January transfer rumours!

[Number 9]

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Bit worrying this, Farke says he can play anywhere, he plays as number ten up north BUT doesn't score and has no assists this season so far.
It's ok though because he's never injured

 

[morty]

Bit worrying this, Farke says he can play anywhere, he plays as number ten up north BUT doesn't score and has no assists this season so far.
It's ok though because he's never injured

Are we writing him off before he has even joined us, far less kicked a ball?

 

[Canaryboy]

Bit worrying this, Farke says he can play anywhere, he plays as number ten up north BUT doesn't score and has no assists this season so far.
It's ok though because he's never injured

Its not an exciting signing, but I feel better about this one than I did about James Husband signing for £1m.... and he can't be any less effective than Marley Watkins so far.

Unfortunately that's where we are as a club now, this is the market were shopping in. No idea what we are going to be doing about the striker situation with no budget though, if a Dulwich Hamlet striker thinks we offered him a pittance.

I said the other week that this feels very much like the Neil Doncaster era all over again, just hope that Farke can do a better job of polishing a turd than the managers we had under him (turd being the situation, not McLean as that would be harsh and he may be decent).

We've got to hope the youth system can churn out a few more good players over the next year or three, that's the only way we're bringing a wow factor into this side. So lets hope that Todd Cantwell is at least a Chris Llewellyn or Adrian Forbes rather than a Robert Eagle or Luke Daley, etc etc..

 

[Number 9]

I've never seen him, I can read his stats. (I tried hard to avoid calling him a turd)

 

[Number 9]

He's got clean teeth....

 

[Canaryboy]

The record for Scottish players coming into the Championship and succeeding is pretty piss poor, admittedly, but you do still get gems. Cummings and May the latest to return to Scotland after flopping in this league... but Wes didn't do too bad Neither has Andrew Robertson!

Unfortunately when you've got a high turnover of players like we have then you are going to get a few duds along the way, just have to hope we find enough gems in the process... don't think anybody expected much from Zimmermann, but he's a good player at this level.

Unfortunate that Trybull is on a one year deal but Franke on 3 years etc, but all we can do is hope that we come out of this with the spine of a good team. Not much else we can do.

If its true that the team trains intensively every day then its probably going to be the driven and ambitious ones who succeed, and those who don't want it enough who don't. Not really going to know which is which until they are here, I had high hopes for Watkins after his first interview but Farke came out and basically shamed him the other day.

 

[Canaryboy]

Also, I did see an Aberdeen fan make the point that Maddison decided to return to Norwich after McLean kept him out of the team

Do the stats verify this?

 

[hogesar]

He hasnt had a brilliant season so far according to Aberdeen fans. At 26 hes a good age but not a young one to improve. Obviously his stats show hes not a big goalscorer or assist maker in a pretty poor league so I guess it comes down to who he is replacing, if anyone. He could just end up being a squad player for us so its impossible to judge before weve actually seen him play for us.

But obviously no, its not an 'exciting' signing. Doesnt make it a bad one though.

 

[OldRobert]

But obviously no, its not an 'exciting' signing. Doesnt make it a bad one though.

As a signing, and that's all we can judge it on atm, it's a nothing signing FFS. There is absolutely nothing good to say about it.

 

[Canaryboy]

As a signing, and that's all we can judge it on atm, it's a nothing signing FFS. There is absolutely nothing good to say about it.

"Uninspiring" might be the right word, but can't help but remember all of the bang average bargain basement players that both Worthington and Lambert got playing brilliantly together. Its a team sport... and if Farke said to Webber "I want a left footed centre mid who can play box to box" then that must have left a pretty small pool of players to choose from (if that's how it went).

Would be interesting to dig out the old threads on the Pink'un from the day that we signed Zak Whitbread, Marc Tierney, Simeon Jackson etc, to see which ones we didn't get very excited about. I'm sure we got excited about Adam Drury and Leon McKenzie at a few hundred grand a piece from League One, but only because Barry Fry could sell Marley Watkins to Real Madrid.

 

[dj161]

they way I see it is he's been brought in as we are likely going to be very short of centre mids next season, hence why he's staying in Scotland this season as he's unlikely to get a game at the moment, but come the summer, Tettey's contract is over, Trybull's contract is over and Reed will return to Southampton, leaving us only Vrancic who can play there, though i'd like to see Cantwell, Thompson on Godfrey more involved next year too

 

[Din]

they way I see it is he's been brought in as we are likely going to be very short of centre mids next season, hence why he's staying in Scotland this season as he's unlikely to get a game at the moment, but come the summer, Tettey's contract is over, Trybull's contract is over and Reed will return to Southampton, leaving us only Vrancic who can play there, though i'd like to see Cantwell, Thompson on Godfrey more involved next year too

To be fair Trybull will be here next season. I imagine the only reason he hasn't signed a new contract yet is because we have other priorities right now due to the transfer window being open. Hopefully once the window has closed and the dust has settled something will be sorted. Even if Trybull doesn't want to commit to us long-term, we have the option to invoke a 2nd year on his current contract, which I'm pretty sure we'd do considering the alternative is losing him on a free.

