Looking at our latest signings in a positive light. We have signed a Welsh international, an Irish international and a former England under 21 international. Much better than some of the poor signings of previous years like Thomas and Brown. A couple more good signings either loan or permanent and there is room for optimism
Transfer positivity.
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I’m trying to remain positive as well. For me, they’re both good punts (and could turn out to be very astute signings) as long as we still bolster with strikers and a RWB. Ideally I’d like another LWB as well, but I can’t see it.
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Just wish for a team that is now entering their 7th consecutive season at this level we’d finally have moved away from good punts as our only transfer criteria
As for the positivity. You can twist things many ways to suit your point of view, but it doesn’t always carry the weight we think it does. For example, Josh Harrop was a former England U20. Matthew Olosunde is a US international
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Agree, but it seems for whatever reason we still don’t have the money to spend, despite saving a few bob on wages this summer.
Wickham and Brown were both England youth internationals.....
I think every club signing bar maybe 5% of them in this division are punts in all fairness. And those 5% are only ever made by the parachute clubs, and even they get there fair share wrong.
For me personally, the ilk of these signings, compared to this time last year, is a significant improvement. And we’ve still got about 4 weeks to go until the season starts.
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Yes to an extent, but it’s a scale for me. Boro signing Ryan Giles is a punt, but it is waaaaayyyy less of a punt than Robbie Brady
I have no issue with these signings and am deliberately not being negative about the lads themselves, but I have no confidence with how this window is going that we will supplement these risky punts with safer ones
Yeah it’s fair enough, I am a little optimistic perhaps. I do think there’ll be a contingency in place, we know he’s asked for two LWB’s right? It’s one of those where if we sign two LWB’s in a window and the latter is Brady, most people are saying it’s a good signing.
I think you just have to sign players as and when available, and sometimes that means the contingency comes first, maybe that’s Brady? Who knows. Still a while to see yet I guess.
Thracia
Club Owner, or wingback, depending on your view
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They're not savings if we spend them on new players.
In terms of the OP and positivity, it feels like we've signed the backups before the first choices again, and the danger is, we might never get round to signing the first choices.
Despite starting this window needing a LWB, RWB and 2 strikers, we signed 2 players today, and we still need a LWB, RWB and 2 strikers.
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He also asked for robust championship players which Brady doesn’t really fit, and players with championship experience which Woodburn doesn’t really fit
It’s possible that Lowe is slowly finding out PR is not as good at transfer windows as he thinks
When we’ve struggled to get in a wing back on either side, I’d be very surprised if we suddenly get two that both fit everything we want
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I thought the choice of wording around today’s transfer announcements from Tom at the LEP was very interesting.
Aye, but Woodburn has played 10+ games at 22 years old for Wales, Brady over 50 for Ireland, both at senior level. Woodman has an U17 World Cup winner's medal too doesn't he?
I think the pessimism is well founded to be fair, but as others have said, there's plenty of cause for cautious optimism with the pedigree of these three players when compared to previous signings, if not for their backups and recent injury records.
Wickham and to a lesser extent Brown had good pedigree. They were both a huge punt in terms of fitness that blew up in our face. There's the same big risk with Brady but he's probably worth taking a gamble on because he is a quality player. If we can get 25-30 games out of him we've probably done well.
I’ve got no massive issue with these signings and look forward to seeing them both play, although I do think it’s fair to say that our pursuit of them is slightly towards the ‘gamble’ end of the spectrum. My much bigger concern is that we are still a long way short of the quality we had last season. I don’t actually know what our official ambitions are for the season ahead but as of right now I think we’re a long way short of having sufficient quality for a play-off fight and we’re probably at some risk of a relegation scrap. We need more (and better) players through the door and some positions - striker and right wing back - are pretty desperate.
Sorry, but Wickham didn't have anywhere near the same pedigree as Brady if you ask me.. he was a striker who didn't score, and played about 15 games over 6 seasons prior to us signing him.
I was excited by Brown because I felt he could have been a quality player if we could keep him fit based on his reputation, but he'd never proven it despite stints with Brighton, Luton, Leeds, Hudds and Wednesday. Same with Sinclair because his record north of the wall was really strong, but for all the hype around him, he had to move up to Scotland to thrive.
I am always hopeful with anyone signing for the club - Ginelly and Graham Burke's youtube reels had me salivating for instance - but Brady's pedigree, at the top level, and over a large period of time, is unquestionable. Woodburn is a bit different admittedly, but there's scope for him to develop and I think Lowe & Marsh might just be able to get the best out of him.
Here's hoping!
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In the interests of maintaining positivity, I enjoyed watching Woodburn’s senior goals reel on YouTube and hope we can see some glimpses of this in a North End shirt.