on loan at wba

TVC15 wrote:James from Swansea would be great
Tripps - long shot but would be fantastic
Ward-Prowse...if saints go down
Holgate - Everton seems out of favour this season
Bryan - competition / cover for Taylor
Wilson (not if we got James)
Bogle
Che Adams

If we could get 3 or 4 of them i’d be happy.

Bryan has been Fulham's worst player this season, we dodged a bullet there for sure
Bogle, never seen him have an impressive half of football

Wilson from ?

Presumably Harry Wilson of Liverpool

Hedontplayforyou wrote:Presumably Harry Wilson of Liverpool

oh yeah, I couldn't place him ! Cheers

Doubt they would sell him

TVC15 wrote:James from Swansea would be great
Tripps - long shot but would be fantastic
Ward-Prowse...if saints go down
Holgate - Everton seems out of favour this season
Bryan - competition / cover for Taylor
Wilson (not if we got James)
Bogle
Che Adams

If we could get 3 or 4 of them i’d be happy.

Won’t be asking you to do my supermarket shop then

Would be pricey after the season he’s had, liked by Klopp too

Down_Rover wrote:Won’t be asking you to do my supermarket shop then

Is that your contribution to the thread ?
Why don't you name some targets ?

Completely agree about the defensive contributions of Cairney. We need a creative midfielder who is up to the job of fighting for his piece of turf. In that sense Cairney would be something of a luxury.

The bigger barrier is that despite their relegation Fulham are a wealthy club, even though FFP puts a limit on their spending while they are in the Championship. That means they won't have to urgently sell anyone if they don't want to.

When a team is relegated everyone looks at who they could take off them, but if a club doesn't want to sell and the players don't want to leave (or the club won't let them leave) then nobody is going to go anywhere. The only exception would be in response to silly money offers.

Fulham are still something of a shambles. When you look at their team they could easily lose a lot of players outside of transfers. And in a lot of cases they would arguably benefit from it.

Odoi, Ayite and Kebano are at the end of their contracts, with one year options. All of them could go for me. They have all been make weight players at Fulham since they signed.

Babel and Markovic were questionable signings who will also be out of contract in 2019. Taking their probable wages into account they could go as well.

Nordveit, Rico, Vietto, Chambers, and Fosu-Mensah are all on loan so they will likely leave.

Johansen will probably leave of a free transfer or for a small fee and Malatyaspor have an option to buy Kamara, although why they would trigger that option is beyond me.

If all those players move on that would be a big saving on the wage bill, which could be added to any decrease from relegation clause deductions.

That would leave them with a lot of holes to fill in their team and two very expensive French blokes in their midfield soaking up cash, that nobody will be queuing up to buy without an eye watering discount.

Sessegon and Mitrovic will probably be sold for as much as they can get for them and they will use the money to patch up their squad along with some loans.

I suspect that Cairney will only be available at a highly inflated price that would be bad business for us. I'm not saying that they don't necessarily want rid of him or that he might like to leave, but with his contract running till 2023 moving him on won't be an urgent priority for them. It would make sense for them to resist any low ball offers and keep him for around another year. They will have enough work to do in the transfer market as it is.

Faced with a reluctance to sell for a reasonable price we can do better for less. I've mentioned Alan Browne before and also Robin Quaison. Quaison would do a similar job as an attacking midfielder, strength, pace and creativity albeit with questionable defensive contribution, but he could also fill a striker slot which Cairney couldn't.

I doubt Fulham will offer up any bargain buys as a consequence of their relegation, Huddersfield might.

Jarrod Bowen is a player we should try for. And hopefully a few gems from Europe

Che Adams would be a good buy.

We need to break the bank for a centre mid to play alongside Westwood, ideally someone with a physical presence.

If I was given the opportunity to throw money around in terms of suggestions then I would go for players like Benjamin Bourigeaud at Stade Rennes or Florian Grillitsch at Hoffenheim, if he actually does have an £18m release clause as the rumour mill has suggested.

