Rob Edwards Sacked

You say that, but the team was mostly playing 433 for about 5 seasons prior to bringing him in.

 

Well yeah, if you’re looking at it on a tactics board, sure, but how many times in the past 5 years have you seen us play with repeatable patterns of play, or a properly coordinated press? We might have lined up with that formation, but every coach has had their own ideas of how to use it, and we’ve basically been fighting fires constantly for most of the 5 years.

I’d argue that Silva was the last coach who really looked like he had a proper plan for how we’d play. You can probably throw Javi in there as well, although I think he was pretty good at setting us up based on the opposition, rather than having a discernible style of play.

 

Looking back at that Javi team and even the team that got relegated the first time, its ridiculous what we've been left with. The degeneration is Stark.

Some fans still haven't quite twigged just how poorly we've been run since then on a consistent basis.

 

Yep. From mid table premier league to looking weaker than Luton. Remember when we had players like Doucoure, Pereyra, Britos and Deulofeu (to name a few).

When did Bayat first appear on the scene?

 

Watford FC star in “Small club drops back down to its natural level after a golden era, to wallow in the champ with lots of other similar sized ex prem clubs” shocker.

 

Similar sized clubs Palace and Brighton in “don’t make season after season of absolutely awful decisions” shocker.

 

Bigger clubs with richer backers and bigger gates.
Most clubs in the champ are about our size (if you aren't blinded by the comparative onfield success we've had over the last 7 or so years).

 

Bigger gates, lol, Palace have less than 3k seats than us, an absolute drop in the ocean compared to PL tv money, it’s what we spent on Danny Rose’s wages.

They may also have richer owners, but the money can still be spent wisely or poorly, look at the players palace have bought compared to us and do you think they’ve spent the money better or worse than us?

 

A quick reminder that Palace's record signing is the £32mil purchase of Christian Benteke in 2016.

 

Ermm, and ours was a similar amount for Sarr??

We also spent £18m on Andre Gray, what exactly is your point here? Other than trying to prove mine?

 

Oh without doubt over the last 3 years we have bought poorly on the whole (actually 3 good loans this summer) and certainly worse than CP and Brighton. But we are just another WBA/Middlesbro/Swansea/Reading/Stoke/Blackburn/Sheff Utd/Norwich/Sunderland/QPR who had their time in the sun but as soon as the decision making becomes sub-optimal, drop back down. We will need to go through a painful readjustment as many of those clubs did. Our long term destiny is not to be a comfortable prem club, we may not even be lucky enough to be a yo-yo club with many yos .
My initial post was simply pointing out that you had picked 2 successful smaller prem clubs with richer owners and bigger gates than us though they clearly are doing well, and much better than us.
If you ignore anything other than TV money, then clearly any club that gets promoted to the prem is under-performing badly if it is relegated and doesn't bounce straight back, Huddersfield and Cardiff and most of the champ included.

 

Sunderland have a capacity of 49k, Boro have a capacity of 35k, more than us Palace and Brighton, Blackburn have a capacity of 31k, Sheffield Utd 32k…

So the issue is capacity, until it’s not capacity?

 

???
Gates more important than capacity but yes we have outperformed all those clubs very well.

 

But you said we can’t compete with palace because they have 3k more seats, yet there are teams in the championship that have over double their capacity?

Which is it?

 

Relegation, yes but also investing in players who aren’t anywhere near the required level but still cost a small fortune. And investing in Players who are at the required level but not in the positions that the squad requires…and investing heavily in Head Coaches severance pays

 

Where did TUT say we can't compete? We can compete with clubs who have billionaire owners, but our decision making needs to be almost perfect, and to an extent, we need to be lucky.

We made several poor decisions 3/4 years ago, plus some bad luck with Deulofeu injuries and Covid, and have been feeling the consequences ever since. It happens, it's annoying, but for me it's not some outrageous situation. It's happened to dozens of clubs before us, and will continue to happen to others.

 

When the administrators are in season after next, TUT will still be excusing Pozzo because Palace have 3k extra seats.

 

Read my post.
I said they had "bigger gates", ie attendances, not bigger capacity.
If we built an 80k seater stadium we would still get smaller gates than them !
You do love to argue against points you wish other people had made, rather than the points they did actually make .

 

See above. Nothing to do with "seats", that a19tgg's contribution to the debate
And no, as you know, I'm no Pozzo apologist, more bad decsisions than good over the last 3 years and I have agreed with you several times that I think we will be in the financial mire if we don't go up and can't sell Pedro and Sarr for good money next summer. I would have sold them both this summer just gone for anything over £20m.

