So if he’s pointless, get rid as he’s redundant! And if he’s not pointless, get rid too as he’s therefore incompetent!
Yeah no arguments from me, my point is, however, I don't think getting rid will solve our issues. More it will serve as a scapegoat for the real culprits who've remained the only constant through all the managers, players and other staff. The Stability.
Personally it think Giaretta is probably just your classic middle manager. Probably no more than a go between, between various scouts, Gino, and the players themselves.
For a club that really should be watching every penny in and out the door, Danny Rose really has not been 'fine' or anything like. He's been a costly mistake.
Quite right. It’s tempting to lump all these players in together but we have to consider whether each have any merit. Personally, I’m OK with Kayembe in a midfield three, particularly in the Championship, although he would not ideally be first choice. Even Kalu, from the very little I’ve seen of him, seems to have something about him but Bayo especially looks like a complete waste of money and a space in the squad. I’m prepared to wait and see how Okoye develops since he does have some evidence of success behind him but, after last night, I’m glad Edwards has gone with Bachmann so far.
Well, the reason I mentioned Kayembe was because of the circumstances of his signing. As a free from Udinese or a nominal fee, he'd have been perfectly reasonable as the 3rd choice squad filling, championship midfielder that he is. As he was signed by an ostensibly broke club during a January window in a relegation season from the Premier League, he was an appalling signing.
There is a reason to lump a number of these players together and that is that the only reason we sign them is because Bayat runs out club. Bayo and Kayembe are okay-ish, but are either worth anything like the money we paid for them? We shifted Hughes, Chalobah, Cucho for a pittance and then replaced them with Louza, Kayembe, and Bayo (his other's Kucka and Moussa did a runner in the summer). We just have to be thankful the rule of 11 is limiting his ability to inflict more filth on us this season. Okoye's signing was odd, but was presumably based on the expectation we would shift Bachmann.
I think not being able to find £5 million for Toney may hint at how close to collapse we were after relegation and Covid.
I don't believe that for a second. That season we raised £71m in transfer sales plus the parachute income. Had they been convinced Toney would be a good player with resale value, I'm certain that could have made the deal. It was once again, poor judgement from the board.
That's your privilege. I look back at the goings-on during that pre-season and think that when we would have had to commit funds to signing Toney we were living hand-to-mouth. The fact we achieved commitments to funds coming our way in the future probably had very little impact upon an apparently serious immediate cash flow problem. For me the financial gymnastics surrounding the Kamara sale-and-lease-back deal throws the importance of short-term cash flow considerations into very clear focus. As GP had already leveraged just about everything available, he had very few options open to him. Let's not forget that at that time, Udinese would've been seriously short of cash also due to the impact of Covid.
A revenue of around £120m for that season and we still couldn’t make ends meet? Surely that in itself is alarming and a damning verdict of how the club was/is being run.
I agree that the club is now suffering the ongoing effects of over-reach in our attempts to become 'established' in the EPL. It's probably not just as simple as whether or not we can 'make ends meet'. It's often a case of whether we've got the available funds to do something at the time it actually needs doing. I have said this before, but I think we were starting to over-reach well before we went weak at the knees in signing Sarr. The knock-on effects of the salaries such as Pereyra & Deulofeu; the inevitable costs of hiring & firing head coaches plus their 'staff'; the apparent juddering halt to acceptable reinforcements that Silva complained about; the unedifying episode of apparently reneging on players' bonus payments. All these could be interpreted as the initial signs of financial strains, compounded by the fact that the renowned 'Pozzo model' could no longer square the circle. And also compounded by the fact that, clearly, no-one making decisions at the club has any clue as to what is required to fashion a mid-table EPL defence.
Salaries never looked from the outside like much of an issue though? For most of that 5 year stint in the PL we were regularly in the minority in that league who had a very sensible and even healthy wages to turnover ratio.
