The College Dropout

I have my doubts about PIF. Both in terms of interest and competency. Football clubs require 100% commitment. The 2 clubs that have grown most from investment in the last 25 years have the best 2 academies in the country. Even clubs like Brighton and Brentford have overachieved through analytics. I’ve not seen from PIF what will get us a competitive advantage. Spending what we can under PSR isn’t anything significant. Have we even tried to loan players from Saudi? and then at the same time they are demanding European football from the manager? I don’t see the strategy or the joined up thinking. It’s been 3 years. Staveley and co. had their issues. But we knew they were passionate.

The ability to pass is pretty key for a modern 6. Longstaff would struggle. Shelvey could pass. Also Shelvey days. He sat deep. It wasn’t a flat 3. He as behind 2 others to patrol that gap. Then we abandoned that concept.

It’s also a bad foot to start with a new manager. The need for instant over achievement.

Which I think is the wrong approach from the leadership. If Howe had scope to develop players we could take more gambles in the renter market. Demanding European football means immediate improvement from signings.

Aye we aren’t in the same boat as Spurs. Spurs have also spent €420m in just over a year. Roughly double our spend in that period. Spurs have spent €100m on teenagers.

Seemed like it was though. We ended up only seriously chasing 1 other defender. For our entire budget.

We’ve landed the worst PSR deal by far. A net £15m for Anderson isn’t looking like great business at all. Everybody else signed players with potential.

Tonali and Barnes in particular. Never going to increase in value. I think the demand for European football is a big cause of our issues. I like the look of Buonanotte, Minteh, Gravenberch style signings. But they might take 2-3 years to fruition. Our transfer approach seems to prioritise the now which is why we spend massive fees on established players. I’m happy to take a long term build view. I don’t see the Tonali and Guehi model working.

Even footballing it makes sense for him. The 2 players ahead of him are injury prone. And Chelsea would expect to qualify for Europe every season and go deep. 3rd choice CBs at successful clubs tend to play a lot. The biggest risk was the Chelsea project combusting.

It’s going to take some time for us to leverage that type of thing regularly. Gravenberch is a little like Isak or Coutinho in that he was a wonder kid who had a big move that didn’t entirely pan out. Still young enough to become a top talent. Liverpool can spend €40m euros on him without massive pressure. FFP makes that a big transfer for us and we would want to be more risk averse atm. But we need calculated gambles on undervalued assets. And of course the academy is leagues behind. Curtis Jones would be our best youth product in 30 years. He’s not even top 5 for Liverpool. Maybe not even top 10 yet.

Aye last season we had bad injuries but Schar, Bruno, Gordon and Isak were among the best in the league. Not the case this season.

That falls on the DOF though.

We’ve built a squad without a 10 and without a RW.

The individual signings are good. But strategically it doesn’t make any sense given FFP. And neither did chasing Guehi.

Unless something big change with PSR - that was always going to be the case though.

Massive chance like. Likely even. Brighton have so much more depth than us. Our squad is so imbalanced. £60m players in some positions and lads that would struggle to get another PL big deputising.

I think european football this season was always going to be difficult given our ffp position. Keeping all of our purples but not adding to them always ran the risk of stagnation.

I think 8th is about par. But there’s a lot of head wind this season. That positive armosphere we had around the club for about 2 years has absolutely gone. It gave everyone a huge lift. This season feels a a bit SBR 5th season.

Decent test of our level this.

I’m not sure this is true. If he was available for free would Wolves or Brentford Sign him? I believe we made it known we would entertain offers for Miggy. No PL club came in for him seemingly.

He's almost 27. We would give him what? Another year? Maybe 2? Anything between £5-10m would be a good fee for him. Is it worth keeping him for that? The annoying thing, is we don't have a natural replacement for him lined up. Maybe we do give him another year, just so he can really start sharing minutes with Miley.

I liked Carsley tbh. Took some risks. Promoted lads did well for him at U21s. But if you decide to go for the best coaches. The list of semi suitable English ones is short. In terms of cup wins. International FA System managers and old boys seems to win the most. We don’t have a decent old boy option since the Redknapp era. Carsley was the system option.

It’s the usual NO pattern. When Sissoko first joined people attributed his lack of pass accuracy to other team mates not making themselves available. Then it Swang the other way and he became worse than shit to people.

When was the last time a fit Joelinton was benched? On Sandro - I didn’t have heady ambitions for him. And he’s yet to hit best case scenario due to the ban. When he joined, his data suggested he could be loose in possession and he’s proving that. I’m not going to blame others for something he’s shown his entire career. I was hoping for physical dominance, creativity and a higher technical floor than a Longstaff or Joelinton. Haven’t seen all of that just yet. But we’ve seen good signs.

Everyone remembers the asterisks against Greece winning Euros or Chile winning 2x Copa’s with foreign managers. Saying all this I do agree the England manager should be English. But in reality, if not Howe or Carsley (just to promote the system), Tuchel is a good appointment.