Which one of these would be the biggest miss?

Square peg in a round hole? Everyone has an opinion at the end of the day. Some people have the sway to have their opinions heard by a wider audience and make them seem more authoritative on a certain subject.

I mean take talkSPORT's Graham Courtney, who regularly pipes up with pearls of wisdom and tales of "in the know" transfer news. It's rarely right but still...

Anyway he did manage to stumble upon a subject earlier that I happen to find quite interesting and that is the sale of players and how it might/might not affect the team. It was centred around the continual speculation linking Demba Ba with pretty much any club that comes to mind, but his conclusion was basically that Demba Ba wouldn't be as a big a loss as his compatriot Papiss Cisse.

Which brings me on to my point really. There is little evidence to suggest that we'll lose a key player over the summer aside from newspaper speculation, but then we also know that if the right money comes in we are likely to do a deal. Now this isn't money that you or I say a particular player is worth. Instead it's what the club believe they are worth to them which is much harder to quantify.

So my question is, purely hypothetical of course, of our big hitters which one do you think would have the least impact on us if they did end up leaving?

Losing any of them would be a blow to be fair, but there are certain players that are just pure irreplaceable such as Tim Krul, Fabricio Coloccini and Cheik Tiote. Yohan Cabaye is getting there and if he can replicate the kind of form he showed in the European Championships it won't be too long before he is in that bracket also. Hatem Ben Arfa can win games on his own and will now work for the team which makes him indispensable whilst Papiss Cisse is just a 100% goalscorer and they don't come along often at all.

Which leaves Demba Ba...

He was great for us in the first half of the season and played a huge part in us ending up back in Europe. Then he went on a lean spell and scored just one goal after his return from African Cup of Nations duty. Granted he was shunted out to the left flank to accommodate Papiss Cisse but he still had his fair share of time up front as the trio of Cisse, Ba and Ben Arfa tended to rotate throughout the game.

However if his main job is going to be on the left then wouldn't we be better off trying to acquire a player who can actually excel in that position rather than have a player there who would be much better use elsewhere? I think so even though it's hard to imagine as Ba actually did a cracking job to be fair.

It's a tough one isn't it?

Can we just be greedy and keep all of them?