This is fundamentally why your argument isnt making much sense. You have disagreements about the specific decisions our group made on squad composition but are presenting it as if the perceived flaws was due to lack of planning rather than simply professionals making different decisions than you would have done (even though you dont actually do the work of explaining exactly what different should have been done and fitting it into an operational model where we already had 17 non-home grown players registered in the Prem and an excess of them for UEFA regs).
2 Likes
Chiesa didnāt stop us but he made it not a priority area in a transfer window where we had already spent shit loads of money.
Diaz phased Mane out. Kerkez phased Robertson out. Konate phased Matip out. Bradley didnāt really phase Trent out but he gave us enough confidence to know we had a starter ready to push into the team. Diaz is the only one who went unreplaced and now weāve signed Munoz to address that miss last year.
You may not like the players or you may claim some one like Ngumoha is overrated and thatās your opinion but the strategy that you are asking for us to follow, and accusing us of not doing, is very clearly our preferred and most common transfer strategy.
And personally I am kind of throwing out this season in my player judgements. There were lots of mitigating factors etc etc but fact is no one was used properly. I expect some players to look very different next season.
1 Like
One thing being overlooked here is how aggressive weāve seemingly been with youth recruitment over the last 18 months particularly, with a lot of the kids weāre signing apparently rated as among the most promising in the country or their country of origin.
It seems pretty plain to me weāre doing what some have suggested and started fishing more widely in the U18s pool in the hope of unearthing gems.
5 Likes
Not really. Given we went into this window with Rio, Gakpo and Chiesa as our wide options, the proof is in the pudding.
That being a a situation you want to find yourself in for a club like us is pretty obvious and undeniable. IĀ“m not really sure why there is a debate. For the sake of it i guess? Because itĀ“s our club?
But you said it was successful. We just finished 5th so how was that policy successful? Konate, Kerkez and Bradley (when fit) were also significantly worse than who they replaced. So how is that successful?
Fair enough if you think our players will get much better this season. Lets hope so.
Yes thatās true, the U18 market is becoming very competitive and weāve decided to jump in recently after not really focusing on it for several years. You can sign 15/20 players pretty easily and the cost will likely be less than Ā£10m for the lot of them. If you get one of those 20 through to the first team then youāre ahead.
Itās all about market efficiency, as clinical and unromantic as that sounds.
2 Likes
But thereās so many holes in this.
You canāt sell Gakpo instead of Diaz if no one is making you an offer.
If you keep Diaz you need to give him a new deal or risk him being another to leave on a free and needing a ready made replacement.
If you do give Diaz a new deal youāve got another one who youāll be waiting for his legs to go.
If you donāt give Rio a route to the first team he goes to Bournemouth/Brighton and could easily be a Ā£50m player in a couple years and double that in a couple more.
Moving Rio to the right could have happened last season but never did. Presumably for good reason others were favoured instead. Chiesa barely played there either.
Moving Rio to the right for a bit doesnāt solve the issue of needing to replace Salah this summer.
The fact is we thought we had enough to let Diaz go. A younger but still senior player who could step up and an exciting young player coming through. The exact scenario you say we should have planned for on the RW but youāre saying it wasnāt good enough.
You canāt have it both ways without conceeding that itās horses for courses and unlikely it can ever be perfect.
1 Like
Im trying not to be antagonistic here, but I dont actually see a coherent argument being made. Itās just a primal scream of frustration.
It is totally reasonable to look back at last year and say we made bad decisions on personnel. Some (but not many) were saying that even before the season started. But that is very different situation than saying we dont plan ahead and arent doing the work to identify the next gen of player (is that even your argument though? I genuinely dont know at this point)
3 Likes
Konate won a PL with us as the starting CB. Isnāt that the goal?
Robertson and Trent are arguably the best pair of full backs ever to play in the PLā¦ are we supposed to bring in better players than them? Who? Kerkez and Bradley are young players who we are trying to develop, maybe one day they get to be that level. At Kerkezās age Robertson had just been relegated with Hull, so letās give the kids a chance?
4 Likes
Why is going into a transfer window undermanned a bad thing? Isnāt that the point of having transfer windows? Now we use this time where we arenāt playing any games to go and strengthen the team, right?
Now if went into the season with Rio, Gakpo and Chiesa as our wide options then youāve got a point.
2 Likes
Would people not want Gakpo if heĀ“s good? If heĀ“s not good, why do we want him?
They are fair points you make on contracts, or realistic possibilities, but youĀ“re ignoring the football aspect. YouĀ“d have Diaz, who would give you better performances and ease the pressure and risk now as Salah declines (has declined). So there is a big football benefit as well as the cost increase.
Well, Rio could also be the next Jordan Ibe. No IĀ“m saying we could have brough in somebody like DIaz (when we signed him) for the right and we should have signed a starter for the left. We knew Chiesa. We should have known he wasnĀ“t good enough to cover Salah.
One of the flaws in what you are saying is we just this week signed a left winger. So what is the goal there? Basically what I wanted us to do, we have done a year or two later. So does Rio now end up at Bournemouth? Is Gakpo suddenly not good enough? Will MuƱoz not get the development he still needs? ItĀ“s the same issues just later on, surely?
I see your thinking, but is that so simple in a world cup year and leaving us with so much to do?
