Don't Shut The Window! We Need A Striker

[Zappa 0]

With tonight's closure of the transfer window now looming closer by the second it's becoming crystal clear that staying in Europe or more specifically, the Champions League this season was paramount to the ability of the new manager to start building a new, deeper and higher quality squad. That may well seem like stating the obvious, but I think we should ask ourselves if Ally was really afforded the opportunity to strengthen for our European campaign given that the club were very public about supposedly bidding for and trying to bring in the players who might have helped keep us in Europe, but either failed or backed off on the deals. Obviously it's all history now, but I wonder what players like Roland Juh�¡sz, Wesley Verhoek and David Goodwillie might have offered the manager in terms of team selection options in our Champions League and Europa League games had we signed them up and registered them instead of messing about with low bids and flimsy attempts to acquire their services.

 

Despite it being too late to help us in Europe, we finally brought in Alejandro Bedoya after a lengthy period of the club saying 'we want him NOW', but if we're to believe media reports, we supposedly went back to Ã?â??rebro with a lower offer than we had previously made just a couple of weeks earlier. No matter what anyone says about the player having been on the last X amount of games of his contract, if it's true that we did that, then it highlights one aspect of our new and somewhat bizarre concept of transfer market dealings. Is it a concept which involves telling the fans, the media and other clubs that there's money there for these new players the club are bidding for, then that money just seeming to disappear into thin air when the bids all fail? Imagine an episode of South Park where illusionist Paul Daniels is running a football club and dabbling in the transfer market with a top hat, a dove and a pile of magic money. No you see it, now you don't. It's Magic!

 

Another strange series of events was the attempt to sign Carlos Cuellar from Aston Villa, now managed by former Gers manager Alex McLeish. In this case, the Scottish press reported that Villa had accepted a �£2m bid from Rangers for the player. Fans were literally ecstatic about it because Cuellar aka 'King Carlos' was a cracking, no nonsense defender who was absolutely brilliant in our run to the UEFA Cup Final, a run which ended in his sale to Villa for almost eight million pounds. Good business to get him back for �£2m then, but what happened to the deal? We had the bid accepted and it was supposedly still on the table until we went out of the Champions League. Then, all of a sudden the deal was off because he was still injured when in actual fact the club knew that he was injured all along. Am I missing something here? Did the guy's return from injury being slightly delayed put us off buying him back for nearly �£6m less than we sold him for? You have to wonder....

 

Roland Juh�¡sz? Were we really ever intending to buy this guy? After a drawn-out saga of us being told the club were making bids and having them rejected, we were reported to have made a final �£3.5m bid for the player. In actual fact we must have bid significantly less than that for the deal to just fall apart because both Juh�¡sz and his agent were keen for the deal to come to Ibrox to happen and �£3.5m is what Anderlecht were reportedly seeking for the player. I'm intrigued as to what really happened to that deal, but if I was taking a guess it would be something along the lines of going out of the Champions League meant that there was no way the club could afford to spend �£3.5m on a defender no matter how good he is.

 

I think we'll skip all the details of the Goodwillie saga here because it was another drawn-out affair and in this case there were extremely unusual circumstances involved regarding his personal life, but it's worth noting that yet again we failed to sign a supposed top target. I can't help thinking that if we were ever serious bidders and the club really wanted to sign him, then David Goodwillie would be a Rangers player. We certainly need another striker because Kane Hemmings was going to be one of our back-up strikers in the squad this season and now he's out till Christmas or beyond due to an injury requiring surgery. Ally actually said he wanted another striker before Kane got injured, so maybe we need to bring in two strikers now?

 

One thing is clear in my mind and that is that we haven't actually replaced Kris Boyd or Kenny Miller with another deadly goal-scorer. Nikica Jelavic is a fantastic player, but we need another 25 goal a season striker to partner him and fill the glaringly obvious void left in our attacking arsenal since the Boyd and Miller partnership moved on. It's time for our new owner to put the top-hat, dove and magic money back in the box of tricks and get his really money out because this isn't a scathingly satirical magic show on an episode of South Park; this is Rangers Football Club and it's real life. The transfer window closes in a few hours time and we need another striker Mr. Whyte.

Edited August 31, 2011 by Zappa

[Gribz 743]

As I posted the other day, when everyone is fit the squad is as big as its been for as long as I can remember but doesnt exactly thrill anyone with excitement as its still 3 players from last season that are the real quality - McGregor, Davis and Jelavic. That might be a tad unfair on Bedoya and McKay until we see them. There are still promising players like Wylde, Ness and Hutton but if the likes of Edu and McCulloch get picked ahead of them then they wont flourish.

