Couldn't care less, mate.

I'm sure the baggies won't mind me stepping in here.

I'm The Pundit and I'm looking after this forum for a few days.

I think my colleagues would want me to reflect that it doesn't matter that Alan hasn't seen him play. Albion have different departments now and they have a head coach. Alan wears shorts on the training ground and blows a whistle. The kit man doesn't brew Margaret's tea and she doesn't wash his kits.

They would want me to tell you that Nigeria B players like Brown at 5'9 can lead the line. It doesn't matter that he doesn't score that many because Graham Dorrens has signed up and he can put it on his head.

This is the Albion way. They will teach it to you, it doesn't involve mass amounts of money, ground developments or George Thorne.

Any questions ask for The Pundit, I'll be locking up around 11pm tonight.

Never posted on this site but the lads that do are on holiday so I will give you an answer to your question. Firstly, not sure why you are having a dig at a club who you are obviously are extremely uninformed about but here it goes...

1. Ulloa was decent but not brilliant in the championship for one season. Ideye has played in the Champions League for a much bigger club than Brighton and has a very good domestic goalscoring record in both the Ukrainian and French leagues.
2. Ideye has previously been bought by Kiev for £7m and the fee we paid has risen further which proves he hasnt been a flop after his first big-money move.
3. Ideye is 25 whereas Ulloa is 28 so Ideye will have a greater resale value.
4. It is impossible for Irvine to have seen Ideye play without him being a fan of Ukrainian football because by the time he was appointed by Albion the Ukrainian league had finished and had started its offseason.
5. Irvine is a "head coach" not a "manager", WBA have an extensive scouting network and a director of football with a team of sports analyists who trawl through over 100,000 DVDs of matches from leagues all over the world - I guarantee we put more thought into a single signing than Leicester do all summer.
6. We are one of only a handful of PL clubs without any debt - we dont throw silly money around and we operate as a profitable club. Find yourself a decent article from a decent source on our chairman Jeremy Peace if you are that bothered about it and I assure you you will change your opinion on our club.
7. Dont believe anything you read in the tabloid press about WBA - they dont know jack and its at a point where baggies fans can only laugh at what they spout.

Good luck for the upcoming season.

........and Pundit /\_/\ is WWFC 1986 resident buffoon.

WWFC 1986 is the team that just lost 5-1 to Margate.

Oh, sorry. You may not know who WWFC 1986 is. It's Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club 1986.

I'm not having a dig at your club and irrespective of your managerial set up, it seems ridiculous to me that a manager doesn't actually choose his players.

We have a Director of Football and excellent scouts but Pearson still chooses who we sign and based on ability and character.

Irvine is solely responsible for the teams success so I would think it would be important for him to have some kind of say in who the club bring in. I also think it would be reasonable to assume that if he has never seen him play then it's not his choice. It's one thing having faith in your scouts but that's going too far in my opinion and that's not how I would want our club to be run.

I would also argue that scoring 33 goals in 74 games in a poor Ukranian league and 5 goals in 24 games for Nigeria is particularly impressive either.

He has also only played a handful of Champions League games because they didn't progress past the group stage in 2012/13 and last season they got knocked out first game in the Europa league so I think this is a huge gamble.

He's pretty much been playing in League 1 standard for three years, certainly not Premier League and having actually been to Dynamo Kyiv play at their smaller "own" ground as opposed to the Olympic Stadium they use for big games. I would definitely argue that it's not as competitive as the Championship either.

Ulloa scored 39 goals in 90 games in La Liga and 26 in 58 for Brighton who might not be as good as Dynamo Kyiv but they play in a better league.

So whose goal scoring record is most impressive? I'd say La Liga urinates all over the Ukrainian Premier League myself.

So I'm guessing Baggies fans think he's worth £10m so I'm happy with Ulloa for £8m.

Our club and NP in particular, put a huger amount of thought into who we bring in so to assume that WBA are putting more thought into signings is rubbish.

So it's impossible to see him play because it's the off season in Ukraine so who decided they liked this player and when and did Irvine just find out he was signing him? Doesn't seem right at all to me!!

arro: i suppose now you're in the big boys league you just have to accept that transfer fees are massively inflated?

As long as your club brings in the players the manager wants then fees are neither here nor there really!

ps. for fantasy football i'm going for one of your cheapest defenders - who is most likely to start alongside Morgan? Liam Moore or Waselewsi?

comment by arrothefoxinoz (U8567)
posted 9 minutes ago
Our club and NP in particular, put a huger amount of thought into who we bring in so to assume that WBA are putting more thought into signings is rubbish.

So it's impossible to see him play because it's the off season in Ukraine so who decided they liked this player and when and did Irvine just find out he was signing him? Doesn't seem right at all to me!!
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Come back when you've had five seasons in the Prem financed by your own earnings not some foreigners handouts and tell us how to run the Club.

I'm not criticising the way your club is run but surely you can't be happy that your manager doesn't choose his players?

Also you say you don't waste money so can you really be happy with spending £10m on someone unproven then?

