January 2023 Transfer Window

[BWFC_Insane]

Can't help Bod's injury. No blame to be attached.

To be very very clear: would you (BWFCi or anyone) have kept Baka and Dapo?

I wouldn't have sold Dapo once I knew about JDB until I'd signed some strikers....personally.

£500K (and I understand we haven't even got that much up front or guaranteed) for me isn't enough money to have sold him in that scenario, until we actually knew we were bringing a better striker in.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Just having a quick scan around for potentials and wondering about that old Danny Ward link. Twas said he was happy to see out his contract but with Huddersfield signing two more strikers (as I noted re Tyreece Simpson) you wonder if he'd fancy the challenge.

If we're waiting on his rehab then that'd make sense. Would also fit my pet theory that we wanted experience anyway and might be going for Ade on reflex.

That can be true for the next few hours then, until we get more news that shows its totally wrong.

That's the window!

Swansea are prepared to let Jamie Paterson go - second striker, 31, 300+ games mostly second-tier - but amid "a lot of interest, discussion and talks" Swans boss Russell Martin says there's "nothing concrete yet". Hometown club Cov seem favourites.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Can't help Bod's injury. No blame to be attached.

To be very very clear: would you (BWFCi or anyone) have kept Baka and Dapo?

I wouldn't have sold Dapo once I knew about JDB until I'd signed some strikers....personally.

£500K (and I understand we haven't even got that much up front or guaranteed) for me isn't enough money to have sold him in that scenario, until we actually knew we were bringing a better striker in.

You wouldn't have sold the guy you didn't notice playing for three months?

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

Is Dad Bod out of contract in the summer? if so, part of the equation has to be are we looking for his long term replacement or short term with a view to renewing Dad Bod?

[GhostoftheBok]

Is Dad Bod out of contract in the summer? if so, part of the equation has to be are we looking for his long term replacement or short term with a view to renewing Dad Bod?

Yes, he is.

[GhostoftheBok]

I wouldn't have sold Dapo once I knew about JDB until I'd signed some strikers....personally.

"Until I'd signed some strikers"...and if the only time you could do the deal was when we did you'd have simply not done it? With the deal having been worked out and the player wanting to move, you'd have scrapped it, despite having targets in the market?

Would be interested to know where you heard the sub-500k thing. Prepared to believe it, but absolutely not the story as far as folks in Germany are concerned.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Still combing the squad lists and there's a fairly surprising dearth of strikers aged 28+ in Champo squads. You'd imagine there'd be a Chris Martin roosting in every club's eaves but no, the majority of forwards (outside Luton) now seem to be under 24.

West Brom would gladly get rid of Kenneth Zohore, but given they paid £8m for him when they thought they'd get back in the Prem, you imagine he's on ludicro-wages as well as being an injury magnet.

Or there's always Ashley Fletcher, the Canon Slade lad stranded in Wigan. Nixon reported that Kolo was considering sending him back to Watford, after an underwhelming loan to Pie Park. Watford certainly don't want him so I imagine they'd be happy to lend him again, but it depends on the slice of Premier League wages we'd have to pay for a striker who's never been particularly prolific.

[BWFC_Insane]

I wouldn't have sold Dapo once I knew about JDB until I'd signed some strikers....personally.

"Until I'd signed some strikers"...and if the only time you could do the deal was when we did you'd have simply not done it? With the deal having been worked out and the player wanting to move, you'd have scrapped it, despite having targets in the market?

Would be interested to know where you heard the sub-500k thing. Prepared to believe it, but absolutely not the story as far as folks in Germany are concerned.

I’d say like every team says to us…wait until we can bring someone in. We always have to do that.

What we’ve done risks not getting an appropriate option in and we sit 5th in a semi final and would have in my view hamstrung ourselves.

You can (and do) make any number of hypothetical scenarios to defend any decision made - you had a long missive about why Hoskins would make sense before it became clear it was nonsense. It’s easy to justify or explain any decision.