 

Yes but in the case of Palace if you switch gates to capacity, or capacity to gates, it’s still only 3k more, which is negligible in the grand scheme of things, as I say it’s what we spent on Danny Rose.

 

Ok so there is one club who's gates are only a little larger than ours who have certainly been managed better than us over the last 3-4 years ? In the league we sit above a number of larger clubs than us but it's the direction of travel that is worrying and, like many other ex-prem clubs that need to adjust to life in the champ, our finances.
Rose was a terrible signing. I don't think there's anyone who'd disagree with that. Plenty of other poor signings too, and a few good ones.

 

Javi started to struggle once oppo coaches had worked out how to counter his strange 4-2-2-2....initially it succeeded by congesting the middle so much that we managed a lot of turnover ball which we used to release Kiko & Holebas out wide....once oppo coaches told their players to quickly switch play wide in our half the two FBs got overloaded and, as we know, our CBs are very susceptible to any crosses, especially early ones.

 

I think Javi did excellently. He lost his job as a result of the slow start caused by 1/demoralising 0-6 public humiliation in front of the world 2/ squad morale-crushing failure to pay bonuses (allegedly) and 3/ Blowing c£30m (£28m for @Jumbolina ) on a luxury player they felt the could develop and sell for £60m 2 years later rather than making a number of smaller improvements where it was needed.
Once a smaller club loses it's way and confidence in the prem, it's almost impossible to recover. Stoke, WBA, Swansea, Sheff Utd all seemed "established" but once the confidence and atmosphere nose-dived, they were doomed.

 

The only way such as WFC can be competitive in the top tier of English football is by having some form of USP and getting critical decisions right at least 80% of the time. The 'Pozzo Scouting Network' allowed them to furnish Udinese and WFC with better quality players than could have been expected at 2 peripheral smaller clubs; that, along with the ruthless approach to selling ANY player when max value was available, was their USP. When that stopped being unique and the Pozzos could see the conveyor belt emptying, they had to try something else. GP decided to keep players beyond the ideal sell point (eg Deeney & Doucoure) & use them to create the nucleus of a competitive top tier team. That entailed spending bigger money on buying more established players & the decisions made were so flawed we are where we are now.

WFC under GT & SEJ had a different USP....the dynamics released by the way the two of them shared a vision, the fact GT was the type of manager he was, and the fact that for a few years our youth scheme churned out top quality players in droves. Once SEJ started to lose focus, GT felt he needed a new challenge and the quality coming through the youth scheme fell off.....we got relegated to tier 2 and didn't make it back up for a decade.

Such as BHA and Palace have their own particular specific way of doing things, but it would only take one season of poor decisions backfiring for them both to run the risk of relegation. As both clubs are backed by much richer owners, I think they would have a better chance of coming straight back up & staying there for a couple of seasons than us or Norwich. Even so, it would only take another season of poor decisions and/or bad luck for them to go down again.

 

Yes, and I'd add Soton to that pair.

 

I agree with a lot of that, but I think the warning signs were there during the whole 2nd half of that season. His system had been pretty well sussed & he struggled to adapt. Maybe the signing of Sarr was all tied up with him being expected to change that system as it had stopped working. There was no excuse for exactly how under-prepared we were for that season, although I'd accept that the alleged bonus shenanigans may have contributed to that. I'm more inclined to think the whole club started to believe its own publicity and forgot the 'hard work' bit.

 

Yes I'm not sure I agree with the tactics point. I think we were still on target for 7th spot by the time we reached the FA cup final. I think the distraction of the anticipation of that final was the prime reason we fell away from that moment on rather than tactics being sussed. Your point about holding onto Doucoure and Deeney for too long was well made.

 

Amazing to be reminded that Gracia was the manager when Sarr was signed. It seems so long ago.
It’s also amazing that none of the 7 (SEVEN) managers since have been able to persuade Sarr to use his greatest asset, i.e. his speed. RUN WITH THE BALL, MAN!

 

Maybe re: tactics, but even in the SF we'd been completely outplayed and neutered by Wolves and it was only Espirito Santo going too defensive too early that let us back in the game at all, helped by GD's wonder goal and Dendoncker's brainfart.

 

I’m not convinced we held on to players for any other reason than Gino didn’t think they were at peak value yet.

 

Judging by the likes of Deeney and Rose, I think he's lost sight of his objective somewhere along the way and is now holding on to players until they're at peak weight.

 

When people started accusing him of treating players like cattle, he perhaps figured he should try selling them like cattle as well - by the lb.