One out, one in
Something I forgot to mention in this morning's post about the Obertan signing - was anyone else intrigued by Alan Pardew's comment? "I contacted Sir Alex Ferguson about him early at the start of the summer to see if there was an opportunity to bring him to Newcastle but it wasn't until Wayne Routledge joined Swansea that we were able to bring him in".
This might explain why Pardew happened to be on the blower to Taggart to benefit from his advice on dealing with Twitter, but more significantly it begs another more significant question: why exactly did Routledge have to be sold before Obertan could be signed? Pardew has said repeatedly that he's desperate for reinforcements - but has Jabba imposed limitations on the size of the squad available to the manager? Surely it can't be that we needed the transfer fee and/or the freeing up of wages to complete the deal - that would just once again invite speculation as to where the £39m (in fees alone) from the sales of Rocky and Kevin Nolan has disappeared to...
This might explain why Pardew happened to be on the blower to Taggart to benefit from his advice on dealing with Twitter, but more significantly it begs another more significant question: why exactly did Routledge have to be sold before Obertan could be signed? Pardew has said repeatedly that he's desperate for reinforcements - but has Jabba imposed limitations on the size of the squad available to the manager? Surely it can't be that we needed the transfer fee and/or the freeing up of wages to complete the deal - that would just once again invite speculation as to where the £39m (in fees alone) from the sales of Rocky and Kevin Nolan has disappeared to...
Labels: gabriel obertan, mike ashley, transfer window, wayne routledge
posted by Ben at 12:40 pm
9 Comments:
Its the fact we can only have 25 registered players over the age of 21! I think we currently have 24 (including barton, enrique and now obertan). One space for a striker i guess he's keeping open.
No it's not that at all... we have to have one in and one out at the moment because there is a 25 man limit to premiership squads and we're at 24. That last space is left to a more priority area like LB or CF.
I think we're going to spend 10m on a striker for that last space and the LB issue will be solved with either Jose staying or Jose being replaced by Pieters.
Could be something to do with the 25 man squad size. Apparently, we only have (now) one place left (hopefully for a striker) unless incoming players are under 21. So I guess it means we have to offload over 21 year old players from the current squad to free up places for new recruits. Otherwise we could end up with players like Smith, Xisco etc sitting out the season while still being paid.
Its to do with squad size being a maximum of 25, only one space left for the intended striker, so unless he gets rid of senior players he cant sign more!
It needs to be one in - one out because we need to stay within the 25 man squad limit and he wants to keeps a place for another striker.
The lack of spending this year has been shameful but my god we have got good value for money for the pittance spent!
If you actually look at the over 21 players we have theres currently 24 and thus we can only register one more (ie the striker we're after) and the rest is one in one out
Well after we buy that striker we're after (assuming we do) we'll have filled our 25 man allocation.
Anticipating the inevitable "but you can just leave out someone from the squad"; if you owned a shop, would you pay someone a full time wage to do nothing all day? of course not. I doubt MA would either, especially when they're collecting 60k a week. He will have told Pardew that if he wants to bring in any other players, he'll have to get rid of one of the crap ones first. (evidently we dont have a small squad, just a lot of deadwood.)
So yeah, it'll be one out one in, but it's justified IMO (as long as it's the dross that's leaving)
premier league squad size rules
we're at 24/25
Thanks all for pointing out the obvious reason that was staring me in the face, really. That said, and as Beatski has implied, it does make a mockery of Pardew's continued bleating about being down to the bare bones and having a thin squad. After all, he's clearly got the players - what he means is that he's currently being forced to include players in his 25 that he'd much rather be able to omit...
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