January Transfer window

[stamfordram]

We are going very well at the moment which brings the obvious question - do we stick with the players we have got or do we spend in January to mitigate the risk of an injury to pivotal player:

In my view the players that we couldn't replace in the current squad:

Lee Grant
Craig Forsyth
Will Hughes
Chris Martin

I think we could 'patch' the loss of Grant & Forsyth and maybe even Hughes (although probably not) but we do not have anything to replace Martin (don't get me started on Best) - we need to find a way to find a solution to what to do if we lost Martin for a period of time.

This is a difficult one because how do you buy a decent replacement who might never get game time if Martin stays fit?

Clearly the chant of "one Chrissy Martin..." is quite poignant because the wheels may come off if the disaster scenario ever happened

[RamFromCornwall]

It's way too early to say. We've played 12 games, we have 12 more before the January window. That gives us a possible 36 points to pick up, so by January we could be running away with the league or we could be down towards the relegation zone, it's impossible to say.

We won't find a player good enough to cover in Martin's role who will be willing to sit on the bench week after week.

[stamfordram]

So are you saying we stick with what we've got (Leon "I make the fish look quite good ' Best) and try and find someone if Chris Martin gets injured - i think this will be the route because as we've both said how do you get a similar standard of player who is prepared to sit on the bench.

The prospect of CM getting injured is worrying though - most other areas of the team are well covered but he is just so important to everything we do.

The player that has impressed me this season is Bournemouth's Wilson - thought he was excellent at the IPro and has scored a lot of goals - wonder how much he would cost (pipe-dream I'm sure)

[RamFromCornwall]

No I think we can get better than Best but say Martin got injured, we probably wouldn't find someone as good as we need to continue a promotion push should the worse happen.

[AdiSalisbury]

We have a lot of strikers, so we could just change the system. Ward, Russell and Dawkins are all able strikers.

It's whether the rest of the team could adapt quick enough. If not, then we're only really likely to be able to take on loans of players similar to Best.

Don't forget, we still have Sammon on the books

[Manofpride]

We have a lot of strikers, so we could just change the system. Ward, Russell and Dawkins are all able strikers.

It's whether the rest of the team could adapt quick enough. If not, then we're only really likely to be able to take on loans of players similar to Best.

Don't forget, we still have Sammon on the books

Rather him than Best!

[Rapid]

I'd say martin is the only true indispensable player in the team. and I mean that literally. there's no player in the championship that could play that kind of role and I don't think there's any premier league players available that I can think of that could do it either.

the best alternative I've seen incidentally is probably glenn murray. if god forbid we did lose martin in January for whatever reason I'd be doing everything to get murray in as the replacement.

I'm very confident we'll keep him now that we had his 4 year contract. rush knows his value and is no fool. he knows we couldn't replace him. I doubt we'd sell for any less than 12m. I know that sounds crazy but I'd back rush. ulloa went for about 8m and there's been talk of Rhodes at 10-12. martin is better than both imo.

the only other player difficult to replace in terms of style is probably hughes. there aren't many players in the league capable of controlling tempo like he does. we have a ready made replacement in he

[swaledale]

I actually don't think it would be as big a problem as people seem to think if we lost martin temporarily, we have a number of good forward players Russell is for instance is a central striker and whilst many knock Best, who knows how he might react if he was starting regulary? Don't forget that the guy hasn't played much and strikers need a run of games.

But IF the worst happened, I imagine Steve would be casting around for a quality loan from a prem club.

After all Martin had poor games for Norwich as soon as they got up from league 1.

Having said that I hope he stays fit, cos with him we have every chance of being in an auto promotion spot.