Quote:
Originally Posted by kevin21
Kingweed,
We have spent obscene amounts of money over the past few years. If we aren't challenging for the league then there is something wrong. Everyone questioning our defence is fair enough but I think we will surprise quite a few. On the striker front we are going to sign someone so I wouldn't worry about that.
We have spent obscene amounts of money over the last 2 years, mainly to catch up with Chelsea, City and Arsenal squads. We've also had to over pay somewhat for the players. It doesn't take long to get to massive amounts when you spend Ł60m on a single player and around Ł30 or over on others in areas that have needed strengthen for ages.
And we're going to have to spend more money to get a more balanced side. Signing a quality CF isn't going to be cheap in this market!
Quote:
Originally Posted by t3hbandit
Our defence isn't as bad as is made out, once we ditched the 3 at the back we looked solid. Only conceded 1 more than Arsenal and 1 less than City, take away the 5 goals vs Leicester in one game and our record is excellent.
Blind has shown he's a good option at LB and Valencia/Darmian is fine for RB. We'll almost certainly sign an experienced CB before the window closes too.
And neither is a good experienced CB that will be required.
So we're certainly looking at signing another 2 players at Ł30m+ in order to have a good all round balanced squad which will actually be able to compete with Chelsea/City and to a lesser extent Arsenal for the title.
At the moment with the current squads - bare in mind Chelsea haven't signed anyone yet - they've got a replacement sub goal keeper and Falcao whose a gamble. City have signed Sterling who IMO isn't going to massively improve them and Arsenal have got Cech and haven't even started signing players - we're still dogs against them all and our new signings are going to have to gel together as well.
Regarding the goals we shipped last year, that's a bit of a sham to compare it to Arsenal and City when you look at it on the whole in that we looked like we'd concede 2 or 3 every game and the much higher number of goal scoring opportunities we gave away. Add the countless world class saves that DDG kept out with stopped double figures of goals - which Arsenal and City didn't have.
Guess i'm not as optimistic as you two are.