So the final transfer window day turned out to be a bit of a damp squib in a sense.
We signed Joleon Lescott on a two-year deal, but we all knew that one was happening, didn’t we?
There was one highlight, where we signed Matija Sarkic, a young goalkeeper from Anderlecht on a three-year deal for £3 million. He’s highly regarded, but in all honesty, I find myself wondering why we need five goalkeepers, seeing as we now have Guzan, Bunn, Siegrist, Steer and Sarkic.
Perhaps Sarkic is rated more highly than I’d expect by the manager and £3 million is a fair bit of money for an eighteen year old, but would there really be a chance of Tim Sherwood putting him in the team as Guzan’s replacement?
I doubt it, but you never know. Hence I’m certainly not knocking the signing. I just find it odd…..
Especially if you consider that it seems we might not have had much more money to spend; money that I think many of us would have preferred to be spent on another striker.
There’s still talk of Berbatov coming in on loan, but I’m not sure I see the sense in that myself.
He hardly set the world on fire at Fulham did he?
Still, no doubt Sherwood has his reasons for wanting to sign him and again I’m not really going to complain.
But I do feel this is the only area where we might have missed out, as if we’d signed another striker in say, the £10 million class, I’d have rated this window as about as good as it gets.
A right back coming in would probably have been the icing on the cake, but Sherwood looks to be happy with Bacuna and Hutton, so I doubt it was ever on the cards.
Going back to the striker side of things, I do think Sherwood was after one.
I thought it might be Austin, but I was proved wrong.
I still think Sherwood wants one, but suspect the club couldn’t work a deal somewhere and it may well be that we’re keeping our powder dry, I expect ready for the winter window.
Which leads me onto the finance side of things.
I’ve often been a critic of Randy Lerner for giving managers insufficient money to do a realistic job.
While Lambert averaged a reasonable spend during his tenure, it just wasn’t enough, given the state we were in.
This time though, if you look at the headline figures, we haven’t spent much overall.
But consider the word was that we didn’t get all the Benteke money up front and I’ve realised that Lerner hasn’t been as tight on the purse strings as I expected, although we don’t know how the wage bill has been affected.
Add in that dry powder (say £10 million) and it’s actually a very decent spend.
Then add in that most of us think that Sherwood has spent the money well and this has turned out to be an excellent window.
The Beeb have just said we’ve signed Tiago Llori on loan too, which has been countered by Joe Bennett and Nathan Baker going on loan to Bournemouth and Bristol City respectively.
Another strange move, as Liverpool have let him go out so he can get regular football.
How does that work if we expect Richards and Lescott to be the main CBs, with Okore in reserve?
Still, choice is good and as I said, I think it’s been an excellent window.
