The College Dropout

Aye and wage increases absorb the money saved on fee amortisation. Isak costs £10m per year for the fee and I guess £5m on wages. Hope he extends his contract. A new 5 year deal means his fee will be £8m per year but he’ll likely earn £7.5m per year. Revenues revenues revenues.

The others you named have all contributed significantly on the pitch. My overall point is we’ve paid a premium last summer for a number of players and nobody made a massive impact. The window and other decisions hasn’t been deemed a success and the club have pivoted strategy as a result. I don’t think we have room for substantial losses. Our squad cost has increased and it carries year on year. Our revenues need to increase. And that includes selling more players. He barely tried it before the injury. Gordon would come off Barnes. In any case Gordon has proven himself at LW. Barnes is proven at LW.

Nah if we didn’t spend anything last summer we wouldn’t have needed to sell this summer. Or it would’ve been minimal. Obviously we needed to build the squad. We’ve sold Anderson and Minteh for 1 season of those players. Harvey Barnes and Tonali will cost another 30m this season. Hopefully we don’t need to do dodgy deals next summer to cover it.

It’s become apparent that Minteh didn’t cover the PSR shortfall though. we added about 40m euros to our amortisation costs at a crude guesstimate in that window. Excluding Hall. But you are right we obviously needed to strengthen. But did we strengthen wisely considering the challenges and expectations? I assumed this last season. And it just didn’t materialise regularly.

Doubt it. He barely got a look in when fit the previous season. ‘Lack of joined up thinking’. We needed a bigger squad for Europe so we went and got good players for positions we already had good players in. But seemingly Eddie wasn’t fully onboard or pivoted himself to mostly keep to a core of players. Or we didn’t get players experienced enough for rotation. He was happy to rotate Barnes/Gordon, Longstaff/Tonali, Wilson/Isak but that’s it. Trippier and Burn were first choice, Livra, Hall, Targett backup. We needed a LB for the season but we signed an LB for the future. I think we relied too much on opportunistic transfers. Rather than a great profile match. We wouldn’t sign a 19 year old LB ideally but Hall was available so we got him. We liked Barnes at the fee, knew Leicester would be willing sellers - let’s get him in. Trippier might be outright #1 for Howe but Livra is too good to pass on, another £35m. It’s only Tonali where he was the exact profile and player we wanted for the first team. Which is why he was the only one straight into the XI. Barnes got some minutes regularly when fit even if off the bench. The other 2 though……

I think the Hall transfer was perhaps too longsighted. We needed someone to come in for Burn straight away. massive fan of Hall tbf.

What doesn’t make sense is that Livramento and Hall barely got any minutes from the start. Barnes was signed to compete with Gordon. That’s a lot of money tied up in one position. Everywhere else we had some quality in depth (RB, CM, ST) one of the players wouldn’t have a crazy high FFP cost.

Gordon was bought with the intention of becoming our LW. Are you suggesting the club doubted Gordon after 6 months? We signed Barnes knowing either him or Gordon would sit on the bench. Thats still a £10m+ bench player. What we did with Barnes is the equivalent of us going out and spending £30m on a left back because Hall hasn’t cemented the position. Barnes/Gordon are working exactly as planned. Quality LW options. It’s just not good squad planning considering our FFP position.

We couldn’t afford it. That’s fine to say on paper but not with our FFP position. Especialy when we don’t have good enough options at RW. That’s not good squad planning. Now we realise that and are beginning to bring in free transfers. No need to go over it again. I’ve said it for 11 months now. Fundamentally I think the clubs decisions have lined up that we didn’t make the best of our budget and we’ve got in a transfer whizz and have changed approach. I don’t anticipate we will sign more £12m per year bench players until we have the revenues to support it. Especially not those that are 26+

If Staveley was as involved as some reports have suggested and we finished 4th. I’m not certain she still leaves entirely. By Feb it was clear the window was not an immediate success. So that still lines up. Our transfer window as a collective got us to 4th the previous season. A success. Last summers has no obvious standout success story. The noise so far this summer is we are signing players for the first XI. We only signed 1 player for the first XI last summer. Thats an immediate pivot.

I don’t agree. Especially not at that price. Gordon was the ASM replacement. And neither were regular starters the previous season. If we needed a replacement for him sitting on the bench - it shouldn’t be £40m+ on 80k+. Having £90m of LW since the takeover and £0m of RW since the takeover doesn’t make any sense. Barnes will cost £12-13m per season FFP wise - it’s a heck of a lot for a rotation option. I thought Howe planned to start Gordon RW - but he clearly didn’t and doesn’t.

I do think Howe thought Hall would be ready and it became clear that he wasn’t. But that happens when you sign boys. We needed a Kelly type signing.

I don’t think any of last summers signings have made the impact Tripps, Isak and Bruno made. We needed a starting left back but we signed a boy that spent most of the season on the bench and wasn’t ready. Weve needed a starting RW for some time. We spent that money on a LW that often sat on the bench when fit. Dropped a massive bag on a lad that got a years suspension. Livramento was a great signing on paper. But Howe seemed reluctant to utilise him fully. Again if we were happy with the transfer activity I don’t think we get a transfer guy in Mitchell.

Lines up with my assumptions. If we finished 4th or 5th. Would we have seen so many changes? If our signings made a bigger impact would we have got a transfer guy to replace Ashworth (not a transfer guy)? Did the rush to sell players at the last worry some people at PIF? While I think we signed good to great players last summer. The window didn’t make enough sense and wasn’t joined up. In time it will prove its value imo.

Howe lies to the press regularly. It’s well known in FPL circles that you can’t take a Howe press conference on face value regarding fitness and selection. Other times he’ll just give nothing of value away. He’s among the worst in the division for it.

Pure conjecture again but if Howe is upset about potential sales - he needs to be fully debriefed on the clubs PSR position. The end of June was a mess. We were desperate.

Ok but we entertained the idea.

?? I thought it was confirmed that the club has to explore numerous FFP exit routes - even unlikely ones.

They have very favourable PSR position. Their wages to salary ratio is pretty healthy iirc.

Re: Howe The only thing I’m confident of is PIF view last season as a failure and have instituted strategic changes. Seems Eddie might not love some lf those changes or at least it hasn’t been clearly communicated to him. Im hoping it’s a storm in a tea cup.

For the record the last 6 RM CLs have come from 2 managers. Zidane and Ancelotti. Barca’s 5 CLs have come from 4 different managers. Cruyff, Rijkaard, Guardiola and Enrique.

No he doesn’t. He’s usually a liar and gives nothing away. That interview is unusually candid.

Edu and Arteta seem to work together. Klopps best team he worked with Edwards on and didn’t always get his way. Guardiola has all his ex Barca lot in management. Eales made it seem like it would be a team effort.

It does sound like Howe has his back up a little bit. Pure speculation but my gut feeling is PIF considered last season a failure and have reacted to it. We spent a lot of money in the transfer market and none of the signings had the impact of Bruno, Botman, Tripppier or Isak. A partial reason why they’ve brought in a DOF who specialises in trading more. I think PIF accept injuries were a major cause and Bunce has been brought in to mitigate that becoming a future issue. From what I read Staveley was a huge advocate for Howe and they were aligned on a lot of issues (Joelinton contract for example). That’s a huge loss for him.

Sounds like Kell Brook. A Yorkshire man I assume?