There are two hours before this summer’s window closes as I write and unless something happens that we don’t know about, the arrival of Albert Adomah from Middlesbrough will probably wrap up what’s been an overall excellent bit of business.
I’ve previously said I have the odd doubts, particularly about Gollini and I’m not convinced about Kodjia.
Even then my doubts about the striker aren’t based on much, except the deal just doesn’t smell right to me and I am of course willing to give him every chance.
As for the goalie, well I’ve seen him and he has a lot of work to do to change my mind yet.
Still, I want to concentrate on the good parts and there have been quite a few.
I won’t talk about each player specifically, but here’s the list of the comings and goings;
INS
Tommy Elphick £3,000,000
Pierluigi Gollini £4,500,000
Aaron Tshibola £5,500,000
Ross McCormack £12,000,000
Mile Jedinak £4,000,000
Ritchie De Laet £2,500,000
Jonathan Kodjia £15,000,000
James Chester £8,000,000
Albert Adomah ?
OUTS
José Ángel Crespo Free
Callum Robinson Undisclosed
Brad Guzan Free
Idrissa Gueye £7,100,000
Ciaran Clark £5,000,000
Joe Bennett Free
Joleon Lescott Free
Carlos Sanchez Loan
Charles N’Zogbia Released
Kieran Richardson Out of contract
Adama Traore ?
I can’t find any estimates for the Traore/Adomah deals, but I’m going to guess they pretty much balance each other out.
Which all boils down to a net outlay of around £42 million, which is no small beans. I don’t think anyone can be disappointed with that and Dr Xia has certainly matched his promise. He’s probably going to spend more on another couple of players in the winter window too, so it’s all good.
Things could have been improved slightly in my book. I’d have liked another replacement in the middle to enable us to get rid of Westwood, for example. Gabby (who’s knocked back an offer from Reading) going would have been nice too, along with Richards.
Still, never mind and the most impressive part is all the players who have gone. I’d have liked the odd one or two of them to have stayed, but I look at that list and it just smacks of decidedly average and I can’t say I’ll miss any of them.
While it’s early days, I like the look at that list of incoming players and one thing is for certain.
It’s hard to see that they’re going to be worse than the rubbish we had last season.
And given that we’ve been told that much effort has been placed on checking out the players’ character, it does bode well.
Even if things don’t look so rosy at the moment.
Oops, I’ve just realised Sinclair isn’t on the list of “outs”
And for clarity, I should probably also say that some of the figures for our “ins” will probably be the most we could pay and are possibly not what’s been actually paid out.
Which is why you might read elsewhere that the actual spend has been less.
But it was never meant to be an exhaustive, factual list and it’s more about the sentiment, which remains the same;
Xia’s coughed up the dough and has given RDM the tools.