city priced out of market or lack of ambition?

[lucky green trainers 0]

before we kicked a ball in the prem, worthy said he wouldn''t pay silly money for players, so he bought the doc rather than crouch, deano or similar (even a decent loan player would have done), then he promptly fell out with svennson, and so city relied on hucks (prefers left wing), the doc and leon (who had played a good bit part in city''s promo run) to get us the goals to stay up - not surprisingly we were in bottom 3 by crimbo.  by the time we finally splashed the cash on deano to get us promoted the next season, it was too little too late for us to stave off relegation.are we now in a similar position?  should city make another decent money purchase, making a calculated gamble, or at the very least securing the loan services of quality players in the vein of hucks & crouch?  anything less would be lack of ambition wouldn''t it, given our hopeful start?

[jetstream 0]

Personally I think it is short-sighted not to be strengthening the squad with quality - look at West Brom signing Kevin Phillips this week. To me that shows ambition when they''ve already signed Hartson (and renewed the Koumas contract).

You can''t afford to mess around, they''ve started well and are reinforcing.

We''ve started well and appear to be crossing our fingers and hoping no-one gets injured.

Every team gets injuries, every team has a dip of form. Some have got backup to play different types of player/change their system. Our back-up players look decidedly thin on quality and ability compared to WBA and Birmingham.

In short, the board need to pull their finger out and sign 2 players by Thursday. Good quality players. Not loans. Players who will have something to prove in the long-term, not the short term. Players who want to stay, not players with half a mind on impressing the boss back home and wanting to get back asap.

I really don''t buy this " we won''t panic buy" and "we won''t sign someone for the sake of it" nonsense. No-one is asking them to. We''re asking them to have identified quality over the summer and pay the going rate for them. There is a budget and it has increased now that Green is off the wage bill, plus his fee (even if it is coming in in stages).

Time to spend it and build on the good start.

[Mark .Y. 375]

I think so too LGT, I particularly have reservations about the current Mckenzie situation. Following the various newspaper reports I am assuming that Coventry bid at least £600,000 for him, I think that would have been good business and give us the Green money plus £600K plus whatever else we had in the kitty (and I refuse to believe we had no more than the Croft fee).

With this sort of money I would like to have seen a big target man (£1M), Greg Halford (£1M) and a left-back - either a promising 21-22 year old or a prem loanee. I think these three signings would give us good cover and should be affordable to us.

Mark .Y.

 

   

[Ramrod 258]

Good post LGT.

[Rossi 0]

i have to confess that i have a bit of an issue with this whole thing. the club talk of over-inflated prices, and plenty of people sit back content in thinking that x might be a good player but we cant afford him and its good that we are not putting ourselves in potential financial difficulty. is this really true though? i always get the impression we look for sale goods and are not willing to pay the going rate - theres a massive difference between the two - worthy hinted at this over the howard issue. he said we have to be prepared to pay the going rate in the normal supply/demand interaction.

[ca 1]

I have to agree with you here Rossi, we always hold out for the best deal for players we are selling but always seem to want to buy on the cheap.

If you want a decent player nowadays you have to pay the going rate or some other club will, as we''ve found out over and over again.