Sorry to blow my top on the first post but.. if Le Fondre has gone to Reading I think it's pathetic on Wednesday's part. We have been messing about for months with joke bids and now someone else has come in and signed the player.
I don't see what difference it makes that he's in the last of year his contract - it's not like we could sign him for free in the summer. The only we way could get him is by paying up now and we've missed out. £400k would've made him our player - a pittance really.
Sure, we don't know if he'd be any good but it's not a massive jump to think someone who gets 25 goals in League 2 could do the same in League 1. The guy has probably scored against a fair few clubs in the division already. In any event, proven scorers at this level cost over a million pounds nowadays so it's a moot point. Le Fondre is the best we're gonna get and we've blown it.
Instead we end up with 9 goal O'Grady who's injured for who knows how long. Fantastic. 4 days to the end of the window and aside from the central midfield players it all just looks like tinkering: re-signing loan players, loaning a few in, shipping out Teale etc and bringing in Lines and Uchechi. Not good enough.
Pathetic
posted on 27/8/11
You mean you seriously want him. Despite the baggage
posted on 27/8/11
Meggo spent 350K on O'Grady who hasn't got a great scoring record and is now out indefinately.
If he really want Afl, why didn't he save the cash and put in a decent bid to Rotherham?
1 word - amateurish
posted on 27/8/11
But how do we know what was going on in the background yes we started low and built up on the price but every one does that. Its haggling, it seems people now see that Milan has money so by defualt we have money so they can up the price of a player worth 300k-400k up to 500k +
The noises coming from Rotherham sounds like they never wanted to sell to us in the first place no matter what we offered.
posted on 27/8/11
You maybe right Gill but its the process that irritates me. The OGrady buy looks worse by the day for me. Another big man, and injured.
If we had not spent the money, we would be in a better position to haggle with Rotherham. Whist they probably wouldn't want to sell to us, money talks and we would have had the muscle to up the bid and over the tipping point. Alf will probably spend time onthe bench at Reading whereas he would be a guarenteed starter here.
To get out of this League, we will need a proven scorer. Currently, we just don't have the firepower to get out and it could be very costly.
posted on 27/8/11
true if we didnt buy COG we would have bit more spare cash (as we dont know what the transfer budget is) but do we want to spend say 750k+ on ALF for him to turn in to a Franny Jeffers on us? then all the fans be like' told you not to buy him etc etc' cant seem to win eh
totally agree we need firepower and a creative spark but the loan market is open and hopefully meggo knows what he is doing
posted on 27/8/11
well I know most have gone to lurker mode but this has popped up on the BBC site
Rotherham United striker Adam Le Fondre will complete a move to Reading this weekend, BBC Radio Sheffield reports.
The deal is believed to be worth around £350,000, with further additions based on performance and the possibility of promotion to the Premier League.
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so looks like our bid wasnt to low just the add ons were to far away and the promise of abit of the prem money pie was enough to swing Rotherham
posted on 27/8/11
Rotherham also wanted to cover the 25% sell on fee they owe to ALF's previous club and not pay it out of their pockets..
posted on 27/8/11
He's as good as gone to reading
posted on 27/8/11
Absolutely ridiculous. Signing an injured player with a less than stellar record then fooling around like that with R.U. so that in the end ALF goes to another club. I'm terribly disappointed. I thought MM was more astute than this. A big let down for the fans as well.
posted on 28/8/11
peiowl
Me too. The fact that he's gone to Reading makes me feel likes we've missed out even more. I guess we just have to move on and we don't know what goes on behind the scenes but I cannot fathom how we couldn't find £350k for him yet we can for O'Grady.
GillinghamOwl
I'm sorry but what are you on about? Why mention Jeffers? You could say that about any player so we might as well not sign anyone just in case they 'do a Jeffers on us'. Never mind that he hasn't cost anything like £750k.
Good to get the win yesterday but if we're honest, anything less would've been a bad result. Tough games coming up now that will tell us a lot more about where we are at.