It's amateurish because it is quite clearly out of our budget and at the expense of the entire squad. We severely lack depth and are scraping the barrel in other important areas for the sake of this deal. The fact we were unable to identify one target besides Sakho to ensure other key areas were sufficiently strengthened is amateurish. I'm sure everyone will disagree it is, because Sakho is supposedly the only good defender in world football, but in my opinion it's poor. Whether it's the fault of Parish for getting too involved, or Frank for being too indecisive is anyone's guess.

We're the Arthur over ere!

Apart from:
Fosu-Mensah
LoftusCheek
Reidwield

There's a difference between the squad being light and it literally being empty of any obvious sufficient quality. Hennessey hasn't been good enough for years. Benteke gets injured and at this moment in time our worst case scenario is we don't have another striker and best case we have Niasse. That's without mentioning an injury to Wilf or Townsend and having only championship quality/academy level players as back up. I agree we need someone to bring some confidence to the back line but I still believe our scouting network has failed miserably in not being able to identify one single other quality target for the sake of the entire squad and the approach is naive and unimaginative. I am fully aware this won't be a popular opinion though.

We're the Arthur over ere!

Being unable to identify a single centre back other than Sakho is amateurish, It's my opinion and I'm entitled to it without being told to dry my eyes because I've been consistent with it throughout. None of the players you've mentioned address our other problems and I'd be highly surprised if the latest have been made by the manager. That's not right but I guess the majority hate him as well so are probably glad.

Re wanting to sign cheap players and scoff off the others, not too sure what that's supposed to mean - I personally would've preferred a Wimmer/Martins Indi with Riedewald developing in the background and making cameo appearances and use the extra money (and time) on an attacking player with a different style to Benteke (such as a Munir or Vietto maybe, someone of that ilk) and a goalkeeper that will actually replace Hennessey rather than Niasse and a Nottingham Forest target who we probably wont sign anyway. That's without mentioning other areas that look worryingly thin as well.

Just my opinion, I love Sakho as much as the next guy but I think the gung ho approach to signing him in a very light and struggling squad could prove costly. As I said that just my opinion

Edited by Mstrobez (31 Aug 2017 11.22pm)

We're the Arthur over ere!

I don't think its mistake to spend our budget on a player who so clearly made such an immense difference to our defence and keeper.

I think it helps the whole team even when he was injured the guys performed better than they had in months.

So for me I'm hugely happy we've signed him.

Of course you can have the opinion that we should have spent money elsewhere but i'd point to the loan signings we have signed as adding extra quality.

And i wouldn't right off the other players we might be signing as not good enough without them even kicking a ball.

I would have loved us to sign Munir as well but not at the expense of missing out on Sakho. Martins would have probably been good as a centre back but I very much doubt he'd have lifted the whole team as i expect Sakhos signing will.

Sakho has cost us £24m so thats literally one £15m centre half plus £9m change. That doesn't go far to fix all our problems and certainly wouldn't have accounted for the players you wanted.

Most clubs sell to then strengthen and its really really good to see us keep hold of all our talent.. But yeah that means we have a budget thats then limited, Sakho i truly expect to raise everyones game, more so than Indis + Munir would have.

Edited by Goldfiinger (31 Aug 2017 11.35pm)

No it won't be popular. For too long we have bought squad players that are no better than those we have. In Sakho, TFM and RLC they are clearly better than what we have already. Given that we have kept our best players we should be happy that we are in a stronger position player wise than when the window opened.