Transfer Activity

[Super_Ally 0]

Its criminal though Ally when you think between Lafferty/Velicka/Mhisser we spent 6.25m and you would barely get a decent striker out of the 3.

 

For that sort of spend we should have been looking for more quality in the final 3rd.....we'd be better spending 2m on a proper scouting network and 4m on a striker than buying the likes of the above.

 

How did I forget Lafferty.

 

Quite agree with your second paragraph, but as been said a million times, that's the kind of progressive forward thinking our club is incapable of.

 

We are very poor atm on the striker front, Boyd aside (and many aren't happy with hime either). Yet again, regardless of the title outcome, we have another summer of clear outs ahead.

[Jon 0]

Excellent post SA.

 

Hard to disagree with any of it, well, for me anyway...

[UCF2008 0]

I agree with most of Calscot was saying in his post. Overall I think the transfer dealings have been quite sound. We've brought in a large number of players with International experience for a relatively low sum. Even looking at Lafferty, Miller, Edu and Velicka - that's 4 internationals (2 with previous experience of the SPL) for 8.5m.

 

I can't argue that we didn't pay over the odds for Lafferty. He's going to have a real tough job justifying his fee, but time will tell. Edu and Velicka haven't had the opportunity to show their worth, so I wouldn't write them off just yet. As for Miller, I didn't agree at the time with his signing, but I don't think he's done too badly for us so far.

 

We did sign too many strikers in the Summer, but I think that was more down to the expectation that more (Boyd & Darcheville) would be leaving. Added to Cousin, Buffel (apparently not a midfielder) & Sebo, we would have been down 5 strikers ...OK then, 4 :devil:.

[craig 5,199]

As I was only stating a fact without attaching an opinion I've no argument with you here.

 

However, I think WS did very well up until last summer and your final list only mentions players from that spending spree.

 

Weir has been very good and Ehiogu was decent enough as a stop gap and didn't cost us much.

 

Thomson has been a great signing and Naismith has shown promise. Broadfoot and Alexander have been reasonable successes.

 

Cuellar was fantastic and Cousin showed us he could cut it when he was in the mood.

 

Darcheville did well until this season and Davis was a pretty good loan signing.

 

 

Beasley wasn't bad until his injury. So kind of in between a success and failure.

 

 

On the failure side: McCulloch started well but even he admits he's lost all form.

 

Faye was laughably bad but was only a six month signing. Dailly did ok a few times filling in but it was a huge mistake to extend his contract.

 

Gow never even made it into the first team but we may end up not losing anything there.

 

Graeme Smith hasn't had a chance to feature but didn't cost us much and would have probably been an able 3rd choice keeper.

 

Andy Webster was a promising young player and cheap but he's been unlucky with injury.

 

Stephen Whittaker was very promising but just hasn't yet lived up to his billing.

 

 

 

So before the summer, it seems to me that Walter had more significant successes than failures and many of the failures didn't really cost us much. The biggest two were McCulloch and Whittaker. Beasley is the next worse but he was ok until his injury.

 

I think WS can be forgiven for Whittaker as he seemed a good signing at the time - although I thought he was well overpriced and not ready yet, an opinion which has been vindicated. He should have been able to replace Hutton but hasn't come close.

 

McCulloch was a strange one, WS valued him about 1.1M which I think was about right. However, we ended up paying about 2.7M and he's given us about 300k worth of good service. When you value a player, you have to stick with your valuation or else you can get shafted.

 

 

Then we come to last summers spending which WS seemed to have made a hash of. It seems like he thought he had a bigger budget than he had and so spend willy nilly while thinking he had plenty in the bank. It turns out that his failure to qualify for the CL means he's put us in a spot of financial bother and we have a very unbalanced and bloated squad which still leaves us with pretty much an incomplete first team.

 

Bougherra has been a success while Davis, Mendes and Miller look good on paper but haven't delivered the consistency we need. Miller and Davis also look a bit over priced.

 

Lafferty does not look like a 3.5M player and it's ironic and a bad sign that free 17 year old player from our youth system is now way in front of him. Seems like a waste of money which we are now regretting and may have to get rid of a better player to pay for him.

 

Edu has also seemed like a waste of money although he's been unlucky with injuries. The latter two look like signings for the future but we can't afford that until we have a team for the present.

 

Velicka has been a complete aberration of a signing especially as he's hardly been seen.

 

So the summer has been more failure than success and WS seemed to get it badly wrong.

 

Even if he'd just passed on Lafferty, Miller, Edu and Velica - all of which seemed like strange signings, that would be 8.5M saved of which about 4 million could have been spent on another centre back and a natural left midfielder.

 

Some may see it's easy to see in hindsight but that's insulting to those who were saying the same thing during the summer.

 

The chairman and the manager really need to show more prudence and for the moment buy what we need rather than what might be good in a couple of years.

 

If we want young players developed into the first team we should be blooding those from Murray Park rather than spending 2-3.5 million on them - unless they are really exceptional like Thomson.

 

That's what Murray Park is for - to save us that kind of cash. Would we really be worse off as a team if we'd never bought Naismith, Webster, Whittaker, Edu and Lafferty? Would we have been better blooding Lennon, Lowing, Furman, Aaron and Fleck and save the �£10M?

 

Our expensive transfers should be first choice, experienced players that really enhance the team - like Cuellar, Bougherra, Cousin and Mendes and if we can get bargains such as Weir, Alexander, Broadfoot, Boyd, Novo etc then we're sorted.

 

Sorry Cal, havent had the chance to read through all of this but will. I do apologise for only listing players from last summer, I should have made it clear I was stating only some that I could recall - the post was made in haste as I am busy at work.

 

I would agree with you that, until the transfer window this past August, WS made some very solid, sound acquisitions (McCulloch aside.....) and that it all started to go pear-shaped this past August and sadly coincided with the Kaunas debacle.

 

That said, some of the August signings were decent - Mendes, Davis and Bougherra (but, again, these signings were made without real consideration of where the TEAM needed strengthening. Did we really need to buy Davis, Mendes AND Edu who are all CM's when we already had Thomson, BF and Hemdani ??? Surely Mendes OR Davis OR Edu - but all 3 ?? To give us 6 CM's who could all legitimately expect to be 1st choice......).

 

WS needed to strengthen the team, not the squad. There were plenty of spots that needed strengthened but the central midfield was probably one which, whilst needing it, wasn't as critical as other areas such as the full-bacls or wide midfield areas.

 

The August transfer window was, without doubt, a disaster by WS. He picked up some decent players in Mendes, Bougherra and Davis but he also squandered money too, and a lot of it.

 

Another thing. Taking a chance on potential is one thing but we spent 2.5 million on an untried Edu and 3.5 million on Lafferty. But just how much profit do we actually think we will make on them when the highest transfer fee out of Scotland is about 9 million and I don't think either of these player are near that standard nor do they look like they will be.

 

At 2.5 million, this year given how crucial CL qualification is/was, we needed first teamers, not potential.

[calscot 0]

Totally agree with everything in your post.

[gisabeer 409]

At 2.5 million, this year given how crucial CL qualification is/was, we needed first teamers, not potential.

 

summed up in a sentence.