But if I had said in October we should sell Baka and Dapo in January and replace with two young lads and then hope we could sign a senior striker in the last week of the window. I mean I suspect nobody would have agreed with that.

I don’t disagree that these things aren’t as simple as any of us would like to pretend. But I think we also have to acknowledge that whatever striker/s we get are out of necessity now and not likely to be part of a longer term plan. We get what we can. If they don’t do the business we will be back here in the summer.

[GhostoftheBok]

Still combing the squad lists and there's a fairly surprising dearth of strikers aged 28+ in Champo squads. You'd imagine there'd be a Chris Martin roosting in every club's eaves but no, the majority of forwards (outside Luton) now seem to be under 24.

That kind of division. If you're good you go up, if you're not you drop out.

Most are youngish and proving themselves to be one or the other. Will be loads of older players who had a good Champ season at some point in the lower leagues and SPL...or failing in Prem sides.

I do worry you might be right about waiting for Danny Ward to heal up to the wire. Not something I'd favour, but a fit version of him would be a good player at this level.

[BWFC_Insane]

Danny ward is a good example of the sort of player I’d really not see the sense in signing. He’s not a JDB replacement and I think Dapo would do no worse. Love to be wrong but I think it would be disappointing.

[The_Gun]

Not seen much of Ashley Fletcher recently, but he'd be a reasonable fit for us based on his profile. Unless his head's completely gone, I'd say he could do very well at our level.

[GhostoftheBok]

You can (and do) make any number of hypothetical scenarios to defend any decision made - you had a long missive about why Hoskins would make sense before it became clear it was nonsense. It’s easy to justify or explain any decision.

I do indeed try and parse how a player might fit in. It's fun.

However, I'm not sure that's comparable here.

What you seem to want to say is we should potentially have cost ourselves a fairly huge whack of money keeping a player who didn't fit and who didn't want to be here, on the off chance we can't make a signing.

Is that the same thing? I'm open to being a hypocrite here. Wouldn't be my first rodeo.

I think you're just arguing in favour of pretty dreadful financial decision-making, rather than the normal "would this player work?" stuff.

[BWFC_Insane]

You can (and do) make any number of hypothetical scenarios to defend any decision made - you had a long missive about why Hoskins would make sense before it became clear it was nonsense. It’s easy to justify or explain any decision.

I do indeed try and parse how a player might fit in. It's fun.

However, I'm not sure that's comparable here.

What you seem to want to say is we should potentially have cost ourselves a fairly huge whack of money keeping a player who didn't fit and who didn't want to be here, on the off chance we can't make a signing.

Is that the same thing? I'm open to being a hypocrite here. Wouldn't be my first rodeo.

I think you're just arguing in favour of pretty dreadful financial decision-making, rather than the normal "would this player work?" stuff.

You can essentially if you use the ‘financial sense’ argument never justify not selling a player. Because ultimately if someone bids for a player who would go to that club you should using your logic always sell them regardless because it’s always going to be a substantial amount of money.

The money for Dapo would be roughly the same as we would get if we progressed to Wembley.

It would pale into insignificance if we were to win promotion.

The argument being I think that Dapo wasn’t good enough to get us there. In either case. Which is fine.

So the judgement of the outcomes will be whether the strikers we sign (assuming we do if we don’t then I’m already right in my assessment) improve the team in terms of results and goals.

Let’s wait and see.

[GhostoftheBok]

Let’s wait and see.

All we can do, I think. In the end, whether the players we get in improve us will be what matters.

What we already know is that what we had wasn't good enough, so personally I'd take the money for players I wouldn't expect to make the team come February.

We'll see, like you say.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

BWFCi, is your entire life just planting seeds to say I Told You So? Sometimes, it feels like it.

[malcd1]

Just having a quick scan around for potentials and wondering about that old Danny Ward link. Twas said he was happy to see out his contract but with Huddersfield signing two more strikers (as I noted re Tyreece Simpson) you wonder if he'd fancy the challenge.

