The College Dropout

The expectations are based on what the club keeps repeating. Personally, I think they’re wafflers. I think it was this time last year similar was said by the leadership. ‘Major force in European football 2030’ or similar same time last year.

Of course you can. Liverpool under Klopp and Arteta now are examples. And they were better positioned. Even Chelsea and City has to build towards it. The likelihood of doing a Leicester is low. No we weren’t basically as good as Arsenal last season. On our day aye but nowhere near it squad wise and performance wise. We are a long way from CL semi finalists + 2nd in the league (for the 3rd year in a row). White shot him some bail when he said 2035 Newcastle European and PL champions. He knows us winning the league by 2030 is unrealistic (although not impossible). When Hopkinson doubled down on 2030 it tells me that target isn’t of his own creation and it comes from PIF. Unless PIF have some wicked moves up there for the summer, this talk of milestones with dates leading up to winning it is unrealistic. If PIF hold him/Eddie to those milestones neither will see 2030.

A CEO might not need to be a football man. But this guy doesn’t know ball.

Halfway through - slick talking corporate suit waffle with a bit of bullshit. Still considering what to do with the stadium. It’s poor (but not his fault).

It’s bullshit.

He's trying to paint his team as underdogs to get them fired up... or for whatever reasons but he knows the truth. They have the biggest wage bill in the league by a distance.

The whole thing starts with Staveley. Then the whole Mitchell fiasco. By the time we get to June 2025 we are in an unrecoverable position. Our DOF was leaving and our best player had informed the club he wanted to leave and the club for some reason didn’t take it seriously. At that point we’re fucked.

We managed the whole thing awfully. The money was ok but not the issue.

Agree with this actually. We can offer some of the best prospects 18-22 something fairly unique and v. good wages too. I thought we would have RB/Dortmund type pull but guess not.

Wood was a flop it’s fair to say. But at least he was part of a winning team and has proven he is a good layer at least.

Why does every player have to be a long term target? What’s wrong with the January window if deals are to be done? Wissa isn’t a long term player either. I love Howe but he’s not always right.

The information we have now is that the squad needs reinforcements to hit whatever goals we had targeted. If Wilson signs good players Howe doesn't utilise, that is on Howe not Wilson.

You back a coach by giving him the best tools to succeed. That may not always be doing what the coach prefers. That's what DoF's are for.

The second part was always sketchy. Nearly everyone we signed is at close to their peak value. The first part is always a massive risk.

Like I say - all transfers come with risk and upside. The Wissa upside was immediate results with Prem experience. Risk was his age, the fee and lack of consistent pedigree and doubts about his ability. Was that a sensible risk? In isolation, I don't hate it. With the rest of the transfers... I don't like it much but hey hoo. We took a high floor, low ceiling approach for a premium but the floor has been lower than expected so far.

It's one way. If we are going to sign £55m 28yo strikers from Brentford - it's because we think season 25/26 is so critical and must be a success. So in January, go get some loans to try and make 25/26 a success as the squad needs reinforcements. We spent money like the 25/26 is so important and then neglect to strengthen it mid-way through the season when the need is obvious. That doesn't make sense.

What do you mean by a return? I don't think any of them are meant to be demonstrably better than we have. Coming into the summer, I thought we needed two purples. ANY position, we could do with 2 signing what we expect to be top quality players ala Isak, Tonali. For whatever reason we didn't get close. We also didn't sign anyone with the potential to go up 2 or 3 levels by getting them in early ala Tino or Hall. Everyone we signed - at the time - with the exception of Elanga (funny) - looked like they would be rotation options.

It was a panic buy. We all know it. But even our non-panic buys don't make a tremendous amount of sense from a PSR perspective. Ramsey and Elanga in particular.

Nah Wissa was a massive risk. He needed to hit the ground running and score 14+ goals in the league this season. We paid a premium and likely won't make a substantial profit for him. 28 when we signed him. Only had 1 season at the level we need him for - for a club that always gets their attackers scoring anyway (how good are Schade and Thiago really?). The reality is all transfers are massive risks. Attitude, ability (potential and realised) and coaching fit matter more than anything imo and things can still go wrong.

This isn't even true.

Eddie doesn't have to choose the players we sign.

It's also not entirely true. You can always sell players I'm happy for players to stay on and develop. But we can move them on Chris Wood style. I don't think our approach makes a lot of sense. We've prioritised the here and now - immediate success in the summer. But don't want to leverage loans for the here and now.

He's saying what most of us have been saying for at least a year now. Very conservative. Not leveraging some low-hanging fruit to increase revenues "for whatever reason". Squad needs investment to hit targets. Beard asked the right question - are they as driven without Amanda Staveley? The limited and inconclusiv evidence that we have would still suggest "no". Said everything i've been saying for awhile. The conservatism doesn't align with the stated ambition or the needs of the squad. Villa are in a more precarious position with UEFA but have a higher risk appetite which is giving them a decent shot at achieving their goals. If Emery doesn't get CL, it's a failure on him.

I think the top 6 will be the top 6. Can we win that mini-league below? The squad is still desperately short of quality imo. We'll need someone, probably 2 players to really come to the fore if we are to finish 7th or higher. Wissa, Barnes, Gordon, Bruno, Tonali - someone needs to get on some mean form. I was hoping we could bring in someone to provide a bit of a shock to the system.

I expect we'll be playing in the CL until mid-March. Another 4 games in the CL. There will only be 8 games league left to play. We should expect to win 6 of those mind. As a club we are not aggressive so I didn't expect much action. If we intended on giving the CL/Europa a real go, we would've invested for the short-term. We didn't so I don't expect a CL/Europa spot in the league. Maybe not even Europe. If we do secure Europe somehow, it's a great coaching job from Howe.