DMAA

The most important thing is to have people who have a real eye for a player. So many ex-pros just don’t really have it, and to an extent I’d say that applies to Gerrard. McCoist too. Celtic had a great window last year without a DoF because their manager had an eye for a player. We had an experienced DoF and had several consecutive poor windows.

So will 2 up front, Danilo and Dessers.

Just need someone to come in for Davies now!

Yes. I’ll take that all day long.

Colak to Parma for 2.5m Sakala to Saudi for 4m On the same night that an ITK has reported with confidence that Danilo is signing. This has escalated quickly.

Don't shoot the messenger but probably worth mentioning that Scott McKenna's name is also being mentioned. Very difficult to see that one. He's into the last year of his contract though.

Turning into a very exciting window indeed if the Danilo rumours are true. Great age at 24 too.

I’m very much on the other side of the fence with Kent and always have been. Not a dud by any means, but £7m was daylight robbery and I said so at the time. Celtic got Jota for £6.5m who was a far better player, everything Kent was made out to be. There was something about Kent that caused people to believe he had far more potential and ability than he ever had. Probably because he produced flashes of brilliance occasionally. It was a very popular belief initially that he would be sold for £20 and was destined for the EPL. Couldn’t believe how many people said that when we signed him. The result was that a lot of people turned on him a bit and felt he was never fulfilling his potential, or worse, not trying. The irony is that because I didn’t rate him that highly from the start, I never doubted his attitude and effort and his performance rarely surprised me. He was fine at our level but not a star, and he was capable of very good performances but simply not capable of that weekly in our league.

Well that I agree with. It doesn't make sense. But it does look that way to me at present.

On what basis are you saying he is 5th choice? Who is our 4th choice?

That’s happened a couple of pages back. Letting him go wasn’t a mistake, he spent most of the past year injured.

Replacing Helander like for like. Like for like in terms of of availability to play that is. With Souttar I pretty much see our number 4 as a number 3 and Davies has been unreliable for two seasons now too so I’m very uncomfortable with an injury prone and ageing Balogun being our 4th choice centre back. Standards are low if people are content with that.

Hopefully a centre back

I asked Joost to run the stats on Dowell. matches up with what it looked like from YouTube. A goalscorer and very creative too. Would struggle as an 8 though.

Kamara and Hagi would be more realistic. Two players that wouldn’t cost crazy money and could certainly do him a turn in that league.

Ideally

Where are you getting those stats? I was looking at FBref and trusty had better numbers, albeit it was aerials won rather than % won. Trusty looks much better on FBref.

Would much prefer Trusty. If the stats are to be believed, Panzo would be worse in the air than Davies. That doesn’t work in Scotland at centre back.

He’s 29 later this year 🙂

Joost's stats for Danilo are good too. A very interesting link. Perhaps a case of identifying a player who is due an upturn in his career based on underlying performance.

I’m a big fan of that system in our league, and good pressing forwards would create a lot of opportunities for us and put loads of presssure on opposition defences. I've often been frustrated by our 1 up front approach because we just don't have enough players in and around the box and right on top of defenders. In an ideal world, I'd like a quality goalscorer brought in, maybe like Dessers although I find the fee very high. I also think Colak is underrated and has proven himself as a very clinical goalscorer. His goalscoring rate is excellent.

He got the 9th highest number of minutes at Angers last season, but he got just over 2000 mins compared to 3200 mins from the player who played the most, despite availability to play being almost the same. I saw someone post a quote from the manager saying he was struggling a bit with fitness after his injury ravaged season at Stoke. If that’s the case, that’s possibly better than not playing as much because you aren’t performing. After a season of playing fairly regular football, he should be in a far better place this summer than last. You’re probably right about set up. More of a Christmas tree? If we sign Dessers, he's a 20 goals + player though. If not, Colak can be that player. One thing I do like about Sima is that he does seem a goalscorer, despite some very low xG and touches in the box last season. System could be to blame for that too. If you compare to some of the players from recent seasons he's certainly an improvement for goals.

His FBref stats are the same as Lammers for last season, very bad. Playing for a bottom of the league side of course so you expect them to be low, but didn’t seem to stand out at all in that context. Did score a few goals. Managed a fairly low minutes total despite a high number of appearances, apparently it's partly because he was struggling to regain full fitness after a season out injured. So I'm a bit mixed on it. Looks like he can score goals and add a bit of athleticism but not less skill full and creative than you'd want in a wide forward. Edit - just seen your comment on the last page commenting on some of this.