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Arsenal doing some business this week. Zubamendi deal almost complete. They have pinched Norgaard from Brentford, with Partey set to leave. Kepa to sign from Chelsea for 5 Million as back up to Raya.

Looks like we've lost out on another one of our top summer signing targets. FFS Rangers..... (sarcasm). Good signing for Hibs.

Fair 😂 but yeah I was just pointing out that the Sporting Director being in the signing picture is unusual, unless significant. Nils Koppen, Ross Wilson etc weren't pictured with signings like this.

Yeah, I was being sarcastic mate 😀

Fumble. I'm backing you up, mate.

Anyway moving on Coady deal apparently done and we still remain an option for Jamie Vardy.

What, you'd expect the coach NOT to be in a picture with a new player?

All you need to do is look at who's standing with him. Seems very obvious who's signing players or at least very involved, by this picture.

So the new owners are lying to us?

I'm not negative about the Aarons signing. He seems a good player. I only mentioned that because you said RM won’t influence our targets and I very much doubt that.

So your data-set is 1 player. The footballing department may have had him in their sights. Fans will read into things the way the want, but all talk has been that the footballing department will manage all aspects of player trading whilst RM will COACH the players. Hence he is head coach and not manager. I'm already tired of all this negativity after 1 signing. Let's see where we are when the window closes.

Well his first signing is Max Aarons, who credits RM and his assistant with “kickstarting my career”. So the evidence so far is that he is involved in picking targets, and a manager would normally have some involvement in the style of players he wants.

But RM DOESNT pick the targets

The context for me is that Russell Martin has a record of conceding far too many goals, so I am holding out hope he has learnt a lesson and gets us some proper, aggressive centre backs. I’ll get behind players once they sign but IF we do buy soft centre backs I do reserve the right to say I told you say like I did with Davies, Propper and several others.

The first part of my response was tongue in cheek.

We have to trust the footballing department - we've been crying out for this for years so we need to trust it. Inevitably we'll get some wrong, but as long as we get the majority of them right, we'll be in a good place.

That's very vague. We don't know how highly rated he is. He plays in league 1 and the performance data I see shows he is not performing well defensively.

We should always be looking to improve in every position. I don't care which we sign first, a CB or a striker, as long as we get them signed in time for the CL qualifier.

Yeah, that makes sense. Let's see what the coming days bring. I'd still like to see some attacking players signed, but I accept we all would.

It is, for me at least. Some fans have been demanding a new right back. Most others recognise we've the best right back in the league. I know there's a lot of hate for Tav these days but his stats speak for themselves in terms if his importance to our team. Look, I'm not against having two good right backs, competition is healthy and the last couple of right backs we've signed to compete with/cover Tav have got injured, so no complaints. I'm just a little surprised he's our first signing. A new left back would have made more sense, a centre half or two, a winger and a forward are all positions that are considerably weaker than right back. I'm just surprised this was the priority. As you rightly say if we bring in players for those other positions too then no harm done.