I wouldn’t look at other clubs with new managers as a barometers of how we should operate really.
Brighton and Hove are operating in a different market to us, and are always active regardless of manager - a strategy that does the club well. We are seeing our club sign younger talents earlier and be active on that in this window.
Chelsea buy players as and when they choose, without much thought given to the managers views - Potter and Poch both had to deal with it and have left. No European footy to boot.
Palace have had Glassner in since Feb, so he’s had time to work on it
West Ham - not been that active to be honest.
Clubs without new managers aren’t that active either - United have gone United and done a mad spending spree that is not to be seen as best practice.
Both Arsenal and City - who we should be seeing as our rivals, are not active either, beyond City bringing a player in from one of their other clubs.
When the rationale for no signings is “the new manager needs to look over what he’s got” it is certainly worth looking at how other clubs with new managers are approaching the same challenge.
What next, “contract talks with Virgil, Trent and Mo are dependent on Slot seeing how they go in pre-season before any decisions are made?” Same kind of rationale but we’d all agree that would be ridiculous.
Pre-season is more fitness and shape than anything. As a club we should know whether there’s a better option than VDB who is attainable for a suitable fee before Slot watches him do some shuttle runs.
Slotty will certainly have input regards the players ability, and/or longevity of usage in his visionary plans, but it will be Edwards that will determine, exactly, when the right moment will be to ‘cash-in’ on certain players.
This is what might trump all in the eyes of FSG.
As in most things in life, it’s not so much what you say but what you do. We have given a cover story, if you like - Slot running the rule over the players, international football, crescendo in August. With those things having been said, there’s no need for the club to keep talking about why there hasn’t been a signing yet.
Now let’s see what we actually do.
If there are no signings this window, that might be concerning. But let’s see.
So all they are doing is fitness and a little bit on shape?
Seeing a player in the flesh, even doing drills, small sided games, listening to their communication, understanding how they deal with situations and what their motivations are, are massive to coaches.
For me it is imperative that Arne assesses what he’s got, even Edwards and Hughes coming in are in the same situation, I don’t want us to be like Manure, supposedly winning the transfer window, we don’t work like them we are more cerebral in our approach.
If a current squad player or academy hopeful can save us money then that means we can spend money in the right areas and seeing someone like Quansah, Elliot, Trent come through is more than buying the latest flavour of the month.
If there is no signings then they believe we have players that are ready to perform at the level of the alternatives, spending money for the sake of it isn’t responsible for a club like us.
Do you really think you could get more of an understanding of a player’s ability from pre-season training versus being able to watch any and every game they’ve ever played on video? Coaching team will have access to all of that.
And I hate it when people reduce the discussion to “we don’t want to buy players for the sake of it”. That’s not what anyone wants.
We bought a stop gap at DM last summer. We lost a senior CB this summer. Three key first team players are out of contract next summer. We’ve a left back who clearly isn’t up to the standard we need.
These are obvious gaps. Just like the midfield gaps a lot of people could see a couple years ago before we rushed out to sign Melo on deadline day. Just like the CB concerns of 3-4 years ago.
You don’t need a couple weeks of pre-season to see these things.
So you are saying that Arne, Edwards and Hughes, watch all the games of every player, do they have player cams on them all.
For me seeing a person train, act and react in person is so so important, especially if you are going to pass judgement on whether the can play or develop into a role than you have in mind
You think modern day player scouting and assessment is done by people sat in stands watching games?
They’ll have access to every game Sepp played for Mainz last year. Every piece of data about his physical performance and measurable in game metric will be available to them. That’s literally what our recent success was built on, being better evaluators than everyone else using data and technology instead of “the eye test”.
Tell me this. If Sepp was actually a Mainz player, do you think Slot would need to have been in attendance at a Mainz game in order to decide if he was good enough to bring in or would that assessment predominantly be done in other ways?
I don’t know why people are fretting about signings at the moment.
We have a brand new manager and backroom team who may have every bit of data available to them but they might actually want to see what they have with their own eyes - not a dvd or what a PC says.
We haven’t even played a game yet (that behind doors game dont count) and peoples dicks are falling off cos we haven’t signed anyone. Calm down FFS.
Arsenal and City’s managers (and any other team whose manager has been there a while) know exactly what they have (and need) as they brought all their players in and have seen them play.
Yes we need strengthening but at least give the manager a few pre-season friendlies to see what he thinks he really needs.
If things were so simple, the game would be won on the spreadsheet.
Give the guy some time to move in, get acquainted with the new place, where he wants things arranged before deciding on all the new furniture. Because if you buy everything in advance… you aren’t going to be happy with the result.
Oh… and we are talking about tactics, personalities, people, fit, adaptation ability, fitness, new coaching team (even for Slot) and an even more complex process.
The CB with the best stats might not be the best CB under our new manager and this is a game of margins.
In a nutshell, because any new players would suffer from a complete lack of pre-season bedding-in. They (should we actually sign anyone, that is) would have to be thrown into competitive games straight off the bat, with a hope that they gel with the team plan immediately. Definitely not ideal.
If you watched the rise of Salah from being a Chelsea flop to Premier League winner, all the data in the world can’t predict that.
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He slid effortlessly into a Klopp team and looked a million dollars. Where as, Chelsea couldn’t wait to move him on.
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I still think in the modern world coaches like to watch players train.
Even during Klopp’s time, many of the signings were not thrown into the first team starting immediately. The fact is that we have a squad already capable of starting and winning matches. Its now about trying to add quality or plugging gaps if Slot sees any throughout the pre-season and training. And these type of players will not be expected to start immediately. We should be glad we are in such a position rather than clubs like manures who know they are going to be shite if they start with the squad they had last season.
Very simply, there area areas of the team and squad that could, and very probably should, be improved upon this summer.
The season kicks off three weeks tomorrow. The window closes in five weeks.
We’ve done this a number of times in the last few years where we’ve left ourselves short, people have said “don’t worry” and then it’s bitten us in the ass.
Literally had a transfer record that was the envy of football led by the “laptop guy” who we just brought back. A system built to take as much human bias out of decision making as possible. A system that told us Salah would be a better option than the managers desire to bring in Brandt. A system that correctly told us it was worth spending world record fees on Alisson and van Dijk or that a relegated left back could actually be a world beater.
But sure, if Slot thinks Sepp is a nice lad to chat to then that’s good enough.