I’d think quite a few of them will have one year options on their contracts....and suitors bigger and wealthier than us, but we can dream anyway! Not sure how up-to-date or accurate the list is as Ashley Young has definitely signed a new deal recently. And as much as we need a CB, I don’t want Antonio Valencia anywhere near being a CB as suggested he may be above! Mangala is the type I think we should be targeting - highly rated not so long ago but career has stagnated. Good age and undoubtedly better than what we have currently.
So many of those players would be looking for 100k plus contracts though. Maybe Cahill/Luiz would be tempted with a 3 year deal in London but would still be our highest earner by some stretch.
I bet Mangala is on an absolute boatload of cash. I reckon he’ll end up at West Ham, or Palace. I agree though, that he’s the type of guy we should be looking at. I think it’s vastly important that we add a high-quality addition to our back line in the next 6 months.
Hopefully we won't get in on loan and high wages some waster like N'Dong (as we did last year) for him to make our bench , (but not pitch once) all seemed pretty pointless, unless it was a way to get Sinclair off our books for a year!
Diaz is an exceptional player, I don't think he'd wanna play for us. If we could pull it off, it'd b a masterstroke.
I've always liked Giroud and I would not say no to him and although he is getting on a bit now i think he could still
Leventhal has tweeted: Basically saying transfer plans are fluid and can change but the club are saying that Doucoure is not for sale at any price. And he understands a top quality, starting CB is top of the wish-list. Hallelujah.
Sounds like smoke and mirrors to keep the fans happy. We’ll refer to this post in about 30 days when Molla Wague reappears from wherever he’s being stored and appears in our PL squad.
Maybe, but he was fairly accurate with things in the summer and last winter if I remember rightly. I do think the club use him as a gateway for getting info to the fans at times. I think the Doucoure ‘stance’ is the one that’s put out to let clubs know it’s not worth coming in with lowball offers. A club with the financial turnover of ours simply can’t afford to have a player that isn’t for sale at any price. I think they will have an acceptable price for him but that price is inflated in the January window - likely to an amount that clubs won’t pay. If his form continues to improve this season, I think it’s inevitable that he will go in the summer though.
Interesting that he mentions a centre half but not a striker. For the record I think we'll go for the former but not the latter, and this will be the clubs logic: a) Even slightly-above-average strikers will cost an absolute fortune in this window b) We will have Penaranda available soon, plus possibly Cucho and Lukebakio to come in the summer (so it's more likely the club will reassess in the summer rather than spend big now) c) We score goals. As long as the midfield continues to bang the goals in, it won't be as much of a concern as our central defence Obviously you never know, there may be a big January surprise signing a la Deulofeu, but I'd be ok if we just concentrated on the defence and overhauled the striking department in the summer.
If we get a decent goal scoring striker in this month I think that qualifying this year for next seasons Europa League would not be out of the question.
Totally agree. This is how it looks. Watford have quite a few young promising forward players on their books. Cucho, Pedro, Lukebakio, Stuparevi* (yet to be confirmed) and of course Penaranda. Centre backs are in short supply at the club. Britos is only emergency cover, Kaboul has gone and Prodl is injured. Mapps is great, I love the bloke, but he's only cover from the bench. That leaves just Cathcart and Kabasele, with possibility of Navarro and Wilmott. It's clear we need someone of real stature. Like AL said, we're looking to get someone of top quality. So it will be (hopefully) a first team player, with Cathcart/Kabasele vying for the other position, which would be very healthy for the team.
Like who? You keep banging on and on and on, but who's available? Who's within our budget? Who wants to play for us?
I totally disagree with The Voice of Reason, we don`t need a striker. Like many people have already said we score goals it doesn´t really matter who scores them, in saturdays game v Newcastle both goals came from very good crosses how many times have we seen crap crosses this year that go nowhere. I really can´t see any club wanting to let a striker go mid season unless he is sh!t or they get shed loads of money for him. What really worries me is the defence if Kabasele gets sent off again he will be out for quite some time and one of the others is bound to get injured sooner or later. Surely for less than 10 million we can get a really good center back. The best way to attack is a good defence just look at Liverpool.
Time for an Almoo/Gomie/Foster type of CB signing? Seasoned pro who lead on the pitch & be solid in the dressing room.
Andrea Ranocchia springs to my mind if we can pry him away from Inter. Will be hard as he has looked decent for them this term.
Yes but the midfield can’t be relied on to always get the goals. There’s no escaping the fact that a strikers job is to score goals - and ours just don’t. Outside the top few sides, we have created the most ‘big’ chances in the PL and have missed a huge load of them. Think where we could be with a semi-competent finisher? That being said, that striker should have been sought and acquired in the summer - it’s been left too late now and any striker coming in now would be another potential blockage to Cucho/Penaranda/Lukebakio/Stuparevic getting their chance to fulfill their potential with us. Only way we should be looking at a striker is if Okaka AND Gray go this month. We can cope with losing just one of Penaranda is soon fit. IMO a CB is a far more pressing matter.
