Bilic:

"We are very close to signing a couple of players and that's it. When I said a few days ago that we are expecting to get five players I didn't mean five new players - but players like Payet, Lanzini and Cresswell who are going to be back."

"We are very close to signing Andre Ayew from Swansea and we are very close to signing Arthur Masuaku, the French left back from Olympiakos. It's almost done, but until it's done it's never done!"

"We are trying to get quality players but we have marquee players, Feghouli is a marquee player, Tore is a marquee player. Andre Ayew is a big time marquee player. It doesn't have to be someone for 70 or 80 million, we can't afford it."

"But we are close to signing a couple of them; if those two players come then I'm quite happy with my squad."

Good for us if they're one less team to compete with to sign him.

Why would anyone chose to be a Seagull? The Eagle is a far superior creature.

The Seagull lives under it's damp pier meekly looking out, blinded by the sheer quality of the Eagle's palace.

Some of the crap being said on here is unbeliveable. No one knows what is going on. We have 'reportedly' made a bid, nothing official from Palace, nothing from Liverpool saying it was us.

Pardew has said we need strikers publicly and also said he hopes to have 2 in by the end of the window. I highly doubt that he would say anything like that publicly is there was nothing in the pipeline. Of course it is frustrating but this isn't a 500K deal for Frazier Campbell, these are 20million plus deals for international quality strikers, they don't happen overnight and other teams will always be looking at them.

Then I see people are complaining that SP isn't backing Pardew in the transfer market. I must have imagined the 13mil for Townsend and the 10mil for Tompkins Also the 5mil for Mutch and the 1.5 for Chungy!

Why should we just pay what Liverpool want? Imagine we just paid whatever the selling club wanted to for players all the time. We offer a low bid, club knows that if they hold out we will end up baulking and paying their over inflated price every time then we are stuffed I would much rather SP play some hardball. Look at prices of players as soon as Chelsea and Man City get involved, you can add 10mil onto any valuation as the selling club knows they have the money and they don't care.

Chill out peeps, we will have a couple of decent strikers coming in. If it isn't Benteke then I hope we keep this thread open so we can carry on discussing how good he would have been for us or how much better we are with our other sigings compared to him #500pagethread

So NOT impressed how striker debacle has been dragged out this summer with no required additional strike force brought in with only a week to go before season starts afresh.

Lot of other clubs in the same boat as us so I imagine their message boards are also clogged up with people like you.
The time to start worrying is the week before we name our squad.

Not very impressive, I agree.
A top striker has been a number one priority for a while and with Campbell out for a month,a huge risk to rely on Connor alone, he though he is superb.
Is SP up to his old tricks of hoping to secure a loan signing or an aging striker on the cheap?
Agree, good acquisitions early on in the window but apparently,£14m recouped in sale of Gayle and McCarthy to offset the outlay.
To not sign a decent striker shows lack of ambition as far as I am concerned,with the tv money and American investment.

Correct; and that makes our bargaining power even weaker as clubs know there are few options out there - and we are desperate.

Let a club like Liverpool pull our pants down on a high profile deal like this and the whole football world will know we are suckers ripe for the plucking.

I do get the fact that sometimes extreme need should override the usual principles of prudent management. The "biting the bullet" theory given how many times that hackneyed cliché has been used on this thread. It appears a very difficult balance of 1 ensuring the club has its full compliment of playing staff to compete at this level and 2 run the tight ship that has kept us as one of the best run clubs in the country.

One thing is required to achieve that: holding your nerve. In that respect I am glad it is our current management negotiating the deals and not some of the flaky posters on this site.