Should’ve just been a 1.5 year deal then, absolutely no excuse for a 2.5 year deal. Plus his wages must be overly high that no relatively local championship team would take him, even on a subsidised basis.
Well, I mean some people might say Dennis was a good signing because he scored and assisted some goals and we might get a good fee. But the ones I've highlighted are inarguably terrible pieces of business.
Yeah. I'd say Troost and Kucka as well from the last year. Feel they add more weaknesses than strengths. Sadly, King and Dennis are also starting to show the behaviours we've all seen before with Pereyra (lethargy) and Ighalo (selfishness) which will tank their performances and value. Hodgson has his work cut out.
It's largely forgotten now because in the end it came off by hook or by crook and we got promoted, but the Gosling signing was part of a clear 'seat of their pants' approach to promotion by the Stability last season, in which we had several key positions with absolutely no backup in terms of the role they played in the team - if any of them had got injured in a serious fashion, we would very likely have suddenly been absolutely sunk - Hughes and Cleverley chief among them (along with Sarr, obv...). They were utterly integral to the way we played, once we actually worked out/Xisco was forced to play what everyone else in the world could see was the formation and personnel we should have been. Gosling was the stopgap fob off 'look, we've reinforced' signing of the January window designed to be wafted at either or all of those midfield positions, despite the fact that he didn't carry out the same work as either/any of them. I think the contract length was primarily an act of desperation, and I from what I've heard from one or two on here who have some kind of ears at the training ground, it was really what convinced him to choose us over any other option - he did have to relocate his family, after all, even if it wasn't exactly heading to Tyneside. So, basically, it was an all-purpose bodge that we got away with because we had the insane luck of the Irish sustaining our promotion bid by suffering no serious injuries all season (something we have been paid back in kind, this year) and we spaffed as much money up the wall as likely humanly possible to be able to have that bodge shield to questions of why we hadn't actually reinforced adequately.