 

[Din]

To be fair Trybull was a transfer that was labelled 'uninspiring', yet look at that has turned out. We've paid peanuts for McLean and as others have said we might only be planning on using him as back-up anyway. It's not an exciting signing no but I'd say it's pretty low risk, high reward. If he's sh*t then we don't have to use him because with Trybull, Vrancic and Godfrey we should already have a fair bit already in that position,and we can sell him back to Scotland for near enough what we paid for him. If he comes in and does really well then it's a great bit of business. We can't lose really.

 

[OldRobert]

I'm afraid I tend to subscribe to the saying of what you get when you pay peanuts. Especially when they come from Scotland. Only my opinion of course.

 

[morty]

Another name thrown into the mixer....

http://www.pinkun.com/norwich-city/norwich-city-transfer-rumours-loan-enquiry-for-field-1-5366311

 

[Canaryboy]

I'm afraid I tend to subscribe to the saying of what you get when you pay peanuts. Especially when they come from Scotland. Only my opinion of course.

We've only got peanuts, so unfortunately we're going to get our fair share of monkeys.

But at the same time... we paid a few hundred grand each for Hoolahan, Drury and Tierney (off the top of my head) and only £600k for Grant Holt. Think it was half a million for Ruddy too (who, incidentally, came here after a year on loan at Motherwell in Scotland).

And I don't think there has actually ever been a time in our history when we've succeeded with a big transfer budget. Obviously we could have done with spending more when we went up under Worthington (e.g. buying Ashton in the summer, not January).

But that Worthington team was constructed for nowt + the generosity of a wealthy fan to sign Huckerby.

The Lambert team was built for peanuts + the generosity of fans to buy Grant Holt (technically not a Lambert player of course).

Mike Walkers team was built up of big club cast offs + players from lower leagues + young products (built by Stringer, right place right time for Walker).

And every time we've attempted to spend big we've managed to get it terribly wrong. Hughton's second summer window + Alex Neil's January window are the two times we've attempted to sign high profile players for big money... Naismith and Van Wolfswinkel being the flagship signings of both windows.

Not really got any choice but to hope we can spend what little money we have well, by finding gems on the cheap. That strategy is going to bring some players that in hindsight are going to be perceived as bargains, and others that are going to look like they should have cost the £250k or £500k or whatever that we pay for them and need to be at Rotherham or Dundee.

Franke looked to fall into the "dud" category, from what we've seen of him, Zimmermann didn't... you'd probably have guessed the other way round based on their CV's. So McLean may be a Franke and heading home in 6 months, or he could be a Zimmermann...

... but I don't think we've had a left footed centre mid since Surman, so I'm looking forward to seeing if it adds some balance to our team?

 

[Din]

Another name thrown into the mixer....

http://www.pinkun.com/norwich-city/norwich-city-transfer-rumours-loan-enquiry-for-field-1-5366311

Struggling to see the logic behind this one. He's supposedly a promising player but he's not even a particularly attack-minded midfielder like Pritchard, he's more a well-rounded centre midfielder, like Howson or Dorrans, something that we really don't need. I'll be disappointed if out of the '2 or 3' players that are supposed to come in between now and the end of the window, a centre midfielder is one of them.

A striker, a winger, and right-back cover is what we need. Hopefully as well someone somewhere will be having a mare of a transfer window and throw in a panic bid for Oliveira. Then we can use that money to get a couple more in.

 

[Canaryboy]

Hopefully as well someone somewhere will be having a mare of a transfer window and throw in a panic bid for Oliveira.

We'll probably be the ones panicking on deadline day again. Its the Norwich way.

Also sucks that we aren't in the position to just sell Oliviera, fed up with his indifference and shocking form... but we need 2 strikers before we can let him go (if we are being sensible) so I can't see it happening in this window.

Wouldn't ever rule out Oliviera just going on some sort of run again after somebody comes in and scores a couple of goals and relegates him to the bench... because that's the type of player he is... but hope there is much less adulation for him this time around because sometimes he frankly hasn't looked bothered.

 

[morty]

Signed a young right back according to David Freezer.

http://www.pinkun.com/norwich-city/former-huddersfield-starlet-joins-norwich-1-5366725

 

[Canaryboy]

Just a bit of a weird feeling about everything at the minute, a player who has never kicked a ball professionally and was released by Huddersfield is presumably coming in to be our Pinto backup (when Pinto really needs a rest).

And taking the academy donation option away from season tickets, a month or so after the club saying they needed fans to help fund the academy (wtf???).

I've sort of good a feeling deep down that our situation next season may be a bit worse than we are letting on, when considering our liabilities (e.g. wages of all contracted players). If we were, for example, worried about administration and a transfer embargo... it would make sense to pay for our summer transfers in January (McLean) and would explain why we were priced out of a move for a Dulwich Hamlet centre forward and haven't been able to persaude Trybull that his new contract offer is worth signing.

Probably just being overly worried, but it does concern me that the gravity of our situation with Naismith, Jarvis and co stuck on the books + money still owed in past transfer fees is a bit more serious than has been let on.

In Oliviera leaves before we sign a striker, then that's definitely time tor a meltdown.