DMAA

Very hard to compare though because this summer is a proper rebuild. January was very good but Beale told us that Wilson put Raskin to him and he agreed and they moved forward. So Wilson was very much involved. I’ve no idea how Cantwell came about but I got the impression that was all Beale.

My understanding is that the manager is also involved up front. So the manager could say, I think we need a target man. Someone who can hold the ball up well, is good in the air etc. Or I need a ball winner in centre mid. And the DoF then does a lot of the work involved in modern recruitment and brings the manager a list and they work through it together. So rightly or wrongly I don’t see it as one sided as you do, and it makes sense to me.

They don’t call the shots though. The final say has always been with the manager. My understanding is that they do a lot of the legwork on transfer strategy partly because the manager doesn’t have time, and they present lists of options to the manager and the work through them together and narrow it down. It’s a collaborative effort and it makes sense to me in terms of the division of labour. I honestly think things would be chaotic if transfers were bottlenecking through the manager only.

Yeh I’m in favour of a DoF role. It just hasn’t improved our performance In the transfer market the way it should have.

The most important thing is to have people who have a real eye for a player. So many ex-pros just don’t really have it, and to an extent I’d say that applies to Gerrard. McCoist too. Celtic had a great window last year without a DoF because their manager had an eye for a player. We had an experienced DoF and had several consecutive poor windows.

So will 2 up front, Danilo and Dessers.

Just need someone to come in for Davies now!

Yes. I’ll take that all day long.

Colak to Parma for 2.5m Sakala to Saudi for 4m On the same night that an ITK has reported with confidence that Danilo is signing. This has escalated quickly.

Don't shoot the messenger but probably worth mentioning that Scott McKenna's name is also being mentioned. Very difficult to see that one. He's into the last year of his contract though.

Turning into a very exciting window indeed if the Danilo rumours are true. Great age at 24 too.

I’m very much on the other side of the fence with Kent and always have been. Not a dud by any means, but £7m was daylight robbery and I said so at the time. Celtic got Jota for £6.5m who was a far better player, everything Kent was made out to be. There was something about Kent that caused people to believe he had far more potential and ability than he ever had. Probably because he produced flashes of brilliance occasionally. It was a very popular belief initially that he would be sold for £20 and was destined for the EPL. Couldn’t believe how many people said that when we signed him. The result was that a lot of people turned on him a bit and felt he was never fulfilling his potential, or worse, not trying. The irony is that because I didn’t rate him that highly from the start, I never doubted his attitude and effort and his performance rarely surprised me. He was fine at our level but not a star, and he was capable of very good performances but simply not capable of that weekly in our league.

Well that I agree with. It doesn't make sense. But it does look that way to me at present.

On what basis are you saying he is 5th choice? Who is our 4th choice?

That’s happened a couple of pages back. Letting him go wasn’t a mistake, he spent most of the past year injured.

Replacing Helander like for like. Like for like in terms of of availability to play that is. With Souttar I pretty much see our number 4 as a number 3 and Davies has been unreliable for two seasons now too so I’m very uncomfortable with an injury prone and ageing Balogun being our 4th choice centre back. Standards are low if people are content with that.

Hopefully a centre back

I asked Joost to run the stats on Dowell. matches up with what it looked like from YouTube. A goalscorer and very creative too. Would struggle as an 8 though.

Kamara and Hagi would be more realistic. Two players that wouldn’t cost crazy money and could certainly do him a turn in that league.

Ideally

Where are you getting those stats? I was looking at FBref and trusty had better numbers, albeit it was aerials won rather than % won. Trusty looks much better on FBref.

Would much prefer Trusty. If the stats are to be believed, Panzo would be worse in the air than Davies. That doesn’t work in Scotland at centre back.

He’s 29 later this year 🙂