[Slick_Footwork]

Hi Slick, it's a fair question regarding Taylor but I think the story had run long enough and been pretty consistent in its reporting to conclude there was some mileage in it. I'm sure we were interested and, as we don't have a left back and clearly need one, I'm also assuming he wouldn't have been a squad player. Having said that, if we were to sign Robertson from Hull I'd be happy as I think he's a very good player. Our forum chat often focuses on how much money we have and what is realistic for us to achieve as a club playing in a league that has become increasingly polarised between those with huge amounts of money and those like us who are relatively wealthy but cannot compete with the obscene amounts knocking around at the top. My issue is not that I think we should be challenging for a top six finish as I recognise that, without the money from a Russian oligarch or a sovereign wealth fund, we'll be an also ran like the majority of clubs in the league. My issue is what we do with our money and the type of player we sign, which leads to the style of football we deliver. I just think that we could do something more with it that makes us more adventurous. During the back end of the season, TP was playing a midfield of Fletcher, Yacob and Livermore (two of whom he signed) which had no semblance of creativity whatsoever. My concern is that this is fundamentally his preferred approach; contain and defend. After a time, this starts to grate on the nerves, particularly at home. I'm jumping the gun as the transfer window is in its early stages and rumours abound with little hard fact. I'm prepared to wait and see, it's just that I'm lacking a bit of confidence in what may happen. Fingers crossed!

I'm in the camp where I can completely understand your frustration, particularly with selections. I'd agree 100% that the midfield trio mentioned lacks a quality ball player who can join in with the strikers. You need 1 of 3 doing this. I guess the unanswered question is, do we have an alternative with currently personnel? Yacob is a fantastic reader of the game and stopper, but lacks the legs to play in a 4 (in my opinion) which makes it harder for TP to put a Chadli in the attacking midfield role.

Now if the board would've released the purse strings and let us sign William Carvalho in January to replace Yacob, then I think we would've really seen if Pulis has the guts to not play 3 defensive minded players. But typically for us, he was way out of our reach.

Mozza was the other alternative, but didn't really recreate his form from previous years when deployed in the midfield 3 last season. He's been a great servant, but can't help thinking he's coming to the end at a Premier League player.

I guess we will have to see on the left back situation, but I'm not going to lose any sleep on Taylor. Maybe people have seen something I haven't on the occasions I watched him where he looked very average. For me, we should be aiming higher than someone who was second choice for a mid table Championship side at the tail end of last season. But I honestly think the fact he's English and relatively young seems to attract people.

One thing is for sure, the fact we're all fed up at missing out on Taylor (potentially) shows one thing, we really could do with signing someone early, just as a signal of ambition. A lot of our competition have snapped someone up by now.

Left back is an area we should've fixed last season. I know we made concrete bids for Martin Olsson when he was at Norwich and Jeff Schlup last season at Leicester, but typically got outbid. We're definitely in the market for one, but there seems to be a dearth of talent in this position so everyone is after the same players (in fact, there's a dearth of talent in world football full stop).

Incidentally, a friend of mine works for a club and we were talking about transfer rumours. Their media department collect a list of every player they are linked with an report back. According to him, out of over 60 names they were linked with so far over the summer, only 5 players had actually been watched and considered. So I really wouldn't be shocked if most of what we read is complete cobblers about every side. We've been particularly decent at keeping moves under wraps in recent years. From what I remember, Rondon arrived as the record signing with no rumour at all.