Beram Kayal late through the door
The 5th and final loan happened way after the 5 o’clock deadline tonight when Brighton’s experienced Israeli international Beram Kayal signed up for the season.
Kayal is thought off very fondly down on the south coast, and it was pleasing to see so many good wishes from Seagulls fans towards both the player and us.
The Israeli moved from Celtic to Brighton in 2015 and made 122 appearances, including 37 in the Premier League during the last two seasons. He brings ability and much needed experience, and he sounds every bit a Bowyer player.
Question is, was Beram’s good friend and Brighton colleague Tomer Hemed also cleared to sign before one of the befuddling deadline times set by the EPL and EFL tonight. Guess we will find out tomorrow, and one assumes it has to be a permanent move.
As exciting as Kayal is, we need another striker, especially an experienced one. Fantastic news of course that Lyle Taylor is staying, but it sounds as if it has been a fraught week for Taylor and we need his head and game where it has been since he arrived last summer. His personality and work rate has defined this team.
Four bids were turned down for Taylor in the last couple of days from Brentford, the last for £4m, the same amount incidentally we bid for Peterborough’s Ivan Toney. That unconfirmed by good sources though.
I feel Bow and Jacko have some work to do with Lyle. Yet they are all honest and grown up men, but let us not get away from the fact that we only found ourselves here because Duchatelet had been scrimping on a new contract offer for Taylor.
Steve Gallen has worked miracles this week, and with Bowyer, on very little sleep I suspect. I really want to see Hemed, but even without him based on expectations and history this has been a very positive window.
I’m sure there has been some heated moments and a fair few pointed fingers at Sparrows Lane this week, but as always there’s only one man to blame for how we got ourselves into this transfer deadline circus in the first place. Let us not forget that.
Chicago Addick 
overall its been a good window but we probably should of brought in a RB.
I think the ability shown by Bowyer and Gallen this week has been nothing short of miraculous, the last two competative games Charlton have played and won, also beggars belief, I think these two along with Jacko would be, given an ambitious owner, would surely be ushering in the dawning of a new age. Like many on Monday and Tuesday, I took to the ipad screaming “asset stripping”, things seemed so bad, yet the array of talent available on Saturday would have been quite unthinkable a few days ago, hope it hasn’t all been done while Roland was away on holiday, can’t quite fathom his place in all this, seeing as the budget was so “tiny” am starting to wonder about that, could it have been a clever ploy? we will never know.
Cannot believe other clubs are not casting envious eyes at this “clough and Taylor” mark2.
I agree with your comments on Taylor. If a £4m bid was put in for Toney, there must have been doubt as to whether Taylor was going to stay. Hopefully now the window is shut and we have some new recruits we can put it behind us and work on that improved contract in the background. Would have been disappointing to spend £4m on a striker unproven at Championship level.
The midfield has been significantly strengthened with five new additions, hopefully not at the expense of George Lapslie who is 22 next month and should be playing first team football at this stage of his career. He has on occasion played right back in the U23s so could be a candidate to replace Dijksteel. The big concern is Taylor’s situation, has he been badly unsettled by recent events?. Are we going to play a packed midfield with only one striker i.e.Taylor?. If he gets injured where are we?. In my opinion it is imperative that Taylor is given a significantly improved contract to protect his value, otherwise he is likely to be sold in January, which would be the last opportunity to get a transfer fee. The failure to recruit additional strikers is a big blow as the U23 s and U18s are also short of strikers who might be able to step up.
With a full compliment of midfielders in place, hopefully Lapslie will still get a chance to show his talent. He has played right back in the U23s on a few occasions so could be a candidate to replace Dijksteel.
The club should increase Taylor’s contract to protect his value and eliminate the possibility of being sold off cheap in January or lost at the end of the season for nothing.
As we did not recruit any strikers maybe we will play only one up front
Sorry for edited repeat but my first entry seemed to get lost .
“we only found ourselves here because Duchatelet had been scrimping on a new contract offer for Taylor”
The existing contract was obviously good enough for Taylor to sign at the time – the problem as I understand it is that a team with money to burn desperate to find a replacement striker have offered excessively good terms.
I don’t think you can blame Taylor for being tempted but neither can you blame the fact that his existing contract wasn’t at the same level.
I don’t know if he’d had a better / longer contract whether it would have been any different if the competing club came offering more money.
I know that our owner is, to put it mildly, not loved by the fanbase, but to be fair, from what I’ve read, it seems that he refused what from a commercial point of view was an extremely tempting transfer offer .