Defensive Recruitment History

19/20:
Dawson - £5.4m

18/19:
Masina - £4.5m
Navarro - £1.8m
Wilmot - £1.5m

17/18:
Zeegelaar - £2.7m
Femenia - £0
Folquier - £0

Total:
£15.9m

As a Premier League football club we have spent a grand total of £15.9m on defenders over the course of the past three seasons. We have signed only two centre backs - one primarily a right back from the Championship, the other an unproven 18 year old from the lower leagues who effectively hasn't kicked a ball for us. During this time we also haven't had a single, homegrown youngster come through (lol, as if) that might have provided reasoning for this area of our squad not being given the attention it has so obviously and so desperately needed for so long.

If anything highlighted the absolute negligence and incompetence of Pozzo, Giraldi and the club as a whole then it's this. Relative pennies spent on absolute appalling, bargain bin signings (that doesn't apply to just the defence, to be fair) and key areas completely ignored in favour of trying to scrape by with the mindset clearly being "meh, we'll be alright".

Arrogant, ignorant and embarrassing.

 

We paid money for Navarro? I’d always just assumed he was out of contract and we picked him up as a favor to his agent, or some such madness.

Beside this personal moment of discovery, your post is spot on. We’ve not signed a decent defender in years. It’s beyond a joke now, and we deserve to go down.

 

You complain about spending pennies on players who are not good enough but then you abuse - not criticise, abuse - those very same players because they're not good enough.

 

If we get rid of Wilmot, **** me, what's the point anymore? Absolutely ready-made for where we'd want to be in the Championship with the potential to get better. Don't even care about Mariappa, he can stay and be 8th choice CB/RB or whatever, help the kids out/do the hospital radio

My biggest fear is that they'll look at the defence and think that, while they're bad at this level, they've had enough moments where they've not been hilariously bad (especially Dawson) that they'll be kept on whatever division we're in

 

That’s precisely what will happen. They’re not going to drop a league and suddenly spend more on defenders, it just won’t happen.

 

It's clear, and this is not hindsight, that the defense needs a major overhaul. We needed a new back line before the season started and everyone new it apart from the club apparently.

There is justification in criticising this failing. When you look at how well Burnley, Palace and Brighton have done in their defensive recruitment, they have much better quality than us in this area and this is why these clubs are not going down this season.

You need to have a solid base. From there you can build a strong side. Bournemouth have always been weak defensively, even worse than us, but they have better quality up front which helps them overcome this.

I think we're strong in certain areas, such as midfield. This is an area we've done well and also on the flanks we have Premier League quality.

We don't have a Premier league "striker" and we don't have a Premier League backline. These two shortfalls are crucial to get right. If you have one of these things, you have a chance. Put Danny Ings in our side, we'd start taking chances. Put the likes of Dunk, Duffy, Ake, Mee, Burns etc at the back, we'd be so much stronger.

Two areas have been poorly neglected. I can forgive the club for not signing a Premier League striker. They are difficult to get, and you've really got to pick up a youngster and hope they develop which we have in Cucho, Suarez, Pedro and before that Richarlison. The trouble with that option is they take time to develop, so you sign someone who is a proven play but will have issues like a poor injury record (Welbeck), well known form fluctuation (Deulofeu) and hope they keep you ticking over while the young ones develop.

Where I don't have sympathy with the club is the lack of investment at the back. There has never been what I would call a quality central defender signed. They have all been journeymen Championship standard players. We've had long enough at the top table to have done a lot better in this area, and this one thing will be the reason why we go down, if that is our fate this season.

 

Poor Bachmann and Dahlberg, there must be a good keeper in Bachmann, but he's just not had the chance. As for Dahlberg, he was a ******* Swedish international as a teenager, yet he's not played a single minute at first-team level in any league for 2 seasons... Do we keep him for next season (because Foster is starting to do stupid things from occasionally), or is he not ready?
Janmaat is meh, been decent when he's played, but why give him, and everyone else of a similar age, such a long deal? Gray was a poor deal, I'm not even going to blame him because he's fundamentally an extremely limited striker, but how on earth did we decide he was worth a club record fee? How on earth did we decide that he was going to replace Deeney? Success I don't know, he was class for Granada, and maybe he never actually was going to have the ability/attitude to be a regular PL player, but he never really got the chance. He's 24 now, but his stock is far lower now than when he joined

 

Janmaat was over £10m as well.

I don’t disagree with your point, but I actually think it’s relevant for the whole squad. Too much has been invested in tomorrow at the expense of today. In midfield, Capoue & Doucoure were signed early on in our PL life and we haven’t pushed on in that area other than Hughes and a disappointing Chalobah.

Deeney should have been replaced long ago. In attacking areas we’ve signed Gray who is poor, Deulofeu who offers little, Pereyra who turns up three games a season and Sarr who will be gone soon.

Of the three areas mentioned, our attack has regressed the most rather than defence.

 

Bachmann had a couple of good games for Kilmarnock and seemed to gain a great reputation from that somehow. He then played both games against Tranmere and was poor in both.