Bourigeaud is a real touch of class who has played well in pretty much every midfield slot. I would be happy to take him to bolster our midfield options and also fill a spot on the right wing. Rennes might not give him up easily, but they are something of a selling club and they have an abundance of central midfielders at the moment, after bringing in Grenier and Johansson during the Summer.

Koubek has looked shaky between the sticks this season and they don't have a quality option to challenge or replace him. I don't know if Joe Hart can speak French, but if he is open to a move as part of a trade it could be an option.

Alternatively, he might fancy Hoffenheim, who could also benefit from another good keeper, with Dennis Geiger coming the other way. If anything should happen to Baumann they would be screwed without another option.

I'm not really sure why Rigg picked out Reiss Nelson from Hoffenheim in a recent article, as a way to highlight the type of player we should be after. He is only on loan at Hoffenheim and he is obviously in the Gunners future plans.

He put in some superb performances before Christmas and the only reason that it has dipped recently is because he is recovering from a back injury. Zero chance of him moving on while they are cash strapped and light in midfield. Even if they were open to selling we couldn't get near their asking price and we would be amongst the last in a long line.

We should have learnt a valuable lesson from chasing unrealistic targets in the last two windows. It doesn't matter how good a player is or how well they fit our new statistical recruitment model. The most important questions when decided on suitable target are -

Is their current club likely to sell them
Are they likely to come here over other clubs
Can we afford to pay what it will take to sign them

If we can't realistically expect a "yes" answer to each of those questions then we will be wasting our valuable time effort and resources by pursuing them. It's called common sense. That check list would probably make Grillitsch a no, but I was throwing extravagant sums of money around in the first paragraph.

I suppose we might be in with an outside chance of a loan for Reiss Nelson, but why we would want to give away the valuable development opportunity of first team game time to another teams player is beyond me. I would prefer us to give our own players that opportunity. Nelson strikes me as the type of player that we should only be devoting scouting resources to if we are aiming at unrealistic targets. I can only assume it was a deliberately misleading example.

On the other hand Geiger might make a lot of sense. Young, played really well last season, an injury has knocked him off the visible radar. Hoffenheim have coped without him and could afford to lose him. Nagelsmann leaving for Leipzig will throw everything into disarray at Hoffenheim which could work for us or against us. He wouldn't be cheap, but he could fall in our price range.

The problem with young players is that the game has moved on. 19 and 20 isn't young anymore. By that age good players have already made something of a name for themselves and they are already valued highly in terms of performance and price. That places the most desirable young players outside of our bargain budget range, even in the foreign markets.

Identifying known players is fairly easy, but pointless. Our recruitment needs to be able to identify hidden gems and the next big thing before they appear on the radar, like Ludovit Reis of FC Groningen.

Apart from the names I've mentioned in this ramble I'm sticking with the players I suggested in the Summer Recruitment thread, supplemented with Callum Robinson from another post I made.

It's a shame that we don't have a quality target man to include in a trade for Browne and Robinson. Preston have been actively searching high and low for someone to lead the line and Stockley doesn't look like he is going to be the answer.

Wait a minute we have Vokes, oh no, sorry, we sold him in the last window

TVC15 wrote:James from Swansea would be great
Tripps - long shot but would be fantastic
Ward-Prowse...if saints go down
Holgate - Everton seems out of favour this season
Bryan - competition / cover for Taylor
Wilson (not if we got James)
Bogle
Che Adams

If we could get 3 or 4 of them i’d be happy.

Was so hopefully at the late, late deadline day rumour JWP might come our way. Expect It was Southampton just phoning round and the money was too much for us. (Good incident of this in the Sunderland docu)

Sadly I think he's almost done too much in the latter half of this season to go unnoticed again, he'll be on many radars.

Not saying we could afford him permanently or even on loan.

But Liverpool fans are apparently very underwhelmed with Keita. Who they courted for a couple of seasons before shelling out 50m.

Exactly the style we should be targeting. Quick, physical, good on the ball and gets a share of goals (usually).

Young Millwall right back
Danny Drinkwater
Inga loan or permanent

cricketfieldclarets wrote:Not saying we could afford him permanently or even on loan.

But Liverpool fans are apparently very underwhelmed with Keita. Who they courted for a couple of seasons before shelling out 50m.

