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I see Yeovil have taken Jon Obika on loan from Spurs to cover for Dean Bowditchs injury.

Our situation leaves you speechless in comparison.

The longer this saga rolls on, the less it makes sense (apparently) and the more convinced I become that DW has something on the go.  I can't rationalise the situation any other way.

I hope he has something on the go. I just have this crazy hunch we're going to get someone special. That said, we need more than one striker (yes everyone's said it, yawn), which makes it all the more bizarre.

Bowditch scored on Saturday didn't he?

You have to wonder if we are trying to get a Premiership/Championship player in and Ifil is being sold to fund the signing(s). If we are, lets bloody hope it is worth the wait!!

he did but also damaged his shoulder i think

it's not great to think we've got one forward and they've gone out and got another one 3 days after he's injured.

whoever this/these targets is/are he'd better be the new messiah/s

Who though??

What would DW do if Billy got injured in training today and say was out for a couple of months?

I dread to think what our line up would be for tonight and Saturday!!

I, like everyone else has no idea. If I was to guess, I would say Lee Trundle, who would perhaps play in the 'hole' behind the strikers and then a pacy young hungry unknown from a Prem team, this Fulham chappy that has been mentioned before.

Or Carl Cort.

i've been banging on about prem youngsters for ages now.all our best players of recent years have come in,in that way.
they are out there, as other clubs are getting them in.

It's a disgrace that nobody's been listening to you. I hope you get a personal apology from  Wilson.

I say we try that Polish keeper up front.

We might have to!!

If Jerel does sign for Aberdeen that will be fifteen players who have left since the end of last season to be replaced by five.  Maybe we have lined up fifteen new strikers

i thought he might have called on my genius by now.

So they've managed to get a played who did a job in this division last season and looked good against us in 3 days and we've so far taken 3 months, this is all getting a bit embarrassing IMO.

Chances are we're now competing with Rovers for any players we go for so I just hope we manage to stump up more money than them on fees or wages.

maybe we made an approach but spurs/he was only interested in going back to yovile?

fucking stinks though. and that stench is starting to smell like incompetence.

Championship sides of the like of Reading, Watford and QPR, who are just down the road from us have loads of exciting young talent on their books who will not feature this season, why aren't we banging on their doors to get a couple on emergency one-month loans.

I just cant see this mystery big money signing coming at the moment, and it will probably end up with a panic purchase just to appease us lot in the end. Re: Trundle.

 :surrender:

Thats actually quite worrying as we thought our squad lacked depth last season.....

We still had a huge squad though! The reason it lacked depth is because they weren't very good!

Obika is very suprising, maybe he is not the type of player DW wants. Its beginning to look like it could go bad with these other clubs picking up players seemingly very easily, still wait and see.

Fingers crossed the optimists are right and the rabbit pulled out the hat is worth it!

It makes you wonder how much Douglas and O'Brien are on a week. We've trimmed our squad to the tune of 15 if Ifil goes, thats alot of wages freed up.

I'm not worrried as such YET, But frustration is starting to set in. How are other clubs able to get strikers in and we can't get anyone. GO SIGN TRUNDLE AND ADAM LE FONDRE NOW!!!!!

Where did you get that figure from? I'm sure it's closer to 20.

Didn't Wilson say he wanted a squad of around 22, including a few of the youths chipping in where needed?

Antoine van der Linden up front?

Quite surprising ... from Wilson's interview it seemed to suggest that only 1 striker would be signed now ... I guess Peacock is the 3rd striker ...

This is going to be a KEY signing .. if we dont get a player who can bang in 25 goals .. we might well be up against it with our weak defence ..

13 were released at the end of last season.

Cox was sold.

Ifil looks like he's on his way.

= 15 players left the club.

No DW will still sign 2 strikers, he actually talked before about getting 3.

Oh dear. This is both disappointing and embarrasing.

