Deadline day and a half!

Amavi, Gueye and Richards have hit the ground running. Traore has looked superb so far. Gil feels like a new signing and along with Grealish we're going to see goals from them soon.

Veretout is one I think will come good, sorting out our slight issue with Westwood playing in that general area vacated by Cleverley. I'm not sure about Gestede or Ayew but I have faith in Sherwood though to sort it all out.

Sinclair is the new signing (you know what I mean) who looks like he's in best form, if only we could see what Kozak could do.

Overall, I think we've done well. Very well.

Carrying over from the Tiago thread as it's more relevant in here, if we take out the extreme ends of the net-spend spectrum (that is, ignore Stoke whose net spend was fuck all and ignore Man City whose net spend was unbelievably outrageous), guess who was at the bottom of the list?

Yep....Villa.

As such, you have to point a disparaging finger at Lerner but also have to stand and applaud the rest of our management team for doing what they've done.

Lerner shafted us and didn't back Sherwood - £7.5m net spend

BUT all credit to Sherwood and TF for the business they WERE able to do as I think they've made some great signings. Sherwood probably did want a striker but with what money?

Trotters wrote:I'm not sure what the net spend was but I'm guessing not huge. So Lerner likely limited the spend to money made of sold players plus or minus a few million.

Not the most ambitious of moves but then, considering he's selling, it's also not the worst case scenario!

What HAS impressed me in the way this off season has been conducted. Typically we've done things mostly on the quiet - unlike a certain red scouse bastard club who do all their negotiating through the media - and we've done some clever deals.

How the lines of communication work between Sherwwod and Fox is anyone's guess but it's fairly obvious that whatever they're doing, they're doing well.

I also suspect that there's a lot of input coming from a great many sources from scouts through to our new assistant manager; I've got little doubt that his influence so far has been massive!

No, we've not got the striker we appear to so desperately want but, like Germany in the last World Cup, maybe the manager feels we've got enough fire power coming from midfield to more than cover the loss we'll feel from not having Benteke in the side.

As such, I give this window a solid 10/10 and can honestly say that I feel it's been the best window ever for this club. There's no way anyone could have predicted this.

Sorry, i just can't get overly excited or optimistic over a transfer window that has given us nothing we haven't seen in the last four or five years. We're at that young and hungry stage again, aren't we? We're once again being asked to be patient and give the team time, the only difference is that this time most of the players are foreign rather than young British. Yes we have what look to be a couple of gooduns in there in Traore and Amavi, but the overriding factor is that if they do prove to be as good as we think then they will be gone at seasons end and we start the process all over again next summer. The net spend is disappointing, it points to a club with their ambition firmly focused on finding the next Benteke that they can sell for good profit, and repeat the process again. All well and good if you're an accountant or a German supporter, but it kind of dampens the flames of competition for me. It is obvious to all that we required a decent outlay on something approaching a proven striker, or at least a sought after young talent with good potential. We did neither. God help us if Sinclair gets injured because i have seen no signs yet of anyone else capable of scoring the goals required. People on here saying Gil, Grealish, Tarore etc will chip in with 5,6,7 goals each must be on something stronger than me, because there is thus far no evidence of that number of goals from other players. It's all pretty wishful, blind faith hope.

We only spent £53.4million, behind only Chelsea, ManC and ManU? LERNER OUT!

How can PAOK afford Berbatov's wages???

Astounded by negativity towards club, I most definitely would not swap last years squad for the new one, INCLUDING BENTEKE.

We can now play any formation we like, we are overall much stronger and with 2/3 additions we would have a very strong squad.
We are unlucky to only have 4 points IMO so with a bit of luck and key players hitting form we'll be AT LEAST 12th, THATS PROGRESS!

The squad will be rounded of in the next 2 windows, that's if it needs it, as the slow starters may turn out to be peaches.

Its down to the coaches now, get Ayew, Rudy and Veretout clicking and work on Guzans(must have Lerners ear to survive this window) weaknesses.

TS to play the best team and not his favorites is all I want now.

