Who do you fear most next season?

I think that it depends on who the other clubs sign.

Chelsea look like they are doing some decent business so far. Selling Luiz for £40M was ridiculously good value. Buying Fabregas for a max of £30M will be as well. Costa for £32M, I'm not so sure. But Chelsea finished 4 points behind us with 3 useless strikers so he's an improvement on what they had. 

Liverpool will find it more difficult with the CL games, but their key is keeping Suarez. They'll buy some tier 3 players, hoping they can make it to tier 2 or 1. This seems to be their way and it can work for them (like Suarez, Sturridge and Sterling), but also they can come a cropper (like most of their signings last summer).

Arsenal could have won the title if they had kept all their important players fit (Ramsey and Walcott) and they could have handled the big games better mentally. If they had had a Viera type, they may well have been top dogs. They need a leader, someone to drag them through tough games.

For me, I fear Chelsea most at the moment. Best defence. Attack just has to get better. Manager is a bit of a tosser, but he can be quite brilliant tactically.

I fear us. If we don't make the right signings, we may struggle for a CL place. Chelsea, Arsenal and United will all strengthen significantly. Sagna? Fernando? 2 players we don't really need. When you match them to Fabregas and Costa to Chelsea...they look pretty pathetic signings. 

We need to be seriously off loading some fringe players and adding one or two Category A players, not more B players.

I wrote a bloody long detailed assessment of our challengers for next season, then pressed "send" and my computer crashed....arghhhhh.

Anyway, it was along the lines of:
Chelsea will be favourites, but we'll still be challenging.
Liverpool will struggle more than this season and will challenge the Rags for 4th....and Arsenal will be 3rd.

I agree with you bluey and I'm fairly certain I said something similar last time we won the league.  The players we've been strongly linked with (Fernando and Sagna) are just backup players.  At least last year Fernandinho was an automatic starter and Negredo was good enough to force his way into the team and Jovetic and Navas not looking out of place either.

We really do need at least one top drawer player, if not two, to move forwards again.

If we don't...we stand still. And teams don't tend to win the league if they don't improve each year.

I'm with Blue on this, I fear us. I just get the opinion with the FFP restrictions next season they are going to use it as a transition year, balance the books, bring through some youth but just make sure we get into the Champions League.

I don't see why next year has to be seen as a transition year for us. Yaya fucking us around hasn't helped.

We've got a transfer budget of £49M + income from player sales. We can't increase our CL squad wages but we've lost Lescott (£120k pw) and Pants and I can't see Richards and Rodwell in the CL squad even if they stay so we'll save maybe another £250K pw on their wages. Sagna's wages will be around £100-£120K pw so we've got about £250k for new signings. I expect Fernando to cost us about £60K pw in wages so we've got plenty for two top quality players.

If we got that top quality CB we've all been after, that'll probably finish off our transfer budget if Fernando is going to cost us around £17M. If we get Mangala, the budget's finished.

Basically, we can get two players at a combined £40M or one really expensive one.

The restrictions because of FFP will be a pain, but I really don't think that should us stop us being the ones to beat.

Did MP not say all our transfer dealing will be done sooner rather than later.....don't see that much activity going on thus far down at the Etihad.

I hope any signings are done before the WC, but i can't see it....failure to do that could well mess up pre-season and the start of next season, abit like it did last year.

It was the chairman, Khaldoon, that said we'd wrap up our transfer activity early like last year.

Besides the WC, I think one issue is that some players aren't out of contract until the end of June.

I expect a whole raft of announcements, from City and other clubs, at the beginning of July.

Topdawg wrote:Besides the WC, I think one issue is that some players aren't out of contract until the end of June.

Tbh Dawg that shouldn't stop any activity, it hasn't done in the FL (Bury have signed 4 contacted players (2 who's contracts were due to run out) thus far).

Example: http://www.buryfc.co.uk/news/article/hussey-signs-for-the-shakers-1591260.aspx

Even if players' contract are due to run out, they can in principle still "sign" for anyone else, just not officially until July 1st. Another problem with waiting is if any of these players we're looking at have a good WC, their price shoots up and we'll be screwed with the restrictions we have.

On the other hand, we may already have agreements with players in place, but don't want to disclose any details thus far....thinking positively here   .

I'll be very surprise Den if we haven't already got a couple of deals pretty much closed already.

Having said that, can't players sign pre-contract agreements? maybe that's what's happened and details haven't been released yet?

I thought it'd have been nice to have a couple of players signed before the WC so we could have a good look at them during the tournament.

Well by what we've seen and read - it pretty much looks like Sagna and Fernando are definitely signing, so that's 2 players - both of whom we don't need. Granted, if Micah goes, Sagna will be good cover for Zaba...but Fernando, I just don't understand this signing, unless Garcia and Rodwell are leaving.

Still, I remember 12 months ago saying something similar about a certain "Fernandinho - what a waste of money"....how wrong was I?

I think we'd all like some top marqee signings, but I honestly think we have to be realistic and trust MP and the board this season. Whoever we get, will surely improve the squad over the likes of Micah, Rodwell and Sinclair....

I m hoping kaldhoon is correct that the signings will be done early, I am also hoping they will be "A" grade signings and not leave us with egg on our faces like we had the season after we won the title last time. Surely we will have learnt from that episode.

I think we are naturally nervous given what happened last time. I do think, however, that the club has learned its lesson and will do some proper business.