The College Dropout

I don’t rate this squad but his rigidity is making things worse.

Thought Murphy as bobbins too.

He doesn’t. That’s his game. For a game like today when we get pressed he’ll keep it under pressure which is good. Nice touch and turn pass it safe that’s it. Has zero personality as a player. Jermaine Jenas.

Nah he was still major for us last season despite some decline. I love Pope but he’s shot to pieces. The decisions aren’t bad. But his execution is awful. He got to the ball first comfortably and would’ve relieved the pressure. But execution was all the way wrong.

That’s true

Showed some leadership today and a good performance. He’s battling and giving his all. He must be exhausted too.

Arsenal were bad. Extremely nervous. We never truly looked like scoring mind

Was annoyed it took so long to bring him on. And then. I realised why. For some reason he’s never even standing in the right positions. A number of times he needed to be out wide and he was so central.

Liked what I saw. Showed some strength at times too. needs to be starting alongside one of the strikers and ahead of Bruno (positionally). They will find each other.

Man I miss the old Nick Pope. Right decision. Poor execution.

Bit of a waste of time digging up that post. I would have told you I never thought Anderson would be this good. You can also find me saying I wasn’t sure we should give Joelinton a new contract. You could tell he had maybe a couple years at the top and would start declining/losing value due to age. And like I said. You could justify these sales with the success of the following season. But we did the same short term thinking the following summer. It’s not my job to ensure we sell players at peak value and sign players that can become even better.

aye man this is becoming real

I’m not talking about fans. I’m talking about the club. It’s for people at the club - the DOF in particular to ensure the medium/long term future of the club. As soon as Ashworth left we stopped doing that. I personally understoood the logic of selling Joelinton and would’ve preferred that to either player going. Obviously that June was a mess, we were the biggest losers from all of that. Selling promising players for not spectacular fees and bringing in a dud. And even then - all of that was ok because we won the league cup and got into the CL. Then we had another summer of short term thinking. We had the opportunity to go and buy the next Anderson or Minteh and we spent the entire net fee of those transfers on a single Elanga or Wissa. Summmer 2025 wasn’t an outlier. We’ve had no long term thinking at the club with transfers for some time. We’ll be lucky to get our money back for any of the 2025 signings.

Even the players we were after backs it up. Which is why we missed out on them. We went from trying to sign players 1-2 years before the big clubs are likely to come circling (eg JP 2023) to try and failing to sign players the big clubs want now (eg JP 2025)

Outside of Barnes - no. We signed Tino, Hall and Gordon but these were all inexperienced players who weren’t prem proven - so we bought them based on potential. Gordon had the most Prem matches at 65, Hall had 11. Which is why their values have increased. Now they are prem proven - Gordon is now at peak value or close. Under Ashworth nearly every player we signed had potential to 2x their value or close. Barnes has been a successful signing but there was little chance his value would substantially increase. Anderson made 44 league appearances for us. He wasn’t prem proven either which is partially why his fee was so low. Now he’s a Prem star. Edit: I guess Pope and Targett too. Both were cheap though. I don’t mind cheaper prem signings. It’s the Ramseys, Wissa, Elanga type deals that you can’t have too many of. And the chasing of Strand Larsen.

Our transfer policy since Ashworth left has been now now now. Signing players at peak value, prem proven etc.

We don’t know because we gave him a new contract. But the intention was to sell him from Ashworth. Sell at peak value, get in a younger cheaper model or even better promote from the youth academy. Thats the type of medium/long-term thinking a DOF should provide. We essentially sold Anderson for £15-20m. We would’ve got more for Joelinton imo.

Of course. But this is where he needs to be managed. Jacob Ramsey was never going to be able to take away enough minutes from the big 3.

Yes agreed. But you can’t keep moving like that and we basically have ever since Ashworth left.

Because we had just given him a bumper new contract after Ashworth left. Ashworth planned to sell Joelinton (and/or Bruno). We never got the Bruno bid and the Joelinton contract stopped any sales. That’s why we were in total panic.

The big one was Joelinton. He was at peak value. You sell at peak value. Thats where not having a proper DOF killed us. Selling both your best youngsters is short sighted especially with an older squad.

We didn’t have to sell him. We chose to sell him over more mature players. A lot of short term thinking that summer

Huge failing this season is not signing someone capable of giving Bruno a rest now and then without massive drop off. And it’s been poor management that he goes to every Brazil camp even for meaningless friendlies. Even CBs like Gabriel have had games off for Brazil

Won’t get in there because we’ve been shit and he’s been injured but he’s been elite

You think Howe wants any outfield player that can't press? And that player being Nick Woltemade? Osula is way more a Howe player than Nick. A summer won't change that.