This is how we have done business for the last 12 years so I dont see how you can slate it as it has given ws 9 seasons of PL football, multiple top 10 finishes and a FA Cup semi-final along the way. The football club know what they are doing and put a LOT of thought into any potential signings. I assure you he will have been scouted over a period of 3-5 years, Irvine will have been given detailed reports and will have had the final say on whether we sign him. There is no way our chairman would spend that much on a player unless a case was put forward to him that it was 100% required, Ideye may or may not be worth £10m but I and virtually all other WBA fans fully back the decision based on how the club has been run under the current ownership.

As for Ulloa, he is priceless if he scores the goals to keep you up. But it is a heck of a lot of a burden on effectively a top 6 championship striker when Nugent and Vardy are the only other options.

I think what the Baggies fans are saying is, Terry Burton (yes the same Terry Burton who was sacked by AFC Wimbledon) is in charge of player recruitment.

Irvine has got it in early that he isn't the man behind the signing.

Oh & the thought & planning they suggest happens is the same process that saw Anelka, Anichebe, Vydra, & various other 'great successes' signed last season.

Albion fans you will find are incredibly deluded in general. Plus fickle, as a crowd of less than 9000 last season confirms.

So Pundit is probably the wisest guy to listen to on this forum.

comment by cddvilla (U18324)
posted 6 seconds ago
I think what the Baggies fans are saying is, Terry Burton (yes the same Terry Burton who was sacked by AFC Wimbledon) is in charge of player recruitment.

Irvine has got it in early that he isn't the man behind the signing.

Oh & the thought & planning they suggest happens is the same process that saw Anelka, Anichebe, Vydra, & various other 'great successes' signed last season.

Albion fans you will find are incredibly deluded in general. Plus fickle, as a crowd of less than 9000 last season confirms.

So Pundit is probably the wisest guy to listen to on this forum.
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Spoken by a supporter(?) of a club in total disarray.

Or you could listen to the Villa fan who's club can no longer dream of buying players because their sugar daddy has had enough and wants his dollars back. But they won the European cup in 1982 dont you know? And they still have delusions of grandeur although they are only a relegation away from imploding due to the gigantic debts that would have seen most clubs given a winding up order.

Id take one poor transfer out of 5 seasons over that any day

Marco: yeah that's kind of what I've been thinking regarding transfer fees and let's face it, £8m is peanuts these days.

Liam Moore is quality and although young he will most likely be first choice, he was last season until he broke his ribs. If not then I think he'll definitely find himself finishing the season because we expect a big progression this season.

Perhaps the deluded Baggies fans want to look at the betting odds for relegation next season.

It appears they are the only ones who are happy with how things are done at the Hawthornes.

They are now either one of fav four to go down.

Told you they were deluded!

Cheers arro, enjoy the season - hopefully we'll be joining you there soon

Cause betting odds mean everything. In fact lets not bother with playing the matches anymore - just scrap the PL and lets all spend weekends watching oddschecker so cddvilla can have a tug over the fact that a bunch of people who usually lose their bets think his team will finish 15th.

If we go down we will come back up. If Villa go down we may well see an AFC Aston Villa 2015. No pressure...

Don't u worry about us.

While your crowing about 5 years in a row in the prem (whhooo)

We have been ever present,

Another deluded baggies fan ! They never fail to make me smile!

comment by cddvilla (U18324)
posted 13 minutes ago
Perhaps the deluded Baggies fans want to look at the betting odds for relegation next season.

It appears they are the only ones who are happy with how things are done at the Hawthornes.

They are now either one of fav four to go down.

Told you they were deluded!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Now explain to a non-betting Baggie what bearing people who want to waste their money now has on what will happen in the future.

Vil-la! Vil-la! As Jasper Carrot said ".........couldn't remember more than two syllables"

comment by cddvilla (U18324)


We have been ever present,

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Not for much longer by the look of you!

As long as there are clubs in the division like the Baggies we will be fine !

Arro, you won't get any sense out of the baggies fans.

The club is in meltdown and the appointment of Matt Irving as manager tells its own story, a real rudderless ship at the moment.

Lescott signed up for them but after a week declared he made a mistake and wants out, so that really helped John Irving stamp his authority on things.

Brown Ideye, well, what can you say, massive gamble but not quite as embarrassing as the Anelka signing last season, and the manager not having a clue about the player sums up the problem at hand.

Fair play though, they did well for a few years but you end up just running out of managers to employ, but hey, Steve Erwin my just become a great manager.

Honestly I wouldn't waste your breath guys. This is the same pundit whose predictions make Garth Crooks look like a footballing genius and has resorted to personal attacks when he inevitably makes himself look like a clown and the other who supports a club who have just signed half of the worst defence and a 32 year old injury prone hasbeen in Joe Cole.

Fact is the betting companies know fack all about us as do the media and we'll be laughing hardest when the season ends.

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/west-brom-joleon-lescott-rejects-7510907

you were saying cinci?