Fleckys Flip-Flop

[quote user="Indy"] It''s never about who you sign but how they fit your system, your club and how they fit the current team. QPR & Pompy are examples of money can''t buy you success.   I believe that all the players in so far will push our current 11 and will add to the quality, most being happy to pull on the yellow shirt. Not just the big wages ala Wanyama.   Villa have impressed me as much as it pains to say, they have added quality young players to a good young side. funny that we are now seen in the same light as Villa.   We have signed some good player and that''s why I hope we don''t go after this old  Quagliarella bloke, big money high wages and might just upset the team moral. Hooper would fit Norwich better. [/quote]   Interesting take. My Villa supporting buddies are not happy! They think they are a shoo-in for bottom 5 if they don''t pick up some genuine quality. They were expecting to stay up last season and then push on and now find themselves signing the same kind of players they signed last year. Less than everyone else around them too!   What you say about Quagliarella needs explaining too. And the Hooper fitting us better remark. Premier League side with big ambition sign (a) 5th top scorer in last years SPL or (b) Serie A, Champions League and Italy International goalscorer (two years younger than the talismanic Striker they have just sold). Still think Hooper fits better..? Really..?

[quote user="Paul_CFC"]As a Celtic fan I will be really sad to see Hooper go. His ability to score goals will be something we will miss and must replace. I did think he would have stayed until the Champions League qualifiers were over but it looks like he will be away in the next few days. All the talk is it''s either Norwich or QPR, and if he is leaving to further his career or get the England call up many believe he deserves then for me there is only one place he should be and that is the EPL. Whether or not his head is turned by the money at QPR, I don''t know, but I would rather see him at Norwich.As for the mid table Championship nonsense, do you think many mid table Championship team would have beat Barcelona, Benfica or Spartak Moscow last season? [/quote]   Do you think the rest of the SPL would have beaten those sides? I think the majority of what''s being said is about the standard of the teams he is scoring his goals against. He scored 19 league goals last season against the likes of Hibs, Inverness and Ross County. Why should we expect him to repeat the feat against the likes of Villa, Newcastle, Everton etc? He was outscored by Higdon, Griffiths, McGinn and McKay despite getting the best service of the lot from the best players in Scotland. I just don''t understand the hype!!

For me, we should look at the case of Leigh Griffiths. He outshone Hooper in the second half of last season and will be heading back to Wolves in League 1 for next season. That is the general level of the SPL. Hooper did well for Scunny and has done well at Celtic, that leaves him completely unproven at (close to) premiership level. Difference with RVW is that he has played in Holland and Portugal for relatively strong sides. We know how good the Dutch and Portuguese sides are from european competition. Last season Hooper was playing for the only side in Scotland who are anywhere near that good!! All the opposition were League 1 standard at best. Hooper is Lineker-esque fox-in-the-box type. I''m not sure what that brings to us at this moment in time.   Of course, if he signs I hope i''m wrong and will back him all the way. I just see no evidence to suggest he would be any more effective than Becchio. If the reports are to be believed, and we are refusing to go over £4m then I would say that''s a very sensible move by the board. 

It''s not entirely about money being put on. It''s a combination of that AND information. The big bookies have teams of people working very much like risk assessors. They obviously have to set odds and very frequently have people in the know feeding them info. Betting will suspend when they feel a deal is likely. These odds suggest nothing is really seen as certain. 1/2 isn''t short enough to suggest they are confident. If they felt a deal was likely you would be seeing odds of around 1/5 - 1/10. Fer wasn''t an open market, although odds availiable on request, because there haven''t been a number of clubs linked with him.  

Row D, you have clearly never met Mr Gunn have you! Genuinely fantastic bloke. Generous, honest, humble, reliable and, perhaps most importantly of all, he bleeds yellow and green. He also WAS a great ''keeper. I''m not suggesting we haven''t had other great ''keepers, but Gunn was a class act. He kept us in so many games and was so vital that one half a season long injury led to our relegation from the Premier League.    The fact also remains that he took on various roles at this club rather than more lucrative positions, such as the one he finds himself in now. He did that because he was asked to, he never forced himself upon anyone.   All I can say is you MUST be an Ipswich fan! 

Maybe i''m being oversensitive, but in what world is 30 ''old''? Grant Holt scored 15 PL goals at 31. Look at Alan Shearer, Frank Lampard, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes to name a few. If you have the class then age isn''t a factor. This fella certainly has class!

Guys, you are arguing two sides of the same coin. The whole risk issue is why the medical gets done first. You are both right there. You just have different ideas on how best to use the info. One of you is saying reduce the risk by not signing the player. The other is saying reduce the risk by paying less for said player. That''s the only difference in what you guys are saying and there are compelling arguments for both sides.    

30 years old, international experience, Champions League experience, top flight European league experience. A very experienced striker, with a good 2-4 years left in the tank seems like a snip at 8m euros (or £6.9m). Lots of Juve fans talking about it with very mixed feelings on the matter. Does make sense for him to leave and would be a better bet than Hooper who has only ever scored goals in a much weaker league.

Yeah, there''s no contradiction. Rather that reading "tosh" as "medically dodgy" try reading "you think are tosh" as "you are not interested in signing"

I completely agree with you, but I think that was down to the standard of players we had on the bench! So RVW, Becchio and then a pacy striker alongside in 3rd place would give us all the options we need. The reason we lacked variety were because Holt, Kamara and Becchio were too similar and Jackson, for all his effort and graft, just wasn''t good enough. Van Wolfswinkle looks an awful lot better than what we had last season. He is a completely different player to Becchio too, so we already have more variety. I don''t see why we need to waste the money on an extra man. At some point you have to put faith in the younger players. Loza has been scoring goals for the U21s this year and is probably due a go in the cups and on the bench every now and then as a preliminary to a loan move next year. A forth striker would probably stop that happening too. Presumably they would want game time? 

I don''t think it is actually that rare. I''ve heard of clubs being allowed to speak to a player without actually agreeing a fee, usually when they are confident an agreement will be reached. This would more than likely be a case of Norwich being unable to commit to a figure without seeing the result of a medical as he had very publicly failed one last season. If the medical comes up all fine we would be prepared to pay more than we would otherwise.

And Camp yes?   Right, you can''t have Morison AND Becchio as they were swapped for one another. They count as one player.   Let''s take the first half of the season shall we? Contributions from Holt, Morison and Jackson.   Second half? Becchio comes in for Morison. Jackson plays in 2 cup games. Holt and Kamara share the starting rule and Becchio plays before Kamara is fully fit and also after he has gone home. Never in the meantime. We were only ever actually using three strikers max at any one time during the season. We don''t need to waste a likely £20k per week (Over £1million for the season) on a 4th striker. We never needed one last year and we won''t this year.

I completely agree. But if we have one striker starting and two more on the bench then we need two injuries before we are even in the situation in which one of them needs to be on the bench! Rudd isn''t a case in point. I''m not suggesting that they are the third choice, i''m assuming/hoping we will bring in another striker, leaving them as fourth and fifth choice respectively. I would see this as more than adequate cover for a position in which we only ever start one player. 

Surely we would be better off using Loza or Morris as a fourth striker? Aid their development. If we are likely to start with one up front then there seems little need for more than two experienced players covering? Just a waste of a wage.