My girlfriend's dad sat next to Llallana at some Southampton charity thing around that time, they were chatting about his club and Southampton and somehow got onto my support for Wolves and apparently Llallana more or less told him he expected to be at Wolves within the week.

You're making it worse

I know I thought half a mill was an absolute steal at the time, let alone in hindsight.

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Something the Mick bashers can never take from him, f and co. is his their ability to pick talent coming through British leagues. Think we were also knocked back for Andy Carroll before having to settle for Hof (wonder what happened to that giant chef?)

Taff and co.

Fair point Tatter.

Also, with the Hof, Carroll thing. We'd have been better not just getting a body in and relying on Voles instead.

Ah! good old hindsight, 20/20 every time

Oh what coukd have been..........

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11677_2356591,00.html

Does show that Mick had much more of an eye for a good player than some on here with their lists of "failures" realise.
Perhaps the problem was that he was always forced to shop cheap.

One of the reasons we went for players from relegated clubs (Doyle, Fletcher, Mouyokolo, Hunt, Johnson) so regularly was the wages issue.

Players that have just been relegated would, you assume, have taken a hit to their wages and so would be willing to move for less than if they had gone from Prem club to Prem club.

In a way I fully understand the caution Morgan showed around wages – it’s the wage bill you take down with you if you’re relegated that can destroy a club not what you’ve spent on transfers over the last 2 or 3 seasons – but hopefully next time round there will be a little more loosening of the purse strings.
I don’t want us to over spend, I wouldn’t want our wage bill to rocket to £50m in our first Prem season (however far away that is ), but if he insists on the wage bill being amongst the lowest in the division then he will have to expect us to be in a dogfight.

I think if you look down the signings of any club over a 3 to 5 year period you will find more players that weren't successful signings than those that were. Jackett has bought well so far in terms of players to get us out of this division. But even amongst those I suspect there are players we have given 2 or 3 year contracts to that will be out of favour well before then. And I also suspect his most expensive signing Leon will never be a first team regular.

Whether you look at Alex ferguson, mourinho, or the much praised Southampton you will see as many poor signings as good ones, let alone the ones that got away

Mick supposedly tried to sign Demba Ba too before his breakthrough Newcastle season.

I definitely think it's harsh to criticise Mick for the signing of, for example, the Hoff on the basis that he didn't work out well. It's hard to do but, for fairness, we should always look at signings in the context of what we have to spend. Could Mick have spent that two or three mill better? Maybe. Should he have been expected to unearth one of the incredibly rare gems of two to three million pound players on wages we can afford. Probably not. At that price point, in the Premiership, you're going to have a lot of players who don't make a huge impact, particularly when they're coming into a squad fighting relegation every week and struggling to look good.

The Jonsson thing bothers me most. People have this idea that Mick looked at the squad and thought - I know what we need to save the season, Eggert Jonsson. Absolute rubbish. Mick will have been a thousand times more disappointed with our spending than the fans were and probably had a host of names in mind if he'd been given the money.

Lallana dodged a bullet by the sounds of it!!

Being 3rd choice behind henry and Edwards would have done him no favours.

Illustrates the gap between Premier league and "the rest" when here we are bemoaning the fact that we failed to tempt decent players due to not stumping up the wages, and at the same time are desperate to offload our "premier league stars", because of their extortionate salaries.

The pitfalls of trying to replace gargantuan stars such as Elokobi and Edwards in the prem

Elokobi only started 3 games in our relegation season. Hardly a key player.

Edwards was a squad player who started 24 games mainly due to injuries to O'Hara etc. An injury crisis which was so severe we call David Davis back from loan.

I know you like to constantly knock Mick McCarthy, but if you pay Championship wages most of the time you get Championship players. Anyone we bought to replace them would likely have been at the same level, we blew our budget on O'Hara whose signing I am sure you celebrated at the time.

James McCarthy is another one we missed out on. To the mighty Wigan as well.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/hamilton-ace-james-mccarthy-cant-1031356

comment by lizardburns (U17424)
posted 5 hours, 7 minutes ago

Also, with the Hof, Carroll thing. We'd have been better not just getting a body in and relying on Voles instead.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't a vole would have given us much height up front. Unless by using a plural term you mean we dress a number of them in one kit.

*think

You are right tam, micks transfer work in the prem was top class, especially given we were so far behind the likes of Norwich and Wigan and so on.

By all means defend certain things, his prem transfer record is not one of them.

Norwich are only in their third year in the Premier League and are battling relegation as we were, with a similar budget. Spent a lot of money on a few players who have not really had any impact i.e. Van Wolfswinkel.

Wigan battled relegation every year on a similar budget and were eventually relegated.

I would not say we were miles behind either of them. In fact, I would say we operated on a similar level whilst we were up there.

You’re spot on Cinci. Martinez’s work in the transfer market was stunning compared to ours. To take a team from 11th in the Prem to relegated in four seasons is some achievement.

"By all means defend certain things......"

Yeah tam it was sarcasm.

Just amazing how we spent more than just about any other bottom half side in that time but went down with 8 of the same 11 we started with, or very close to that.

But of course, that is down to the massive disadvantage mick had over most other clubs and not poor transfer dealings.

Our squad stagnated for 3 seasons, which led to us slowly declining, its not a mystery.

Yeah tats, and I am sure from 11th to relegation was a massive points swing?!?

You know as well as I do that it is a battle with about ten other clubs, I don't dispute that, but he failed to improve the side, no argument with that either.

“but he failed to improve the side, no argument with that either.”


He certainly did which is why I’ve never got the cult of Martinez but people will start to see through him when he does the same to Everton as he did to Wigan.

It’s actually taking him a little longer than I expected to work his magic but he does have some very strong foundations to chip away at.

Being outside the top ten next season should finally mean that people catch on.