Rejected 2 bids apparently. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....ected-two-good-offers-for-lewis-ferguson/amp/
Yep, and then removed from the squad today. His dad doesn’t seem too happy they’ve gone back on an agreement
His dad will be furious then when we chase after his son all summer making painfully slow increasing bids, eventually get him, write loads of puff pieces about him on our website and then ostracise him after 3 sub appearances and loan him to Coventry in January.
You missed the bit where we play him out of position at left wing for two games whilst playing Sema in the middle but other than that, spot on.
I would have thought Yokuslu is still more what we need, especially now we've signed Kucka. We could probably still do with both though to avoid Gosling and Cleverley getting near the team.
Thanks to the idiots in charge of the club we ended up with a giant turd and drain on resources when the model should be and still is not despite assurances otherwise to bring in young talent with upside. Pitiful.
They certainly do Jumbo as evidenced by the window so far. A real change in direction in transfer policy. Lessons have been learnt. Amazing how other clubs have a scout network based on masses of data, concrete psychological profiles and a system whereby they have a series of talented targets for each position so when the current incumbent moves on they can fill it with ease. No matter how much one may dislike Brentford, Brighton and several others they have it right most of the time. Meanwhile our squad gets older and older for the most part and there is no plan it would seem to overhaul it piece by piece into an effective PL squad. Should we go up we'll be in the same boat. Too many pieces to replace and not enough funds because one thing with this ownership is that they love to fritter away money.
To be fair I think that's take a slight turn in the last couple of years. Of our last 29 permanent signings, only 5 have been over 30: Rob Elliot, Carlos Sanchez, Dan Gosling, Moussa Sissoko, Danny Rose. So really only 2/3 since 2020 brought in with the aim of being in the starting line up for a prolonged period. It's a step in the right direction and hopefully we've seen the end of long contract extensions for those that are past their best. We've now got a chance to build a squad around promising young players: Pedro, Asprilla, Pollock, TDB, Baah, Okoye, Sierralta, Ngakia
Juraj Kucka was also brought in with the aim of being in the starting line up - even if it was just for a season, that was still too "prolonged" a period for his level of ability and stamina.
We'd still been way too slow in refreshing/overhauling the squad despite this. The younger players we'd signed often were not yet ready to replace the ones who were already over the hill. It was an issue in our prior relelgation season and it continues to be one. We might be starting to turn a corner as of this summer at least, but this is definitely one of the areas of the club's management where I wonder if lessons truly have been learned. Just look at this graphic:
Is it that they weren't ready, or that the managers didn't trust them? When we change Head Coaches so frequently, it's only natural that the incoming HC will use the more experienced players that he has the most data on, it's the low risk option. Sierralta, JP, Cucho, Louza have all had extended runs out of the team, stunting their progress. What did we, as a club, gain from Hodgson starting Foster over Bachmann, or Cathcart over Sierralta? The club has a decent record of bringing in young players, but now needs to give a HC a proper chance to integrate them into the team, even if results aren't immediately positive.
But not brought in to be a long term solution, and would have been fine if used correctly, as a rotation player, or a 30 minute sub. But if you want it, let's say 6 of the last 29.
I’m baffled by this train of thought. He just ran around a lot and did very little. Good tackler? Not really. Creative? Nope. Leadership? None. He didn’t do very much at all, 60 mins or 90.
I though he did pretty well most games until about 60 mins after which he tired understandably. Tackler, leader by example, box to box, not that creative I agree. Otherwise happy to disagree.
He was an absolutely awful player, plus even if he was good (he absolutely wasn’t) what’s the point if he can only last 60 minutes? It’s not like he was a goal scorer who could score us goals, then it might be worth it. He was a player who did very little and then needed replacing by another player for at least a third of the match, hence rendering us as bad as his replacement for a third of every game we had to play. A waste of everyone’s time.
Fine. We disagree. I don’t think any of our players were truly prem class last year other than a few in patches eg Dennis. He was by no means the weakest link in the side, just my view.
To be fair to him, he got into better goal scoring positions than King or Dennis over a sustained period of games. Problem was, he wasn't a striker and obviously his shooting was Andre' Gray levels of bad, but at least he was a presence and at least a player we knew was on the pitch. Unlike Sarr who was more or less invisible most games.
We haven't had a decent goalscorer since Ighalo left and Deeney started to decline. When we were still in desperate need of one in our last relegation season we bought in JP. Some on here even had the faint hope he might somehow "save our season". He might become one in time, but he's not been yet and in the last 2.5 seasons we have still been missing a decent striker. I have some hope that in Bayo we may have addressed this problem, but we needed to sign an up-coming striker in their early-mid 20s 3 seasons ago already. We'd lost Doucoure, Capoue, Hughes and Chalobah recently from our midfield prior to our promotion, and Louza was the only player we really spent money on to try and plug the gap. I was sure he wasn't what we needed yet and in his first few games he was terrible. His extended run out the team actually seemed to help him, rather than stunt his progress, as when he returned he was a bit more competitive. Even then he was still mediocre for us, even relative to our other mediocre midfielders. He could still improve in time, and should do well in the Championship, but again he wasn't really up to it yet when he needed someone to be. Cucho just is/was mediocre, and was playing in one of the few positions where we actually at least had other decent options. Bachmann and Foster is splitting hairs, they're about the same standard and both have a habit of crapping the bed under pressure. The club must not be that confident in Bachmann's potential to have signed another GK in Okoye. Sierralta is the only one who probably should have played more and whose progress perhaps may have been stunted this season. It's also not entirely conclusive though as he had a lot of complicating factors over the season. Maybe he was kept out the team at the end of the season for the same reason we didn't change manager sooner, so as not to destroy his confidence going in to this one while we were repeatedly getting hammered and def going down? This season will be telling in terms of whether he's trusted again and if he picks up where he'd left off in the previous Champ season. The examples you mention are also only few in number, and wouldn't have fundamentally altered the fact that we've basically had the oldest team and squad in our last two seasons in the PL. Our CB, RB, CM and CF positions in particular have been creaking, and generally most of the signings we've made as competition or replacements have not been up to, or ready yet, to replace the outgoing players when needed.
I think the last 3 years shows the club just completely lost its way, panicked about new players, and worst of all concentrated on player trading concerns to dig our way out.? Why GP went from their original (udinese) model of "buy a few young & cheap and flog one for £30m 3 years later" baffles me. In some ways you could argue that the purchases of Gray and Sarr were their 2 biggest ever mistakes, leading to ongoing fluidity issues. I think they know that now so we're back to freebies, loans, and sub £5m signings, which is fine by me.....
I'm gonna be completely honest, I can't be arsed to read that. Let's just assume we disagree, and leave it there.