 

The only thing I can think of with the Cuellar deal is we desperately needed defenders who could play straight away as we had almost zero options before signing Goian, Bartley and Bocanegra. So if Cuellar did also sign we would be left with maybe 1 too many in that department when everyone is fit, yet id have no problem with that especially when its quality like Cuellar coming back. To put it into perspective, signing Whittaker on a high paid long term deal was a top priority and then we pulled from the Cuellar deal.....I cant get my head around that business. Its worse than signing Beattie last year rather than giving Novo a 2 year deal.

[calscot 0]

I have a feeling we'll sign Cuellar in January or for free at the end of the season. I don't think he'll be fit until close to Christmas and so why pay more money for him when we can't play him and there is a chance he might not recover well - like buying a car which needs a repair and has no MOT, it's risky.

 

On his side of the fence, why take a pay cut when you can't even play, when you can pick up a bigger pay cheque while recovering at your current club? Players milk everything they can these days so a tactic like that wouldn't surprise me. There is also the continuity of treatment - and maybe Villa can afford better specialists...

 

If he is only fit by December and we get him in January for �£1M then it will have been a canny bit of business sense.

 

Sometimes it seems people want Rangers to work in a way that if their mates acted like that, they'd be calling them, "pure mugs".

[Tumshie RFC 0]

We can't have it both ways. The club got into the financial mess it was in due to poor financial mis-management and playing over the score for average dross. Do people really want to go back to that? We have to live within our means.

 

That's why we have to focus on bringing through young players who are better than what we can buy in. I would much rather have the likes of Ness, Hutton, Wylde, Perry, McMillan and Hemmings in the team/squad over players such as Broadfoot, Edu, McCulloch, Ortiz and Healy.

[Danny 0]

How many times Tumshie, and everyone else. We got into that financial mess because we competed with top clubs for top players - way beyond our means. We spent millions on players who were capable at higher levels than the SPL - GVB, Reyna, Numan, de Boer - bordering on world class players who we chased a dream in signing.

 

That's why we got into a mess. We spent �£72M we didn't have!

 

Now some fans are using that incorrectly as a reason to be astonishingly tight in the market. It will not kill us to spend, carefully, a fair few million bringing quality here. Instead we're signing average players who will suffice for the league. That we haggle over 500k now is ridiculous.

[Tumshie RFC 0]

How many times Tumshie, and everyone else. We got into that financial mess because we competed with top clubs for top players - way beyond our means. We spent millions on players who were capable at higher levels than the SPL - GVB, Reyna, Numan, de Boer - bordering on world class players who we chased a dream in signing.

 

That's why we got into a mess. We spent �£72M we didn't have!

 

Now some fans are using that incorrectly as a reason to be astonishingly tight in the market. It will not kill us to spend, carefully, a fair few million bringing quality here. Instead we're signing average players who will suffice for the league. That we haggle over 500k now is ridiculous.

 

Good point Danny but buying average players to simply supplement the squad i.e the five I mentioned in my previous post is not the way to go either. What i would say though is that I've been impressed with some of the signings that Ally has made. Goian looks like a steal for under a million quid and I've been pleasantly surprised with Lee Wallace.

 

A lot of players who were excellent last season such as Naismith and Jelavic haven't started the season well either, which has got to be factor in our poor start to the season.

[Frankie 8,131]

I think the problem we have is obviously finance. No European football translates to a large loss for next season unless we sell a player or players.

 

I assume to get round this any transfer monies previously indicated will now be set aside to minimise any adverse affect on our accounts. As such, if we do sign any more players, they won't cost much - if anything at all.

[djbroxybear 0]

I think the problem we have is obviously finance. No European football translates to a large loss for next season unless we sell a player or players.

 

I assume to get round this any transfer monies previously indicated will now be set aside to minimise any adverse affect on our accounts. As such, if we do sign any more players, they won't cost much - if anything at all.

 

 

Spot on Frankie

[der Berliner 3,219]

Of course, since we did not spend much so far, there should be some neat income from last seasons CL in our coffers, unless some of it was used to finance the re-signings.

[Guest Dutchy]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but was the transfer fund for this season independant of whether we qualified for europe of not?

 

The winners of the title this year go straight into the group stages of the CL next year, so, it's obvious what needs to be done this year.

 

Win the league!!!