Exactly the style we should be targeting. Quick, physical, good on the ball and gets a share of goals (usually).

Plenty of his type playing in the French league for way less than they paid, but his type is indeed what we require

CFS wrote:Young Millwall right back
Danny Drinkwater
Inga loan or permanent

Zero chance with Drinkwater, he's on a fortune at Chelsea

who is Inga ? If it's a typo for Ings he is going to Saints

Considering most of us are coming to the conclusion that the better Championship players are becoming out of reach with their ridiculous valuations, there are a lot of players being mentioned on this thread from the Championship...

Stories that Man Utd want to get Pereira out on loan next season plus McTominay still only gets fleeting chances
Delph getting very little game time at City
Wanyama is still only 27 and Walker Peters looks to be playing well enough that Tripps may be let go (if Tripps stays then Kyle would be worth a loan)
As well as he played Sat we have to find a replacement for Cork as our no 1 priority for me

TVC15 wrote:Is that your contribution to the thread ?
Why don't you name some targets ?

Because I am a realist. Despite what some people say on this board I will leave it to those employed by the club. In terms of match results, league position and managing finance they have been pretty damn good.

I have said it before that buying new players is not like FIFa19, it is real. There is no store you can visit and there are budgets.

But if you mean why don't I participate in your game of fantasy football, I cant be arsed

Down_Rover wrote:Because I am a realist. Despite what some people say on this board I will leave it to those employed by the club. In terms of match results, league position and managing finance they have been pretty damn good.
But if you mean why don't I participate in your game of fantasy football, I cant be arsed

A) you have participated.
B) this is a speculation thread on a fans forum.

Down_Rover wrote:Because I am a realist. Despite what some people say on this board I will leave it to those employed by the club. In terms of match results, league position and managing finance they have been pretty damn good.

I have said it before that buying new players is not like FIFa19, it is real. There is no store you can visit and there are budgets.

But if you mean why don't I participate in your game of fantasy football, I cant be arsed

You can’t be arsed but yet you can be bothered to post stupid pointless replies which are nothing to do with the thread.
Who is saying they are better placed than those at the club to buy players ?
The thread was for suggesting transfer targets - if you can’t suggest any of your own and can’t even say why other people’s suggestions are unrealistic then not sure what the point of your posts are in this thread.

Can't really see us signing any overseas players so something like:
Jarrrod Bowen on the right,
Aaron Mooy midfield,
Che Adams up front,
and Trippier just to put the icing on the cake

Down_Rover wrote:Because I am a realist. Despite what some people say on this board I will leave it to those employed by the club. In terms of match results, league position and managing finance they have been pretty damn good.

I have said it before that buying new players is not like FIFa19, it is real. There is no store you can visit and there are budgets.

But if you mean why don't I participate in your game of fantasy football, I cant be arsed

Did you actually just suggest we can't afford Browne at PNE?

I was at rovers v Stoke on Saturday and really liked the look of Etebo in central midfield. First time I've seen him. Scored their goal, and was busy throughout, quick, strong and seemed to use the ball wisely

Etebo is a good shout but hard to judge him up against such **** poor opposition

Etebo was decent in the World Cup, was surprised when he went to Stoke. Wouldn’t be a bad signing in my opinion

If Leeds cock it up and stay where they are then their RB Ayling is very good and Kalvin Phillips looks a PL box-to-box CM.
Someone's going to take a fairly inexpensive punt on Morelos from Rangers, despite the red cards, I reckon we should.
Hopefully we'll unearth a few bargains from the continent.

boyyanno wrote:Did you actually just suggest we can't afford Browne at PNE?

Talk about putting words in my mouth.

Where did I say that?

Vegas Claret wrote:Plenty of his type playing in the French league for way less than they paid, but his type is indeed what we require

There aren't though, are there. You've just plucked that out of thin air.

willsclarets wrote:There aren't though, are there. You've just plucked that out of thin air.

no I really haven't, I watch far too much football. Like a few others on here I watch the French, German, Spanish and Premier League on a weekly basis, not my fault you don't

Jarrod Bowen