Threadbare squad...

[Woolly Mammoth]

Run for the hill's - we're doomed

There is no footballer called Hill's good enough to play for Fulham  !!

[blingo]

I've heard he comes alive with the sound of music

[Willham]

Run for the hill's - we're doomed

Relegation is 3 to 1 in hills....

[The Rational Fan]

We talk on this board a lot about when signings should be made and I don't think it's as clear cut as people like to think,

There's definitely positives to each and an argument can be made either way,

A positive that seems to get missed a lot about late signings is the lack of wages paid up until the signings day, sign a player 1st of July and you pay their wage for a whole month and a half before a competitive match ball is struck, say you do that with 3 players on 100k wages, your paying 1.8 mill extra, over signing the player at the end of the window.

Say you consistently do that over 5 years, thats covered the cost of say jimenez transfer at 5.5 mill.

Of course managers and head coaches want players early to bed in but that's from their side with the players, backroom and fiance might need things different, it's about balancing the needs.

Fair point but counter-balance that with the income per league position - Each place in the table is worth about £2.2million.  Ask a coach and Finance Director what the optimum pre-season date to sign a player is!

Great Points, the benefits of buying late in the window is that we can pick up the a) premium players that were hoping for a better club earlier in the window; b) premium players at big clubs that are no longer put of those clubs plans.

Generally, if we buy a player early in the window, then we are generally their first choice like Palhinha; but frankly most players who have Fulham as their first choose are no where near good enough to play for Aston Villa so do we want them.

The hard evidence (excluding Palhina) is a lot of our early signings are terrible, and the mistake was due to a lack of options. Take for example 2017/2018, our first four signings were Fabri, MLM, Seri and Schullre.

I know someone within Chelsea that believed that MLM was our best centre back option (apart from Kalas) early in the window, and Fulham choices were buy MLM, buy Kalas or wait. We should have waited, but waiting would mean KMac was probably centre back for the first game.

[Woolly Mammoth]

I've heard he comes alive with the sound of music

Are you a Hillbilly ?

[Logicalman]

Run for the hill's - we're doomed

There is no footballer called Hill's good enough to play for Fulham  !!

There was one once though, Jimmy the Chin, and he could run.

[jarv]

I still have faith but a bit worried the spine has been ripped out of the team. Not easy to replace centre back, centre midfield and centre forward in one go. However one of them should be back soon, Paninha.