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Dave's Dilemma

Season/s greeting fellow blues. This is just a little note to stimulate some non-incendiary debate about the desire for new blood at the club.

By my fairly bad reckoning, Moyes has about 22 first team players that need feeding and watering (wages and looking after); I would have thought that this should be more than enough for a Premier League season (in better days, we would have coped with about 16).

So we have had a few crucial players unavailable and some of the available have been out of form... what is the answer? "New signings" is the cry: a big Centre Fireworks who scores goals, leads the line; a quick CM who scores goals, tackles, has an eye for a pass; a fast winger who scores goals — none of the above to have rock-the-boat tendencies — are obvious desires. But where are they?

Even if we had a few bob, I haven't seen many who would actually make us better. Again, even if we do buy 3 or 4 and raise the staff to 26 expensive wage earners, where do you play them all when everyone is fit? So do you soldier on waiting for your hurt guys to return or get someone in who will then be surplus to requirements but you have on the staff paying a big wage and who never plays (a la Melchiot at Chelsea), or actually displaces one of your hurt guys and you then have him on the staff doing nowt.

Personally, I'd soldier on with 2 or 3 loan deals till the end of 2010 and see where we stand... but that is just an opinion.
Dave Leeson, Shrewsbury Posted 26/12/2009 at 10:47:14

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Andy Hegan
1 Posted 26/12/2009 at 15:29:14

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Brilliant Dave, pass your comments on to Moyes. I’m sure he hasnt thought of this.

Lee Kidd
2 Posted 26/12/2009 at 17:13:46

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The problem is that the major clubs who have significant talent on the sidelines who could make a difference to our squad are now well aware of the "Moyes trick" of loaning a player with the view to a permanent move - as in, we never, ever make the damn move permanent.

Therefore, we’re only going to attract unproven youth talent from Europe, or the likes of Landon Donovan who aren’t playing any football otherwise and the club has no interest in selling permanently.

I cannot think of anyone at all who could improve our squad and fits that criteria.

Martin Cutler
3 Posted 26/12/2009 at 17:41:56

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Dave, as Andy implied... you are somewhat stating the obvious but nevertheless a good talking point ....

I would say that for where we’re at right now one or two "good" loan signings are all we need. We don’t need talent per se (although that point could be argued). We need one or two who can step in and help out. The spirit the lads are playing with right now can’t be argued with — we just need to put the ball in the back of the net!

My assumption is that Jo won’t be signed permanently and if Saha gets injured then we will have problems but once Neville/Jags/Arteta come back (if/when/please) then we should be okay.

Martin Cutler
4 Posted 26/12/2009 at 17:48:00

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Just wanted to add that when I said Jo won’t be signed — that has nothing to do with our situation right now but just pointing out that we probably need a quality forward/goalscorer ... but that’s more the long-term view.

Brendan O'Doherty
5 Posted 26/12/2009 at 19:03:00

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"... we never, ever make the damn move permanent."

Arteta, Pienaar, Howard....???

Erik Dols
6 Posted 26/12/2009 at 21:09:23

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Yobo.

Pat Finegan
7 Posted 27/12/2009 at 01:13:24

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Arteta and Jags may never be the same players. I’d like to be optimistic but some players just don’t ever really return to form after being out for so long. Some new talent might be nice just in case, God forbid, we have completely lost that talent.

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