The College Dropout

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.

Xhaka would've been a great signing for us imo. A profile we needed. Experienced. A passer. But we don't seem interested in doing that. I like Mukiele but he's older than what we need although the price was good. Seen he went to Leipzig back in the day. That's the model we should have largely. The best 18-21 pushing 23 we can get.

Why am I excited for this?

Lad that was proud to be at our club, to wear the armband. Leader. So happy for him that he got to Captain us in the Champions League. was at the club for the League Cup win. Thank you Jamaal. Best of luck fella.

Honestly, I should be DoF at Palace. I get the club, the DNA. Lucky fucking escape with that one. Dwight McNeil??????????

Was desperate for us to get some talent in but didn't expect it.

1 or 2 good signings is the difference between no Europe and Europa League.

Nah - you don't come in and immediately upset the beloved manager and the clubs best player. Maybe he did good things at U18 level. But Mitchell did next to nothing of value for first team other than some easier contract renewals

Villa look likely to have 4 or 5 seasons in Europe in a row. I would say their transfer flexibility is a big reason for this consistency. We are not going to match their 1 CL campaign in terms of PL performance. 66 points was great work from them.

Isn’t going t their job or someone else they hire job to pic the transfer committee? How many top clubs does the manager choose the transfer committee?I don’t even Pep has that power

‘Being backed by the board’ in today’s modern game is putting together a transfer committee that gets him the best players. That gets Mo Salah over the managers preference Julian Brandt.

They need to check Mukiele lad for PEDs.

They might get 4 or 5 here