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Just had a quick look at a Charlton forum, pretty split on Williams but one poster suggested we give them Flint. If that’s a deal clincher let’s get cracking!!!
If Williams does come, then it's a massive reflection on how bad things have become, and it shows the huge limitations in our midfield, horrendous recruitment by Warnock and to a much lesser degree, Harris. The three we have in there at the moment are pretty damn awful. None of them can carry the ball, go past a player or play a pass and follow it. It comes to something when we're touting an injury prone bit part player without an ounce of form in his bin in order to solve a short term problem. If i was one of Vaulks, Ralls or Bacuna, i'd be struggling to look in the mirror this morning after hearing that bit of speculation. If we do sign Williams then it's indicative of how bad and desperate the whole thing has become-depressing really. I'm at the point where i can't stomach watching our midfield three.
The one criteria for any signing that they need to meet is:
i) improves our squad
He doesn't. He isn't even first choice at Charlton in League One.
Like I said, Graham Kavanagh meets 3 of your 5 criteria. Having read them again, he actually meets 4 as he would be a great influence on younger players.
Unfortunately his legs have gone so wouldn't be a good signing for us now.
This is the problem with your criteria... Thousands of players would meet a lot of the criteria but they would still not be good signings as they are not good enough to play for us.
I’m not saying judge on stats alone but they are a bloody good indicator when someone’s stats are so poor.
If this guy wasn’t a Welsh international we would be asking why the **** are we signing a bit part player from Charlton.
At least with Ng he was captain of Crewe and their player of the year. Watters strike rate this season is phenomenal but could be another Eoin Doyle rather than Jamie Vardy, who knows, but at least you can see the clubs thinking.
Jonny Williams, I’m sorry, if he didn’t have the Joniesta nickname and we weren’t familiar with him in Wales we would rightly be asking what the ****ing hell are the club playing at??
The people who think this is a good idea probably wanted us to sign Joe Ledley when Charlton released him last January.
I think they can only sign pre contract agreements with overseas teams 6 months before hand. I know the FA only let PCAs between Premier League teams 1 month before the contract ends. It's a bit vague though and I may well be wrong so don't shoot me. So Joe Bennet could sing contract with Real Madrid(!!) but not Bristol City (this comment will be on the board soon as insider info!!)
The different between a good signing and a quality signing would be found here.
We had a thread about Arter the other day who would maybe fit just one of the criteria points. More negative than positive about that one.
Is Arter a better player than Ledley? Yes, but both not on the list of players I'd be willing to look at.
I honestly think you're trying to hard to justify your position on Jonny Williams.
Give the criteria thing a rest as it's baseless unless the players that meet most of the criteria are any good.
Basically, because he's affordable, is an attacking midfielder and under the age of 30 means your "positive" about the potential of him joining us.
Not incredibly injury prone, not struggling in League One and didn't look poor when he was in the Championship aren't on your criteria for some reason.
If all it takes is being under 30, plays as an attacking midfielder and would cost £200k is all that it takes for you to be positive then there's no point in debating any further.
I find it quite a stubborn and ridiculous viewpoint that wouldn't have been a debating point if Williams had chosen to represent England instead of Wales.
McCarthy was appointed 8 days ago. With a squad to assess and 2 league games to prepare for, I doubt he's had the time to identify new players as he would like. Williams offers something different. He's full of running, will give 100% and is in all probability just here to try and keep City in the Championship.
its a clear bloody indicator we are going back to Neil Warnock type signings, which wouldnt be a surprise considering weve employed Mick McCarthy. It wouldnt be so ridiculous if we hadnt held a fans meeting only last week to explain we were going down a different route in the transfer market.
When do most of us see Jonny Williams play these days? When he’s playing for Wales. Does he look completely out of his depth when he plays for his country? Individual opinions here of course, but I don’t think he does. With the Euros coming up and Williams’ place in the squad for the Finals by no means assured, would he be motivated to come to a Welsh club and play under a manager who, clearly, rates him - would it give him a better chance of making the squad than if he stayed at Charlton? You’d like to think he’d be up for coming here to prove himself at a higher level thereby increasing his chances of playing in the Euros, so I would say that the fact he is Welsh is an important consideration this time.
Looking at his situation at Charlton, Williams may have a manager who doesn’t rate him much, but, based on what I see when he plays for Wales, he should not be struggling for his place in a League One team, so you have to wonder about things like consistency to go alongside the clear question marks about his injury record. However, if he is fit currently, at that price and age (it’s hard to say with injuries but the fact he hasn’t played as much as your average twenty seven year old May mean that he’s got quite a few years left in him yet), he could be a bargain if he plays like he can - it’s all down to whether McCarthy can get him playing for us like he often does for Wales.
International football a few times a year where he might get a 20 minutes cameo if hes lucky is not comparable to the Championship, or League One for that matter, where the game is faster, more physical and youre playing Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, Wednesday.
He is not fit enough to play twice a week. History will tell you that. Weve already got Tomlin, whos similar in the fact he cant play game after game and hes a far better footballer than Williams.
But you've misunderstood. No one has said we're only signing younger players from now on but the aim of the squad is to be "ideally like a hybrid squad, with more experienced players still in situ to bring through exciting youngsters."
That means signing more younger players than older ones given who is already here, but if there is a player who fits a need on a good deal then why would we turn our noses up at it? From what I can tell in that Glen Williams article this would be just our second player over the age of 25 in our 9 most recent signings, and in window where we've also moved Cunningham on so we can bring Brown back.
Maybe I'm a bit bored of the negativity about everything (and overly pro-Jonny Williams) so will take a break now. I do think we should be able to be more nuanced in our analysis of potential transfers and dare I say supportive or our players though.