If I was Paul Ince I would be telling his players to kick Billy Paynter out of tonight's game.

Kick him hard enough and we'd have 0 strikers for the league game on Saturday, and with no plans to bring one in before then either.

Players who are likely to feature in first team at some point (18):

David LUCAS 
Scott CUTHBERT 
Jonathan DOUGLAS 
Jerel IFIL 
Gordon GREER 
Jon-Paul MCGOVERN 
Craig EASTON 
Michael TIMLIN 
Anthony MCNAMEE 
Phil SMITH 
Sean MORRISON 
Kevin AMANKWAAH 
Callum KENNEDY 
Alan O'BRIEN 
LESCINEL Jean-François 
Billy PAYNTER 
Lloyd MACKLIN 
Mark MARSHALL

Players with long term injuries (2):

Lee PEACOCK 
Hasney ALJOFREE

Players unlikely to feature (4):

Nathan THOMPSON 
Kasali Yinka CASAL 
Mark SCOTT 
Kurt HAMMONDS 
Jakub JESIONKOWSKI

That's 24 players. If we rule out Ifil, the two injured players, Casal and the youngsters then it's 17. A couple of strikers and injury recoveries and we have our squad.

The only other time in our history, (completed season) when we've failed to score in the opening 2 league games was 00-01....we at least had some strikers on the books Alexander, Graz, Martin Williams, but they just didn't score enough.

T*dd had cobbled together a squad, but much of it was rubbish and it took King to sort out the mess. As we know we stayed up by virtue of Wovers spectacular implosion at the end.

This was why AVdL ended up playing up front a couple of times.....Danny Invincibile ended up top scorer with 9.

T*dd could see the writing on the wall and thankfully jumped....there are similarities with this season, in that on paper the new (00/01) side didn't look too bad, it just didn't work.

 Will the smoking chimp be fit enough for another rescue mission?

I think you and talking about players leaving and si is talking about the players left AT the club. Just to clear up the confusion between the two of you.

Si your probably right but if we really are only planning to bring in a couple of strikers then I would go as far as to say we are in a spot of bother. I definately think we need a left back and an attacking minded central midfielder who will score some goals as I don't think either Easton nor Timlin are capable of this.

An interesting piece of research that someone might want to do is to calculate the number of league goals that our current squad has scored, and see how it compares to at any point in the last 20 years.

Any volunteers?

DV?

Including Paynter our squad has somewhere in the region of 20 goals from last season so as a one season snapshot I can't imagine we've ever been lower than that?

edit: including cups and new signings (just Douglas with 1 goal) and not including Ifil our squad scored a grand total of a whopping 26 goals last season!

:doh: that makes more sense!

In reference to what Ralphy is getting at then - the wage budget has actually been cut, but spread around fewer players means we are able to get better ones in (supposedly). This has been well documented and no cause for surprise.

Wilson has mentioned that he also has the 'emergency' loan route to strengthen the team as well when required

That is a very worrying statistic.

Obika had a host of league one clubs chasing him including us but at the end of the day he chose Yeovil purely and simple because of his time with them last season.

What's wrong with that? Afterall Cox chose us didn't he?

Time to move on no point getting pissed off about it

I wouldn't say they are emergency loans, I would say they are players that we need on loan for the whole season at least. They are core members of the team that we are missing along with the obvious striker situation as well. As I said we've got 26 goals in our squad from last season so as well as getting in a striker we desperately need a goalscoring midfielder, there is absolutely no one in our squad at present who is capable of being one.

I heard we tried for Obika months back but got turned down.

Whether its true or not....

...but for fucking hells sake, us fans knew Obika did a job for Yeovil and we knew he'd probably be available to loan and Yeovil have got him in 3 days into the new season....and we've fucking got no one.

Its a pissin' joke!

Language DV!

Le fondre has signed for rotherham today for undisclosed fee that rules him out gazza.

I guess Wilson didnt fancy him but i'd actually fancy our chances over Rotherham!!