That's a fair comment but wages to turnover can hide the fact that other clubs have much more fat to cut into before they hit bone due to the wealth of their owners. It's possible that even an outwardly healthy ratio in our case is still too heavy a burden to carry when all the other cost factors are taken into consideration. It's possible that the nature of the impact of our over-reach was extremely insiduous, in a gradual drip-drip manner. Everything was apparently 'manageable' until Covid & relegation made it not so. I find it hard to believe GP & SD seriously had not considered what the impact of relegation would be. But then, their actions during that season and since suggest they believed their own publicity about being 'established' and pushing on to be the 'best of the rest.' Just take a breath and fully absorb the extent of the hubris entailed by that. No wonder we're now experiencing a form of collective nemesis.
I think Sarr was intended as a deluxe version of what the Pozzo model is sold as (buy high, sell higher so to speak), but obviously so much went wrong along the way (some of it our fault, some of it pure dumb luck). In fairness to the club, they did finally go out and sign Craig Dawson (after lowballing West Brom the season before), who was a good Premier League player before he came to us, and has proven to be a good Premier League player after, but for whatever reason, he was a failure with us, I think the reasons for that go beyond recruitment and speak of a toxic environment in the squad
I also think Dawson needs stronger players around him, so he's a sort of 'second CB'. I'm not sure he was up to being the 'main CB' alongside Cathcart or Kabasele or, let's not forget, Mariappa. As I said, I'm not sure anyone at the club knows what is required to fashion a competent EPL defence.
Surely we're not still banging on about Toney, right? We decided against spending £5m, when skint, on a player proven only in League One at the time. Have a look at some of the other League One top scorers over the years. Was never a guarantee he'd be the success he's gone on to be.
Don’t think that’s the right way of looking at it. Toney was very young, much younger than other League One top scorers and had the best attacking stats across a wide range of metrics. He wasn’t a 29 year old poacher like Will Grigg or whatever, he was an incredible young talent that was so obviously going to come off based on the fact that he was the division’s outstanding player (the best player on Whoscored in 19/20 L1 by 0.5 - 7.92 versus 7.42 the next best player) and was still very young. Just like Ahmedhodzic when he joined Sheff U for £3m earlier in the summer. Was so obvious that he was worth the fee but the Pozzos are not proactive/risk tolerant enough to get their incomings done and sort their outgoings later.
A good point, for all the money we've spaffed on Mogi Bayat, agent fees still make up a relatively small percentage of our outgoings
I don't think Toney was a matter of us being stingy, but us being in a very precarious situation at the time. Besides, at this vantage point I'm not sure it would have made much difference, we signed Dennis, he only got one less goal contribution than Toney last season despite Toney's goals from 8 penalties, and we still went down with a whimper (maybe Toney would have generated a bigger fee given his homegrown status, but I doubt a Championship club would get too much more for someone like him)
That may be true, although whether he's the main man or very much the secondary defender, I don't think there's any excuse for recklessly giving away a penalty in the first minute of a do or die last game of the season game!
I honestly felt we were going to win that game against FA Cup Final bound Arsenal. That pen just killed the energy and hope.
Sauce ? Very very very annoying. Will fire them to promotion. Presume our inability to sell Pedro or Sarr yet means we have missed out. Cue fury when we do sell one of them in the next few days and have no options to replace so are stuck playing Bayo or Manaj frequently.
https://twitter.com/sachatavolieri/status/1562532342953979904?s=20&t=8HAk7MRWVrhhjutc1tLZdQ You're right, not sure why I assumed that just because this bloke had reported interest that he was guaranteed to go to Burnley.
Ah but Toneys progress would have been stinted if he had gone to Watford anyway so probably would be a Champo clogger at best by now.
When we miss out on a blisteringly good player 'we are skint.' When we spend the same money on a load of mogi shyte 'worth a punt.' Cognitive dissonance at it's clearest.
If you ignore all context in both situations, sure. Has anyone said Bayo was 'worth a punt' at £5m, or is that lie?