If we're waiting on his rehab then that'd make sense. Would also fit my pet theory that we wanted experience anyway and might be going for Ade on reflex.

That can be true for the next few hours then, until we get more news that shows its totally wrong.

Just checked the local Huddersfield newspaper. They said on 6th January, "The prognosis on striker Ward is less cheery, however. His recent back issue has developed into a hamstring problem that is expected to keep him out ‘for a lengthy period’".

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/sport/fo ... d-25910409

Might not be worth waiting for Ward if he has been injury prone recently.

[BWFC_Insane]

BWFCi, is your entire life just planting seeds to say I Told You So? Sometimes, it feels like it.

I think there is an awful lot of post-event rationalisation going on here. Which frustrates me. If we'd kept Dapo the argument would be 'Evatt has done the right thing, the bid wasn't enough, he's our best player and we have a plan to get the best out of him'.

In other words I feel like there is little in the way of actual opinion its just 'whatever happens I'll say was right'. As you'll recall I was pretty content with the idea of Baka going and Dapo going. Because I felt it made sense. The context of that changed with JDB's injury and the players we've brought in who I feel haven't really addressed the major issues we have - so it feels like - and maybe I'm wrong that we've got a good young number 10 option who will give Lee a rest but probably isn't going to be in the team week in week out and a good target man young developing type in Big Dan who will add something but won't significantly shift our quality.

Now look - I'm also a big realist. When people were wailing about selling Anelka or Cahill the brutal reality was we had zero choice. We needed the money and both were big money in the circumstances, circumstances again beyond our control. And I fully accept that Dapo was needing a sale financially to realise any residual value in his contract. I'm not in any way suggesting that financially it wasn't on the cards. I'm simply weighing it against where we are now.

If it seems like I'm laying the foundations for something then its not intentional but the brutal reality is I will (and most fans will) judge on outcomes. I really hope we end up better off and have that end of season push to secure a play off place and at least one wembley trip. I think we'd have done that as the squad was - maybe with just one addition. I doubt we'd have gone up though.

But the judgement on this will come down to who we bring in and how they perform. That's not setting it up for an I told you so, as I didn't. I thought the sale made sense until the context changed a bit. Its simply that I personally as a fan won't accept the club writing off the second half of the season in these circumstances. I won't be happy with that. I can rationalise arguments about the situation in my head all I like, but its a visceral reaction to what is happening. That's how I feel.

[The_Gun]

This debate has begun to consume this thread, but Insano, surely you don't believe that the club intends to write off the second half of the season?

[Worthy4England]

The money for Dapo would be roughly the same as we would get if we progressed to Wembley.

Well other than none of us know what we got for Dapo and we might, even with Dapo, not have got to Wembley, in which case we'd be minus whatever we no longer got for Dapo, for a fella that's now pi$$ed at us for not getting him his move and who Evatt might not play anyhow.

That would also be a nonsense.

[GhostoftheBok]

In other words I feel like there is little in the way of actual opinion its just 'whatever happens I'll say was right'.

Oh, in that case, no.

I didn't say signing Hoskins was right. I said I'd not sign him, but I tried to figure out how it might make sense. So in that sense I definitely now disagree with the comparison. Same went for another winger we were linked with (forgot the name for the minute). I also said I wouldn't have picked Carlos Borges were it my job, even when the noise was loud about him.

You're right that if we turned down the Dapo deal as being too little money I'd have backed that decision, as I have no access to the metrics they are using to calculate what he's worth to us. My view has been consistent since the summer, though. He didn't fit what we were doing and if he didn't adapt it was best to sell him. For as long as the manager said he believed he could adapt I was prepared to go with that opinion (I don't see them train), but by Jan he just needed to go if we could get the money we wanted and were sticking with this system.

So generally I reject the idea I'm just justifying whatever happens. As I keep saying, I've been calling for these changes to the attack (and on the left) since the summer - so I think it's unfair to say I'm rationalising after the fact.