The College Dropout

You got it and articulated the reasoning in less words.

At the time people thought VVD and Allison were overpayments. But they got the men required to take them to the next level. So no, I don’t mind overpaying for the right players. Sometimes even that isn’t possible. In any case, we won’t do that. Robert and Bellamy were both back up signings. We missed out on Zenden and Jeffers. Sometimes a team NEEDS signings. They proved to be transformational signings for us. I’m not against getting significantly better players in than what we have even if they aren’t primary targets. I’m confident we’ll sign attacking players (even on loan) and won’t keep our paint dry anyway. There’s potentially a big opportunity cost to keeping the powder dry and I don’t think we’ll do that. It could be the difference between 11th and 7/8th and European football.

An attacker has been priority 1 all summer. It’s 12/8 they’ve been working on this for at least 3 months. Safe to say we haven’t landed our primary targets. If you believe the reports FFP is front and centre of our thoughts, as is value for money, we have a limited amount we are willing to pay total and upfront. Similar to City’s backup left back search. Whoever they sign isn’t first choice Cucurella was their man. That was their ideal candidate. They’ve got a limited budget and they’ll see what’s available for that price on the market that fits their team well enough. For a backup left back - that’s fine. You take Haaland or Phillips - these were likely primary targets for crucial roles. Both are fair to great prices but in the past (Grealish, Walker etc.) they’ve proven they’ll do everything in their power to get their man. Rather than move down the list. Late in the window you either sign players teams are aREALLY want to sell or loan (Tielemans) or you pay over the odds for players teams really don’t want to seek (Fofana). Because there’s little time to get in a replacement and teams have planned and prepared for the season with those players in mind. So take Ramos. Reports are Benfica are more than willing to sell him. He’s available. We won’t pay a premium to bring him in because we think he’s the perfect fit for the team. Of course his profile will also need to fit well enough.

Burn is unlikely to be in our strongest XI within 10 months of signing. His resale value is low. From what I understand FFP is the primary blocker for significant investment. Buying players for the short-term with low resale value isn’t the move unless they really push us up the league or have tremendous quality (Trippier). The £10-20m we spend chip away at our FFP budget. We had to do it in January for Wood (didn’t work so much) and Burn but we won’t do it going forward as a strategy. I think that was part of the thinking that delayed the Targett transfer. We probably want an upgrade relatively soon. But at 26 and consistent performances we could get our money back and some of our existing fullbacks could have decent sale value too. Not saying he’s a bad signing. He’s already achieved what he was brought in for. But going forward the strategy needs to change.

We'll definitely get in bodies on loan at the least imo. I want us to avoid Burn type permanent signings and I think we will.

Do the remaining 4 games not count at the end of the season? I'm sure Eddie Howe would prefer to have all of the key transfers done in time for the players to join pre-season tour, begin to get to grips with environment, tactics etc. From the information available... we are monitoring the market e.g. no formal bids have been made. It is worrying and sub-optimal. It looks like we will do business very late and look to see what's available rather than identifying particular players which iss not the best approach.

Hasn't he made enough money to retire?

No we didn't. He played LW in Germany no?

Cheers

I like the lad beating a man and whipping in those first 2 crosses

Looks more a striker than a RW and I would prefer to spend the cash on a RW

Yeh Bruce did a good job for Ashley. Didn’t moan too much about the upper management. Kept the team in the division long enough to sell the club. Being an Ashley sheep was a big part of being a Ashley era manager. Any manager that put sporting achievement or the fans as a priority was peddled. That’s not in the job description.

as DOF did he even sign any players? He was sacked after 6 months or so.

I’m not saying he did a good job for us. He seemingly did a good enough job for Ashley - his employer.

Tbf I think that's Maguire's position. Funny seeing Rudiger play RB in the Super Cup. I heard he's previously played left-back in a friendly. Clearly a signing from above.

Surely that's Southgate's Plan A anyway.

He played under Howe at Bournemouth. Did his ACL on his PL debut then did his back in after he came back. Essentially missed 2 years of football with those injuries. Think he managed less than 20 games in total. A lot of those young English signings didn't work out for Howe when he got into the PL.

Gerrard is seemingly being a prick. I don't know what's happened behind the scenes. But he could just say "Konsa has been better since he joined, they've brought in a new CB who he thinks is ahead of Mings at the moment. Mings is a top player, great competition. He's sure Mings will give it 110% to prove his worth and get back in the team." Or something. But now he's made it look like there's been some type of fall out. If there has - keep that behind closed doors.

Solid midtable PL CB. Better than Dan Burn imo. He's done well to have a very good career. 17 England caps. Former Aston Villa captain. Bournemouth was meant to be his big break and that was a terrible period for him with those injuries, he's done superbly to bounce back stronger. Weaker characters would've fallen back down the football pyramid. If he had those extra 4 years in experience he might be worth all this noise.

Speaking of Fbref - how do you view those comparison stats and percentile stats for last season? @KaKa Whenever we are linked to a new player i'm not familiar with it's Youtube, fbref, transfermarkt, whoscored.

I'm not really commending him. Priti Patel is seemingly doing a good enough job for the Tory's. Her bosses within the party seem happy enough with her. If another political party with the same beliefs and objectives took her in, I wouldn't be surprised. Did Charnley do a good job for us fans? No. But it wasn't his job to make us happy. As time went on, I became convinced the odd-relegation was part of Ashley's business model for the club. Sell the best players, invest enough to get us back up. Then swirl the drop for another 5-6 years. That's why I stopped posting when Rafa left and brought in Brucey. The whole point of the club was to just about stay in the PL and even if we got relegated, that's ok. Invest enough to get back up and do it all over again. It's also why I was never too mad at Brucey. He knew the job. Stay up if you can. Don't get the fans excited and don't criticise the fat man.

If he did a shit job for Ashley, Ashley would've fired him in the 7 years. It's just that simple. Commercial revenue wise - Ashley was most concerned with the free advertising for Sports Direct everywhere he could. What does signing loads of players mean about their acumen? QPR signed loads of players. It might work, it might not. But the fact they don't have a sponsor suggests there is a problem somewhere in the upper management. Maybe not recruitment but somewhere.

I'm looking at it from the perspective of his employer. Would a team aiming to be a proper club employ him? No. But we weren't a proper club under Ashley. Forest don't even have a shirt sponsor - so i'm guessing there's some ineptitude going around.

Southampton stopped trying a few years ago didn't they?

With the CEO only being in place for a few weeks. We may not have done very much on that front. If we were confident that would be in place in the short-term, I think we would push the boat out more. Clearly, we are operating on the basis of as-is for now.