Matteo...were either Meyer or Cheikhou Kouyaté on your exhaustive list???

The Voice of Reason In An Otherwise Mediocre World

Cheeky

Both are on mine - we just need RLC back on loan & a surprise swoop for Joshua King & I’ll have a full house. Can’t see it now but I’d be happy with these two plus a loan or two.

Will this be five? It's gonna be five! It IS five!

do you not mean WE?

The Voice of Reason In An Otherwise Mediocre World

But Matteo if I've understood your original post correctly Steoinski was 4th on your list. We would have had to buy Niasse, Muto and Origi first and then decided to play Stepinski instead for you to be right.

For you to be much better than the club you first need to justify 9 incomers (thereby upsetting the stability of the club) and name those 9 incomers individually and not part of some massive list.

You may not like it but Hodgson is key to us and I really don't see him wanting massive squad turnover especially if it means loss of PL experience.

This is not to say your lists are not interesting but I suspect you overrate your abilities more than somewhat. We need players who fit the Roy template - a few names!

Omph, you're right,there's no way of prooving that such players would have fit into the system. But I do think that Nani is wrongly believed not to do defensive work and I could see him and Townsend and Zaha playing together, even behind a massive forward.

And Stepinski wasn't exactly 1st on my list,but the 3 players ahead of him would have been much more expensive, so the clubcould have only bought 1. Getting Stepinski too at only 2-3 million would have been a great deal for the club and the player would have made for a great asset coming on as substitute. Yes, the club invested greatly in Sorloth and I do appreciate Sorloth for his age, but Stepinski is a totally different quality.

The 9 players brought in would have been from the total 25 men squad, not the first 11. Most PL teams outside the top6 have 7-9 players replaced from last year's squad, either because some good ones were sold or some bad ones' contracts were terminated:

Everton: Richarlison, Yerry Mina, Digne, Zouma, Andre Gomes, Bernard, Lookman, Dowell.

Leicester: Ricardo Perreira, Soyuncu, Benkovic, Ghezzal, DannyWard, Johnny Evans.

Newcastle: Muto,Mikel Merino, FedericoFernandez, Schar, Dubravka, Rondon, Ki Sung Yeong.

West Ham: Felipe Anderson, Issa Diop, Yarmolenko, Fabianski, Carlos Sanchez, Lucas Perez, Balbuena, Fredericks, Wilshire.

Brighton: Jahanbaksh,Bissouma, Bernardo,Montoya, Andone, Button, Balogun.

Huddesrfield: Kongolo, Diakhaby, Sobhi, Bacuna, Erik Durm, Mbenza,Hamer.

Wolverhampton: Traore, Moutinho, Raul Jimenez, Vinagre, Rui Patricio, Jonny Castro, Dendoncker.

Fulham: Serri, Anguissa, Mawson,Joe Bryan, Fabri, Le Marchand, Schurrle, Sergio Rico, Fosu Mensah, Chambers, Luciano Vietto.

For Palace, the need to bring a lot of attacking options in was because of the lack of depth in that area after the departures of Sako, LCY, RLC and Wikcham not playing for 2 years. That's easily 4 spots in attack needing replacement. Plus a Cabaye replacement, a gk, a better right back and a back-up for Milivojevic, I really can't see how less than 8-9 players had to be changed between seasons. Club ended up with just Kouyate, Meyer, Jordan and Guaita. The attacking options are just 5 (Ben, Sorloth, Zaha, Townsend, Jordan Ayew), 6 if you count Meyer. For 4 places in attack!! And Schlupp is playing left wing (yes, he has before, but I would like someone better for that position). So it's a very trimm squad till January.