The College Dropout

Sidebar: The depth of this generation is far greater than that one. You had Vassell and Crouch off the bench for those lot. I also think they get a bad rap. They lost to genuinely good teams each time. An all-time great forward line Brazil and Portugal's Golden Gen. That gen was a better manager and fortuitous draws away from SF's and Finals. Thems the lines.

Not from the summer. We'll be trying to go from relegation battle level squad to midtable. Happy with Ashworth & Howe for that. Both have experience of that. But what about the following year, midtable to top 8. Neither have experience of that. Point is.. we need to get some experience of that level soon. If that's our aim.

Fair, although I think it's 4 starters (Sterling, Trippier, Rice & Mount) and 3 off the bench (Saka, Sancho, Rashford). Genuinely, what impact did Ashworth era Football Association have to do with developing that England squad? Hire Southgate?

Ashworth hasn't been a TD at a club long enough for me to know the long-term benefits of what he's doing behind the scenes. He's been there for 3 years and from what I understand, Brighton were already a well-run club. Having gained promotion and stayed up for 2 seasons. Not been there long enough to see youth players coming through. I take the England stuff with a pinch of salt. The clubs develop the players. We are a decade plus into significant investment from City and Chelsea. They've started producing a conveyer-belt of class players with the likes of Arsenal, Manchester United & Liverpool still developing talent at a great rate. That's the driving force behind England's uptick in performance. Yes and there's no evidence of him getting scouts of that level. Brighton have been signing the likes of Lamptey, Cucurella, Moder.

Yeh it’s possible. But I would like evidence to know it’s possible Something to emulate. I want Ashwoeth to do things better than they’ve he’s done before over the next 24 Month. I don’t know who signed those Leicester players or Monaco, Benfica etc. I would say yeh do what you’ve been doing just do it more. Here’s the extra funds. Leicester winning the league was an anomaly. But they have signed multiple players for cheap that have gone on to play at the highest level. Southampton back in the day too. Whoever brought in those players m, would get me excited. this isn’t to say Ashworth will flop. He’s just not done anything In his career to excite me.

Why not bring someone in with experience of challenging for Europe then? a Technical Director I want for 3-5 years. In 5 years we should be challenging for CL. Id like a TD with experience of that level.

Brighton aren’t aspirational to me. They’ve done well and are midtable. Nice team. Nice manager. Low expectations. as I said, the signings have been good not great. They invested more but it’s not like Brighton have done A1 business like signed Mahrez and Kante for 10m.

The fact Brighton are not a big club is part of the problem. If we are looking to break into the top 8 in the next couple of seasons, why are we signing a TD with zero experience of the top 8? it looks to me like we are setting up to become a solid mid table side. Which is an improvement and perhaps a necessary step. But I would like someone at the club with some experience of the level above If that’s our end goal.

Still a bit meh for me. Brighton signings and such has been good but not great. He hired Potter. He’s been good, not great. A lot of solid signings. Again, good not great.

Major reason I wasn't happy with our transfer work. Massive eggs in a delicate basket. A setback for Wilson and an injury to ASM and we're suddenly very short upfront. We needed at least 1 more good attacker.

Egypt have been terrible to watch, wasting time in most matches, defensive, looking to nick games or take them to penalties. I’m glad they haven’t won it in that fashion. Commentators have been giving them the Atletico praise all game. But they never genuinely tried to win QF, SF or Final in open play and that’s not to be supported imo. It’s a shame Koulibaly hasn’t gone to a real elite club. He looks a Rolls-Royce of a CB. Pace, power and extremely comfortable on the ball, some of his passing has been delightful. Not just the long ones. Some zinged throufh the lines into attackers. Maybe not the tallest.

The squad is not too good to go down. our best players on paper are 1. Injured 2. A full back 3. A non-goal scoring or high assisting central midfielder

I would prioritise genuine potential young stars from abroad (Botman & Bruno fit this description). And the best of the rest from the league (Raphinha, Rice etc.)

They'v been so poor for so long. Lingard has massive motivation to play well. He's a favourite of Southgate. If Howe got half a tune from Lingard I would be so much more confident of staying up.

Fraser/Almiron to Lingard or a midfield 3 of Bruno, Joe & Lingard is transformative.

We'd need to get Abraham in the summer otherwise Chelsea are likely to use their buy-back clause. For the 70m it would take, are there better options? I would love to take Raphinha. I'd pay 80m maybe more to get him in.

Does he start for any team in the league? If we released him, would another PL team pick him up? We are in too much of a bad situation though. We should have made an exception for at least another great signing. A Lingard or a Botman significantly changes our odds of relegation, even if we overpay by £10m. Sometimes needs must. Big teams sometimes overpay to get the right player that can be transformative.

That's not true. Almiron isn't even PL standard. Lingard scored more goals for Wham than ALmiron has in 3 years.

Also in a relegation battle for a team that sit deep. I think composure and aerial ability are massive. Neither are particularly composed but Lascelles is good in the air. Teams will have to go through us and that's easier to manage with bodies.

Aye Schar also has a tendency to give fouls away andd then not being v. good at defending the next set piece. In a 4-4-2 Schar is a bigger weakness and has less positive assets than Lascelles.

Lingard's a good player and makes most PL squads better. He would've been a great short-medium term signing for us.

Zidane same thing but with success. He managed that squads egos so well, he got a good tune out of players that were unhappy (Bale, James). He didn’t have to banish them to the reserves because they couldn’t be around the squad. I don’t think Ancelotti fancies Bale or Hazard but I don’t expect any major fallouts.

Decent man management is a big factor in Ole lasting so long at Man U. He only lost the dressing room right at the end. He kept a dressing room of big egos pulling in the same direction. if he had the man management skills of a Rafa, he wouldn’t have lasted 3 months because he had little else going for him. The proof was in the pudding. He was tactically inept and limited as a coach which ultimately was his fatal shortcoming. He didn’t really know what he was doing. But he never seemed to suffer from widespread dissent in the camp or consistently unmotivated performances.

Which is why i've been sceptical about how we've done business. Overpay by £20m in January saves us much more long-term in the light of relegation. We've faced most of our relegation rivals at home already. Had we lost to Leeds, would people be so happy with our business? The line is too fine with so much at stake.

Not PEA. Ozil was in and out with Emery as well. Another manager who isn’t suited to managing elite players. Rafa was never good at it which is why he failed at Real Madrid and Inter. Managing ego’s is a dying art in management. Zidane and Ancelotti standout. Tbh it was one of Solskjaer’s biggest strengths and a major reason he lasted so long. Ralf’s come in and struggled with egos from day 1.