August 2014
Transfers
IN
Jack Butland
Agreed this deal last summer, and England keeper
Butland joined for £1.9m on a wage of 8.5k per week. He will, at least this year, be a back up to
Westwood, but I will try to give him a fair bit of game time anyway as he did pretty well when he played in pre season.
Fraser Fyvie
Fyvie joined for £1.3m and has slotted straight in. He seems a very similar player to
Diame, so he will probably be functioning as his back up this season, but again he is a player I want to be giving game time to a fair bit. Another player who fits with my basic transfer ethos of buying young british talent.
Jack Robinson
My coaches said
Parr wouldn't improve past 2.5 stars and that isn't as good as I would hope for.
Robinson had handed in a transfer request as he wanted regular first team football, something which he wasn't getting at Liverpool. So I offloaded
Parr to Celtic for £4.2m, and in came
Robinson for £6.1m, and (touchwood) he will keep doing well for me at left back. Another young brit.
Artem Milevskyi
He was a free agent and I brought him in on trial initially, and after getting a few assists and my coaches saying that he is a good player, I brought him in as a back up to
Niang and
Acquafresca and the chap who I will tell you about next. I know he isn't young. Or a brit. But he was cheap, and scored a few last year.
Connor Wickham
Transfer listed at Aston Villa,
Wickham came in for £9.5m and has been alright so far. Another young brit who will be back up to
Niang and
Acquafresca, but I have Europe to worry about this year as well so he may well get a lot of game time.
As well as these,
Butterfield has returned from loan with Birmingham to be another option in central midfield.
OUT
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Niko Kranjcar, Koln, £3.4m
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Morten Gamst Pedersen, Wigan, £5m
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Orlando Sa, Bolton, £1.3m
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Martin Kopecky (REGEN), Chelsea, £4.2m
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Sean Scannell, Southamption, £1.9m
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Walter Gargano, Ipswich, £2.5m
I was given a £30m transfer budget, and I have spent nowhere near that, especially if you look at the value of the players I have sold, which is (if my maths is right) about £18.5m, which isn't too bad at all.
I still have enough left in the budget to bring in players if I need to come January, but my squad is now sorted until then. Lets rock and roll...
Results
Game 1:
Newcastle 2-0 Crystal Palace
Game 2: Eskisehrispor 1-
3 Crystal Palace: Matt Phillips, MBaye Niang, Bongani Khumalo
Game 3:
Crystal Palace 5-1 Aston Villa: Matt Phillips X2, Ryan Donk OG, Craig Dawson, Wilfried Zaha
Game 4:
Crystal Palace 2-1 Eskisehrispor: MBaye Niang, Robert Acquafresca
Game 5: West Brom 0-
1 Crystal Palace: Matt Phillips
A pretty solid start to the season, apart from the poor start at Newcastle. Other than that, a 100% record in all competitions.
Elsewhere in the transfer window, Liverpool have spent big on
Eden Hazard,
Axel Witsel,
Willy Boly and
Reto Ziegler for a combined fee of £58m.
Clint Dempsey,
Ross McCormack,
Aaron Lennon and
Moussa Sow have all joined Newcastle, who had a total transfer spend of £27.5m and Chelsea spent £21.5m on
Yann M'Vila and £10m on
Hugo Rodallega.
Alessandro Gamberini, Torino, £1.8m