 

I'm having trouble working out what your point is here from what you've written.

 

Maybe I’m being defeatist but when we go down I don’t think anything will change. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say if we’d had Pearson from the start we would’ve survived, he would’ve got three more points than Javi/QSF and realistically that is all we would need to stay up. The owners will put that down as the reason, as far as they’re concerned the error will have been in managerial appointments not recruitment. They’ve been running football clubs for a long time now, if people expect this to suddenly be some sort of epiphany for them then I think you’re going to be disappointed.

 

The humiliation of the cup final should have been the wake up call needed for serious investment in our defence.

 

Our defence this season has conceded 2 fewer than all of last season. I expect us to concede 7 in our next two games, so we will have conceded 5 more than last season.

We’ve scored 18 fewer goals this season than last. Our forwards (all of them, not just the boo boys) haven’t been good enough.

We’ve regressed in every area - not just defence.

 

It was. We signed a past it Championship right back to play in central defence. And the fans lauded it as 'just what we needed'.

 

I'd keep going and look at our whole Premier League recruitment of defenders:

15/16

Prodl - free
Britos - free
Nyom - free
Holebas - £2m

16/17

Kabasele - £6m
Dja Djedje - £4m
Kaboul - £4m
Janmaat - £7m
Mariappa - free

It's just pathetic. And led to us starting the cup final against one of the best teams the country has ever seen with a goalkeeper and back four that consisted of four free transfers and a £2m 35 year old left back. Utterly disgraceful and we've never recovered from the shame of that global watched humping.

 

Dja Djedje, I'd forgotten about him. Signed for £4m. Played two cup games. Wasn't sure if he'd just won a competition or not. Left for nothing.

Another massive success by the scouts and the club. Let's all clap again.

 

Spot on about Gray.

 

The fault is either with the recruitment policy or the players themselves, not both. You wouldn't put a Sunday League player into a Premiership defence and expect them to be brilliant. So what is the point of abusing a crap player doing their best, for being crap? But NathWFC just likes to slag off anyone & everyone during his perennial hissy-fit.

 

But he literally said:

'If anything highlighted the absolute negligence and incompetence of Pozzo, Giraldi and the club as a whole then it's this'

He explicitly makes the point that he's using them to criticise the ownership and recruitment policy.

I don't really see where he's 'abusing' the players, to be honest, but either way, there is no contradiction in stating that both the recruitment policy is abysmal and that the players are neither good enough, nor performing acceptably. Both are true.

 

Absolutely hilarious that we've got one if the highest rated left backs in La Liga out on loan and having to put up with the nonsense we have done this season.

Look at the number of times he runs with the ball in his own half taking the pressure off the defence and moving the team up the pitch. Meanwhile, we have Masina perfecting his Jason Drysdale aimless punts up the wing to no-one in particular. Even when we do scout someone good, we let them play for someone else whilst we go down.

 

Presumably another victim of work permit ineligibility though? I know he can come back for next season but could he have stayed last summer?

 

Been in Spain since 2016. Could've had him here on a Spanish passport if we wanted him - 2 years residency for Ecuadorians.

 

Pozzo and Giraldi know best. We don't need to sign defenders because we have Cathcart and Mariappa, and we don't need to give other players a chance because Masina is a consistent 5/10 and Holebas is still only 53 years young.

 

We don't believe in defenders.

It's total football here, gents.

 

Overall, terrible. Great business in 15/16 tbf.

 

I think the point that keeps being made is that it's hard to get strikers. Everyone wants them, they cost a lot and many of them are over hyped. With our budget, we risk another Success or Gray and we've at least tried to sign players to put the ball in the net - we've just been bad in our choices.

In defence, however, it's pure complacency. We've gona out to assemble a defence for under 10m and that is what we've got. We've got our money's worth.

We've not signed big defenders who've not worked out, we've just signed ****, for **** money, time and time and time again, enough times for it to be clearly a matter of policy, rather than any failure to land our preferred targets.

I am delighted that Gino will be losing 150m when we get relegated. He deserves nothing more.

 

And the facts about the defence, in my view, has led to the issues up front. The complete and utter lack of technical ability in defence means long balls forward, little service to our limited strikers and the opposition pretty much outdoing us for possession every single game.

We had Britos and Prodl who had some ability to pass and keep the ball, for all their other faults. They got injured and disappeared.

Now we have a couple of Championship level cloggers and a ruined former international defender who doesn't want to be here. That's it. No youth defender coming through, no other options.

The defence has been the primary issue for three years.

 

You've actually seen Dahlberg play, have you? One of the few!

 

Do you lot seriously think the club haven't tried to bolster the defense the last few years? Signing players is not like it is on computer games!

 

God you are tedious. The owners are incompetent but I’ll support the useless defenders we have at our disposal. But goodness our owners are useless.

 

Bit harsh on Deulofeu. Although he didnt produce it every game he was the only one that could run with the ball on a counter attack.