The Reality

[Barking Mad Barclay Boy 13]

The club have accumulated too many off-par players on big money(wages) , Which on every turn of the transfer window we just cant shift as no one else wants them.

Unfortunately this is our downfall as it does not free up funds for another big wage signing to come in.

This shows in the recent few transfer windows.

As for the Rhodes rumour, that is as far as it got. Norwich enquired and Boro Refused to let him go out on loan, so that was canned very quickly.

Norwich were never going to get the marquee signing in unless they managed to free up money by getting rid of bassong, Naismith , Mulumbu ect.

Im as disgusted as the rest of you, just thought this might answer someone''s question

[lake district canary 4,531]

Good post.  Given the kind of wages we must be paying many of our players to keep them here, that limits our ability to pay wages for a marque signing that we might want, hence the sell before buy situation.  We had to attract the likes of Canos, Pritchard and Oliveira with presumably pretty good wages, so it''s not as if we haven''t improved the squad.  We may be one striker light, but maybe not a problem if Jerome and Oliveira can stay fit between them, and it can be addressed in January.    And we still have Lafferty and Morris.

[king canary 7,562]

Yes, apparently Mulumbu, Jarvis, Bassong and Naismith are amongst our top earners yet only one of them starts regularly (and he''s been crap). Poor transfer dealings have left us on the hook to under performing players that others teams won''t take on.

[Branston Pickle 3,632]

This ''reality'' would be all well and good if it weren''t for the fact that we signed Klose and Naismith in January (c£15m), and Oliveira this week, alongside Pritchard (who we were able to beat Brighton for) and Canos (Brentford and Bristol City) in this Window; McGovern also had PL offers.

There is something in the fact that we have players who we may like to move on, but we are the archetype yoyo club and it is one of the issues that comes with it. The flipside is that there''s a number of our players who we were concerned about leaving, but we kept all our main guys (Klose, Olsson, Brady to name a few).

The fact is that far too many people seem to be concentrating on what we don''t have/didn''t get, rather than what we have here which is a very decent side. Imo we of course needed one more striker, but for me it was far from the desperate transfer window that many supporters feel.

[Mike 0]

The reality is you need proven strikers to go up. Wilson at Bournemouth, Gray at Burnley etc. Name me the one person that looks likely to get the 20 goals you need to go up.

Cameron? Maybe if fit but not on last years form, Nelson? 9 last time in this league, Lafferty? lets move on... Morris? Did not even get a sniff at Brum. Its not rocket science.... As Sutton said the board have massively failed in the one thing we ALL knew needed to be addressed.

[Chip20 69]

[quote user="Mike "]The reality is you need proven strikers to go up. Wilson at Bournemouth, Gray at Burnley etc. Name me the one person that looks likely to get the 20 goals you need to go up.

Cameron? Maybe if fit but not on last years form, Nelson? 9 last time in this league, Lafferty? lets move on... Morris? Did not even get a sniff at Brum. Its not rocket science.... As Sutton said the board have massively failed in the one thing we ALL knew needed to be addressed.[/quote]

Technically, the strikers don''t need to be ''proven''; you just need them to become ''proven'' while they are with you. Jerome has ''proven'' he can score close to your 20 goal figure at this level and Oliviera''s 9 in 24 starts is not too far off. Boro showed last year that you can still go up without relying on a prolific marksman if your midfield is attack-minded enough. I think it''s partly the element of risk that is concerning people; if either of our two main strikers gets injured/suspended for any length of time, who is going to fill their boots? But in a sense most other teams are in the same boat. How many of our competitors have a proven 20-goal-a-season marksman ready to step in if the two main men (also proven 20+ goals a season) are out?