What would really set the summer transfers alight would be to snare Joe Cole too.
Without question he is exactly the sort of player we need, however I would be very concerned about his wage demands (we need to get the payroll back under the £100M a year mark as we simply can't afford such levels with our income/outgoings ratio as bad as is it is) and there's also a huge question mark over his injury history.
We simply can't afford to have players that can't be used due to long or frequent periods of injury. It makes no sense given our current financial plight to be paying out for players we can't use and in terms of squad depth we can't carry players like that, neither can we add to the squad depth in terms of numbers, again due to finances. There are probably four or five of the reserves we could rely on but we don't want to be using up places in the 25 man squad (under the new rules) who are over 21 if we're not likely to get a near on full season's usage from them.
If you were selling Riera, Babel and a few more maybe selling Aquillani wouldnt be necessary.
We certainly need to raise enough for a left back and top quality wide left player. We'll probably need two wide left players if Babel, Riera and Benni all leave. Although Jovanovic 'can' play wide left, as he's mainly a striker he'll probably get plenty of time in that position, especially with Torres coming off a World Cup. His last two seasons of injury problems have both followed Summer tournaments, Euros and Confederations Cup. If Raul were to be signed, along with Pacheco and Lucas, who is better played further forward, Aquilani could be cashed in on, especially as I can't see him being used in a deeper midfield position as I don't think he can deal with the physicality of the league. Again the injury consideration has to come into play also.
Unfortunately whether we have money or not we tend to shop late in the summer or we tend to let everyone else who our targets are before missing out on them
Juan, I think that's entirely down to transfer cash flow, or rather lack of it. We can't afford to make our moves early, committing to further transfer payments and wages before getting players shipped out first. If we were to do our buying early and then not be able to sell certain players, we'd be expanding the payroll and taking on more in transfer payments than we could safely manage.
If we had an owner who would be prepared to put the money up up front and then be paid back when sales are made, or cover the transfer installments and wages of intended sales or the new players until sales are made and the money reimbursed, then we could move early, as we don't, we can't. Hamstrung every which way by the useless, know nothing turds that own us.
As for letting other teams know our targets, that tends to come more from the media, or the selling team trying to kick start an auction and again due to cash flow we can't move quick enough and get the deal done at the right price for both clubs before word gets out.