This is fucking stupid. Seriously. I've not watched a game yet this season, and i already hate it.

The Obika question is easily answered. Yeovil asked Spurs if they could take him on a season long loan this summer. Spurs refused, as they were hoping a Championship club would want him on loan. No Championship club came in for him, so when Yeovil requested him for a short term loan to cover an injury Spurs let him go. Obika himself had stated if he didn't get a Championship loan deal he'd be happy to go back to Yeovil.

It's got fuck all to do with our situation.

Tom Craddock please!

Its got everything to do with our situation.

Yeovil have a striker , unlike us. He got injured , and in three days they replace him with a striker from a quality club with a good div 1 record.

We have known for three months that we need a striker and we are fannying around waiting for the right player at the right price. We need a striker NOW. Carry on looking for the perfect player for as long as you like, but get someone on board , even for a month. If Yeovil can do it so can we. Pull your finger out, Wilson.

Yes, Wilson needs to pull his finger out, yes we need someone in now. But likening our situation with Yeovil's, who have got a short term loanee (Who they had on loan last season) to cover an injury is total bollocks.

Spurs wouldn't have let Obika come to us if we had asked them in June or July, as they were holding out for a Championship club.

I'd settle for Fanny Craddock right now !

We've got too many Fannys already Fred!

I'm not saying we could have got Jon Obika. But the point is there are quality players out there now who we could get on short term contracts or loans if we tried. Other clubs are doing it.

sorry Ronnie


still in a state of depressed delerium

Right being bored I checked out the goalscoring history of our squad, it doesn't include non-league or foreign games just the English and Scottish leagues.

No. 1 2 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Name Lucas Cuthbert Douglas Ifil Greer McGovern Easton Timlin McNamee Smith Morrison Amankwaah Aljofree Kennedy O'Brien Lecinel Paynter Peacock Macklin Thompson Marshall Casal Scott Hammonds

Apps 231 34 197 223 174 209 385 80 164 76 23 185 249 4 58 29 269 490 3 0 13 5 0 0

Goals 0 1 15 3 7 14 28 4 4 0 1 4 9 0 1 0 56 120 0 0 0 0 0 0

So thats 3101 appearances with 267 goals for that squad averaging a goal every 11.6 games. If you take out the keepers, Peacock (as doubtful he has much of a role), Ifil (as good as gone), Casal (Useless) and Aljofree (Role doubtful) we are left with 1827 appearances, 135 goals averaging a goal every 13.5 games from our outfield players.
As for saturdays starting 11 our 10 outfield players have played 1213 games scoring 93 goals averaging a goal every 13 games.

I know it's just stats n stuff but it really highlights that we don't only lack strikers we need goals from elsewhere and there just isn't a history of goals in the squad as it stands. I would say as well as strikers a goal scoring midfielder is a necessity.

Why have you included the keeper?

EDIT: I can't read

i think the problem is more than likely fitton, rather than wilson when recruiting players.

So, one goal every 13 games between 11 players is less than a goal a game for the team. But on the bright side, having not scored on Saturday it means we're due one tonight! ;)

Thanks for taking the time to get the stats Glos.As you correctly state,we really do need a goal
scoring midfielder.Great shame HRK isn't with us this season.I had really hoped that we could have
replaced him with a goalscoring winger or central midfielder.Easton has shown in recent times,that
he's unlikely to fill that void.

Which will probably come in the form of an own goal!

Agreed, I think the striker situation is getting all the attention and rightly so but the attacking midfielder is just as key.

They all count!

Wilson indentifies the players he wants and it's left to Fitton to negotiate transfer fees
and wages..As far as i'm aware, both Wilson and Fitton are happy with this arrangement.

this is why i have come to the conclusion that i have.

True, but Fitton has stated he will not deal with agents - and therein may lie the stumbling block!

Can we save up for a while and win 13-0?