UTV

Dazzle wrote:

Trotters wrote:I'm not sure what the net spend was but I'm guessing not huge. So Lerner likely limited the spend to money made of sold players plus or minus a few million.

Not the most ambitious of moves but then, considering he's selling, it's also not the worst case scenario!

What HAS impressed me in the way this off season has been conducted. Typically we've done things mostly on the quiet - unlike a certain red scouse bastard club who do all their negotiating through the media - and we've done some clever deals.

How the lines of communication work between Sherwwod and Fox is anyone's guess but it's fairly obvious that whatever they're doing, they're doing well.

I also suspect that there's a lot of input coming from a great many sources from scouts through to our new assistant manager; I've got little doubt that his influence so far has been massive!

No, we've not got the striker we appear to so desperately want but, like Germany in the last World Cup, maybe the manager feels we've got enough fire power coming from midfield to more than cover the loss we'll feel from not having Benteke in the side.

As such, I give this window a solid 10/10 and can honestly say that I feel it's been the best window ever for this club. There's no way anyone could have predicted this.

Sorry, i just can't get overly excited or optimistic over a transfer window that has given us nothing we haven't seen in the last four or five years. We're at that young and hungry stage again, aren't we? We're once again being asked to be patient and give the team time, the only difference is that this time most of the players are foreign rather than young British. Yes we have what look to be a couple of gooduns in there in Traore and Amavi, but the overriding factor is that if they do prove to be as good as we think then they will be gone at seasons end and we start the process all over again next summer. The net spend is disappointing, it points to a club with their ambition firmly focused on finding the next Benteke that they can sell for good profit, and repeat the process again. All well and good if you're an accountant or a German supporter, but it kind of dampens the flames of competition for me. It is obvious to all that we required a decent outlay on something approaching a proven striker, or at least a sought after young talent with good potential. We did neither. God help us if Sinclair gets injured because i have seen no signs yet of anyone else capable of scoring the goals required. People on here saying Gil, Grealish, Tarore etc will chip in with 5,6,7 goals each must be on something stronger than me, because there is thus far no evidence of that number of goals from other players. It's all pretty wishful, blind faith hope.

Agree entirely - sure at the moment there is the excitement that we (maybe) haven't seen the new players in full flow - and we will have few months debating whether it should be Ayew, Sinclair, Gestede, Kozak etc playing. However I see nothing that gives me any confidence that we are going to score enough goals to avoid another season of struggle.

Lescott is a very welcome addition for me - However the defence needs to be more organised - they need to be drilled on dealing with corners, bringing the ball out from defence , etc - not each player just doing what they think in the heat of the moment.

Villa_Dan wrote:How can PAOK afford Berbatov's wages???

PAOK!!! That's who I've been trying to think of with their chants. I love this one - imagine it at Villa Park.
"OOOOOOH ASTON VILLA.
WE'RE ASTON VILLA.
THE BOYS FROM BRUUUUUUM......"

PAOK - the exiles from Istanbul (the K is for konstantinopoulis from when Istanbul was Greek Constantinople) anyway, I digress. what I was going to say was if we copy their chants, can we accompany it with their pyro..................

I'm very happy with this transfer window - it's an all-new squad, in terms of number of players bought! Looking forward to our midfielders scoring more goals this season; the problem under Benteke was that we were too one-dimensional, everything went through him, you only had to put 2 or 3 on him to shut us out of the game completely, like in the FA Cup Final!

Still grateful to him for all those goals he scored for us though!

There was one extra advantage to having Benteke (aside from his goals)....Guzan tended to find his head with goal kicks.

These days I swear he just sees any 6ft 3 black guy and hammers the ball to him.

Trotters wrote:There was one extra advantage to having Benteke (aside from his goals)....Guzan tended to find his head with goal kicks.

These days I swear he just sees any 6ft 3 black guy and hammers the ball to him.

I don't think Guzan has ever found anything on purpose with his goal kicks, other than one match last season when the defence was being pummeled so much he kicked the ball into the crowd on the halfway line twice just to take the pressure off. Both times he nearly missed too.