Transfer Rumours Saint Theo!

Depth versus breadth. We might be working very hard to get a deal done, when we should be working hard to explore different deals. Witness our inability to get deals over the line in the last eighteen months: I have no doubt that we kicked the tires very firmly, but how often have we heard "Saints pursued X, but Y didn't want to sell in this window"? It's great to stick to your guns on targets in some instances, but we don't have the luxury of waiting until summer anymore.

 

No I'm not worried that the board won't bring in players, I'm just not a fan of putting out pieces to our resident journos that realistically may not happen. I'm normally a very level headed fan when it comes to transfers and like the way we do business, but it just gives so much ammo for people to have a moan.

 

Ok, but you did say they should work hard on their targets, Suggesting they are not. There is no evidence to suggest they are not. Let’s slag them off when we get to Feb and they haven’t delivered.

 

My point still being that people are moaning but nobody knows how wide or how deep we are trying. Previous windows are history. The future may prove that they don’t do enough and that is when we should moan. Not now while we don’t know.

It’s just negative whinging. Doesn’t help.

 

This is frankly somewhat bizarre. Our transfer policy hasn't changed, yet past transfer windows should have no bearing on the current one? Neither should the fact that the Walcott pursuit -- where we leaked that we were totally in on him and cautiously optimistic, only for it to become apparent that we never had a realistic chance -- resembles past practice?

 

Yeah sorry I worded it poorly.

 

I’m not sure where we are at here Schad. Perhaps it is not bizarre but we are not quite on the same wave length, eh?

I’m just saying why moan now and just because we have behaved in a certain way before, doesn’t mean we will do same again.

I will wait, see what happens and then judge. May well be the same as before.

 

I'd agree, but we seem to be behaving the same way still. We seem to think that it's good PR to suggest via the media that we're in on X, Y and Z, when we know full well that it would take a dramatic change in the player or team's position to make it happen. We told Wilson that we were interested in a player who was literally waiting in London for clearance to sign for Everton, told him that we were in on another whose team had already flatly stated that they weren't for sale, and told him that we were optimistic about signing Walcott when it's clear that he wasn't anywhere near our budget.

Which to me leaves two possibilities: we're either hopelessly naive, chasing players we're never going to succeed in signing, or we're cynically trying to suggest to fans that we're fishing in a deeper pool than we actually are.

 

Right or wrong, lots of assumptions, even if seemingly logical. I just prefer to wait and see.

There still might be work going on with 5 other targets hoping for 2 or 3 to come off, but we don’t know about them. There might be no work going on at all with Les and Ralph playing Pac-Man in the board room. We don’t know.

Anyway SP has said he worded his post badly

 

Well said. They actually end up making the situation worse every time they actually say anything. There is a real malaise around SFC at the moment, bordering on ineptitude.

 

That's the thing, though. I'm hoping that the 5 targets we were working on didn't include the three we leaked to the media that had zero chance of coming to pass. Basically, I'm hoping that the board was merely trying to get one over on the fans, rather than actually believing that they could make those nigh-impossible deals, because if it's the latter we're in a somewhat precarious position.

 

Worst.
Thread.
Ever.
(have we signed anyone yet?)

 

The way I see it, kicking up a fuss about a lack of signings makes more sense whilst the transfer is still open. Just as was the case from 1 Sep, there's not much point highlighting the issue come 1 Feb. We'll have what we have, and will just have to get on with it - good or bad.

 

Anyway... I’ll leave people to moan

 

As if fans kicking up a fuss on social media has any impact whatsoever

 

Likewise.

 

Sorry Schad, but I know that personal terms were agreed in principle with Theo back in October. So it’s not correct to suggest this deal was unrealistic.

I don’t know what went wrong subsequently and I’m not going to speculate as there are far too many variables.
As we know with all transfers, the players agent is first involved so the buying club knows if any deal is worth pursuing. I know it’s cool to kick the club at the moment, but to think they’re poking around in the dark is unsubstantiated speculation

 

Whatever happened with the Walcott deal happened some time ago, though. Everton didn't just swoop in and tie up an agreement overnight; we'd have almost certainly known that they were offering substantially better wages and a larger transfer fee, and there was a report more than a week ago that Walcott had soured on the move (presumably because a team that wasn't on the verge of relegation was in on him, and offering more money).

Yet even past that point we continued to tell our pet journo that we were optimistic that we could get it over the line.

 

Ok. I think I understand the gist of this;
Not getting Theo shows incompetence
Trying to get Theo was naive.
Not trying to get players like Theo shows a lack of ambition .
For what it’s worth, I didn’t think that we would sign him. It was always going to be about the money.

 

I think trying to get Theo does show incompetence from the board because realistically we were never going to get him unless we backed up our ambition with high wages. Clearly we weren't going to do this so that smacks of incompetence to me as it is just wasting valuable time.

Of course to be fair to the club they may have already known this and moved on, but then why feed Jeremy Wilson information to say we were optimistic. If it was to keep fans on side surely that's a moronic tactic given we weren't really ever in the running to sign him. It all seems a bit bizarre.