We absolutely need these wingers that come in to hit the ground running, which they may not.
1 Like
Weāve got signficantly less to do than we did last year and World Cup doesnāt seem to be slowing down signings too much several players have completed transfers while competing over there including one that we signed.
Also just want to point out that Jordon Ibeās failure was because of mental health issues not talent. He had everything in his locker.
3 Likes
IĀ“m not sure about that. Probably a senior CB, 2 wingers, a midfielder (id say 2) and a right back. Replacing 2 club legends arguably. ItĀ“s a lot.
For me he was a bit of a pace merchant and didnĀ“t really have the end product or quality but yep terrible he suffered with his mental health. He seemed a good lad.
But you keep moving the goalposts.
Yes, keeping Diaz gives us a better chance of winning here and now. But youāre wanting the club to do long term planning for the next five years, not short term thinking.
Diaz and Gakpo or Diaz and Ngumoha are a better pair of options than Gakpo and Ngumoha. But if you keep Diaz you likely need to give him a new deal and carry the same risk we did with Salah and their legs going. Or you watch him leave for free in a couple years by which point Gakpo is likely gone and Rioās development has stalled here or heās excelling somewhere heās getting regular football.
So itās a balance between long and short term, not one or the other. We canāt have one of the best kids in the country for his age and entirely block his route to the first team. You canāt time every contract to when a players legs go. You canāt have a perfect succession line for every position. We canāt always predict what a player is going to want to do or whether some other club comes sniffing around.
As for Munoz, weāre losing Salah for good and Ekitike for the foreseeable. We need wide options and some flexibility which is what this lad brings. I suspect weāll try and manage without buying another CF and use Gakpo but Munoz can also play on the right and centrally. Thatās flexibility weāve not seen from Ngumoha yet. It may also be that they think Ngumoha needs 12 months on loan to play football every week before they trust him more and Munoz would allow for that.
No I am not saying 5 years. It was just an example. The club can do 3 or 5 years plans or 10. Whatever, but the key is itĀ“s a rolling thing right? You have a timeline of expected events and goals
Obviously there is a balance as you rightly say between now and future success. We canĀ“t just abandon the now for the future success, just like we cant just go all in now and forget tomorrow.
But by the time DiazĀ“s legs have gone, we can bring in somebody else or have brought them in ready. See what I mean? ItĀ“s constantly rolling. YouĀ“re right we canĀ“t do everything perfectly so we need to plan ahead and adjust for different eventualities.
Interestingly did you see Rio played for England on the right on his debut?
Great post.
Just want to comment on this part. Presumably we were interested in changing the model slightly, with the multi-club strategy. Given the rising costs of unproven, or emerging players, maybe the calculus with a multi club strategy is to buy more players, slightly earlier, knowing that that success rate (for our level) will go down, but overall with the increased volume of players, we would still have enough of them coming through to our first team.
While Iām on the subject, I donāt think I ever heard a reason as to why we abandoned the multi-club strategy.
Was it just a lack of value out there, with people wanting too much money because a rich Premier League club was trying to acquire them?
Or was it FSG getting cold feet for some other reason?
Personally, I thought the idea (once you get past the concept of a large club owning smaller club) would help us to shift our paradigm slightly, enabling us to scoop up more talent at a younger age and develop them within our structure.
1 Like
I think we do a decent job with this. We signed Jacquet. Good player, about to step up. We signed Leoni, good player, about to step up. We signed Munoz. Good player, about to step up. We are trying hard for Diomande - thatās all getting a life of his own, but he has shown he is a good (potentially great) player, about to step up.
Etc.
Personally I think we do a reasonable job.
Going back to last summer we definitely could have done better, given the money we spent. We probably thought Gakpo would be better. We probably expected Salah to decline, but only a little. We probably expected Frimpong to be reliable, but he started to get injured. We probably expected to see the beginnings of the rise of Leoni, alongside a master in VVD. But Leoni very unluckily got injured and missed the season.
A lot of bad luck came our way, coupled with we could have done better last summer.
But Iām a patient man. I think we do quite well in terms of recruitment, and the signings we made last summer will show their worth, and I fully expect the newbies we are lining up for next season to do the same.
2 Likes
But you said āthe plan should be for the next five years or whatever, not this season.ā
That is what theyāre doing. Theyāre looking at Diaz and the risk/reward of turning down Ā£65m for him but in that instance you want them to think short term about him giving us a better chance of winning last season.
So we keep Diaz, Gakpo gets frustrated at not playing as much as he wants and Rio stays with the U21s. Fast forward three years to us wanting to move Diaz on before his legs fall off. Gakpo is gone and Rio is gone or hasnāt progressed. But weāve had to buy a Gakpo replacement in the meantime and wasted one of the best youngsters in the country and then still need to buy another player to replace Diaz. And thatās assuming whoever we bought to replace Gakpo has worked out and is ready to step up.
Itās idealism at its finest. A concocted scenario where all the hypotheticals work out perfectly.
And yes, I did see Rio play on the right for England. Iām not saying he canāt, just that we havenāt used him there. Iraola may choose to or it may just have been Tuchel wanted to give Gordon those 45 minutes on the left instead of Rio given heās going to the world cup and Rio isnāt.
Youāre a whisker away from suggesting we peek at a playerās hidden potential attribute in the game editor files at this point.