SIGNED - Pavel Pogrebnyak

[Bumblebee]

Buzz off

Brilliant.

Now tell me why I'm wrong.

Because Pogrebniak is an international striker who has an excellent goal scoring record and will bring height and presence to our front line. Players like him don't come cheap, and 35k a week is more than reasonable for a player of his pedigree in his prime years. It's not like we're chucking money at everyone (ala West Ham)..we're working intelligently with the expanded budget we now have thanks to both promotion and Anton's investment.

Rich man's Rasiak. If he ain't scoring, he's a waste of space.

And what do we know about AZ? How long is his 'investment' going to last? He can't make any money in football so he's got to keep chucking money into the black hole indefinitely. He's got to be both rich and crazy to get on that carousel. How long before he wants to get off?

[ZacNaloen]

Some clubs buy shit loads of players and pay them shit loads of money.


Others buy what they need and pay them what they are worth. We can afford to pay pog 35k a week because there is zero transfer feel the total cost of the this player is less than Southampton paid in fees for rodriguez. How is that throwing money at a problem!?

It's more than affordable in the premier league.

[paultheroyal]

Year, two years, ten years?

Sit back and enjoy the ride! I bloody am after enduring midweek trips to
Doncaster, Scunthorpe and the like. If it don't work out its back to them days or maybe just maybe this is the real deal and might even get a European adventure out of this!

[Bumblebee]

Some clubs buy shit loads of players and pay them shit loads of money.


Others buy what they need and pay them what they are worth. We can afford to pay pog 35k a week because there is zero transfer feel the total cost of the this player is less than Southampton paid in fees for rodriguez. How is that throwing money at a problem!?

It's more than affordable in the premier league.

You get a bigger overdraft in the Premier League. That's not the same as affordable.

[Hoop Blah]

I wouldn't totally disagree with that Bumblebee, but, just paying these wages won't cripple us and we probably aren't over committing ourselves. We never really had any moral high ground by the way, we were losing 5 or 6 million a season ourselves before we first hit the big time.

What happens next? We continue to strive for improvement and, potentially challenge for Europe or a Cup and try and win as many games as we can. That's all any club should really try to do isn't it.

[ZacNaloen]

A long as we don't break the financial fair play rules what more can we expect? If we are serious about Europe we can't overspend on wages.


I guess this is the reason they want to proceed with expansion ASAP. The more gate revenue they can get and soon the better.

I just hope ticket prices don't go insane next year to compensate...

[winchester_royal]

Rich man's Rasiak. If he ain't scoring, he's a waste of space.

And what do we know about AZ? How long is his 'investment' going to last? He can't make any money in football so he's got to keep chucking money into the black hole indefinitely. He's got to be both rich and crazy to get on that carousel. How long before he wants to get off?

The fact that he's investing more in the infrastructure rather than players alone suggests he is thoroughly committed to this club long term.

And just LOL at any sort of comparison to Rasiak. Now I know you're trolling.

[M-U-R-T-Y]

This is all just very, very strange.

[Bumblebee]

And just LOL at any sort of comparison to Rasiak. Now I know you're trolling.

It's not a direct comparison to Rasiak. It's like saying that Berbatov is a rich man's Kitson. You described a player that does at a higher level what Rasiak did for our relegation contenders.

[Geekins]

Rich man's Rasiak. If he ain't scoring, he's a waste of space.

And what do we know about AZ? How long is his 'investment' going to last? He can't make any money in football so he's got to keep chucking money into the black hole indefinitely. He's got to be both rich and crazy to get on that carousel. How long before he wants to get off?

The fact that he's investing more in the infrastructure rather than players alone suggests he is thoroughly committed to this club long term.

And just LOL at any sort of comparison to Rasiak. Now I know you're trolling.

Yet people are happy with Hunt playing when he wasn't scoring??

[RoyalJames101]

Reminds me of Ba when at West Ham, scored a few and was rated quite highly but also got a few injuries. Moved on to Newcastle and look what happened there..

Very happy with this.

[FRIDDY109]

People keep saying that there is a pic out there of him and his reading shirt? Anyone got a link?

[robbieroyal]

People keep saying that there is a pic out there of him and his reading shirt? Anyone got a link?

Photos were taken this afternoon. Must be floating about somewhere.

[GSY-Royal]

Someone's already updated the Wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Pogrebnyak

Had a scour around for the photos and couldn't find any. They'll be up in due course anyway.

[Royal With Cheese]

I love the fact that he's played for a team called Tom Tomsk.

[MouldyRoyal]

Lol, someone has changed his wiki again so it now reads:

"On 20 June after it was thought he had signed for Reading, tied up a contract extension with Fulham that would keep him at the club until the end of 2014."

[Mike Hunt]

Pavel has been negotiating a new contract at Fulham along with team mate Danny Murphy, Pavel has announced that whatever happens over his contract that he will stay in England. On 20 June after it was thought he had signed for Reading, some delusional Fulham fans spouted false claims that Pavel had actually signed for Fulham. This proved to be untrue, as he actually signed for West Ham United, increasing their striking fire power to 19.

[Royal Ginger]

This whole thread has become very strange.

Pog's a quality signing. When was the last time we signed a player who was playing above our level and not considered passed it? We're not going to stay up by signing league 2 wonder-kids. Worth being concerned if we started throwing the cash around and replacing the whole team, but 1 or 2 big signings like this (which would normally come with a massive transfer fee) is ace. Do we want to be an overachieving small team forever?

[Bandini]

When was the last time we signed a player who was playing above our level and not considered passed it?

Borislav Mikhailov.

[Elm Park Pasty]

Whilst I do empathise with Bumblebee's point, I don't agree with it. In an ideal world you would only being paying reasonable wages even in the Premier League. However, we are not in an ideal world, and we have to pay the going rate which in this case is £35k per week plus sign on. As stated earlier we have not paid a fee though so this offsets some of the spend. I remember reading somewhere that Curtis Davies was milling over taking a pay CUT to £60k a week to join Norwich from Birmingham, so this is not all one way traffic. It is likely (though not desired!) that Championship wages will creep up too as Premier League ones do. The question for Bumblebee then is, would you prefer we dropped down into League 1 rather than pay wages you would find obscene in the Championship?