Didn’t the club make out that we had been after him for weeks?
I’m also cynical, both about the ability of the club to compete and about players’ loyalty to a club. I was looking through some of my old programmes the other day and it reminded me of how things have changed regarding the turnover in players. As for the club, we are smaller fry than we have ever been and can’t compete financially with a fair few in L2, never mind L1.
I will be delighted if we sign Miller but I don’t think it will happen.
Oh I don’t know Wiltshire !!! I think we have an excellent record of keeping our most promising and prolific people at the club, just look at all the combined years of invaluable service that Gamble, Mole and Whalley have given our club , we are truly blessed.
How will we know if we’ve made “a proper bid” to make him a Walsall player? How big a transfer fee is proper? How long a contract is proper? How much a week is proper?
We could offer 300k, and 3k a week on a four year contract and he could still end up going somewhere else, especially if he carries on scoring goals. But we will never know what the offer is anyway. I suspect that if he doesn’t sign, some people will consider that to be the club’s fault, no matter what we’ve offered.
As others have said, what the club want is just one aspect of a potential transfer, and we’re behind what George Miller and Barnsley want in the pecking order. I’d love to sign him, but it’s not just about us.
This is the sort of things the club need to be told and know about at the fans forum.
They are a business and should be interested and concerned about their customer base and how to keep them happy as well as what helps the business’ future!
Had a chance to put Labadie or Shade through yesterday to make it 3-1. Tried an absurd shot instead. Think we’d do ok without him, but obviously grateful for his 7 goals to date.
He’s far from the finished article and certainly not up to championship level. Given that he isn’t exactly a spring chicken in terms of age I doubt he ever will be a championship level centre forward.
Which means two things. Firstly, we should hope that Barnsley claw themselves out of their relegation fight and secondly, unlike Rushworth it probably makes him available to a club with an average lower league budget.
And it is that latter point we may struggle on. An ambitious league two side could well table a six figure bid in January alongside a pay increase. This is where “giving it a good go” needs to turn into something tangible. I’ve no doubt that a few of our signings in the summer represent a decent “go” for us but this squad is wafer thin, its best and most consistent performers being loan signings.
We’re averaging 4,700 at home - around 94% of the “transformational” 5,000.
It feels like a “moment” this does. Apparently our club needed saving around 1993/94. So few pots were there to piss in that we couldn’t beg, steal or borrow a few hundred grand to save ourselves from the huge albatross of being tenants in our own ground. And yet with the help of a supporters group we still managed to convert a hugely promising and yet 25 year old loanee called Martin O’Connor into a permanent signing who was a lynchpin and captain of our promotion team the following year.
For example, Toney joined Newcastle from Northampton at the start of his career and he would be well within the new Geordie owner’s reach as a proper number 9 to work with Callum Wilson.
If Walsall have a sell on, we could use that to fund the signing of Miller.
I still think we could do with a young mobile full back and a big centre forward on the bench to supplement the current squad.
I’m far more optimistic about the team that at any time under Dutton though…
I actually kind of agree, hence the opening sentence in my post. He’s made some bad decisions in and around opposition penalty areas over the last couple of weeks. But that’s what is also exciting. Nearly a goal a game and yet there are many aspects of his game that can improve.
You surely can’t knock Miller for something like that. There are different kinds of forwards and Miller is definitely one of the old school poacher types. You aren’t going to expect him to get many assists. He has a touch of Stuart Rimmer about him. He is there just for his goals and when he has scored 7 in 9 you can’t really argue. We weren’t getting 7 shots in 9 games at one point last season.
Besides, tell me a 4th division player that has good decision making? They are down here for a reason and mostly it is poor decision making.
