oldtype

The thing is that "20-30 million pound" players stop being 20-30 million pound players when you don't have a professional recruitment staff with extensive personal networks, leveraging their relationships with peers and agents to get a better deal. I suspect the likes of Woltemade and Wissa would have come a lot cheaper if we had a real recruitment team who could manage the situation better. The unforgivable sin was going into a 200m summer with no recruitment team, and once that decision was made the damage was already done.

It's both. It's always both. This season was always going to be disappointing, but if you re-run it a 100 times I suspect a significant portion of those would be closer to "mildly to moderately disappointing" as opposed to the "what the fuck" that we got.

I think it's fair to say that this season we were both: (1) shit; and (2) unlucky, which is typically what is necessary for a club that made the champions league last year to hit relegation form.

If you're a player, the reason things may be a lot better next year is that they've been a lot better every other year under Howe other than this one. We lost 27 points from winning positions this season. If you make us just a tiny bit luckier, have a couple of opposing goals hit the post, and drop that to 22 points (which is what 2nd place has), we are 7th and in the Europe Leauge. If you drop it to 16 points (league average), we are fifth and in the Champions League That's not to say we were not shit this season, but to illustrate that all of this operates on extremely fine margins. To draw the conclusion that we are not just fucked for this season (which we are), but fucked forever is simply absurd. Absolutely nothing could change about the quality of the team or the manager. We could just be slightly luckier and have a season that basically everyone will deem successful.

If you think he should be fired for misspending money, he's no longer running transfers so he's technically been "fired" from that already. And if you think the bad, horrible, not good summer spending caused our struggles this year, well, Howe will now get a season to prove what he can do after a window where actual competent professionals are in charge of transfers. He's done pretty well in that situation so far.

Chelsea had a better and deeper squad to begin with, outspent us last summer including beating us to one of our top targets, enjoy innumerable structural advantages over us, yet still landed about the same place we are this season. Let’s not even get started about Spurs. The reality is that performing consistently in the premier league is harder than it’s ever been and nobody is more than a handful of bad decisions away from a shit season. We sucked ass this year, but let’s maybe take a beat before concluding that the manager has hit his ceiling or that the club is doomed forever. Look at all the “top six” clubs who have chopped and changed managers after a swoon recently and see how well it worked out for them.

Read the title and thought he was signing for Fulham very puzzled for a moment there.

There are people on this board who I've never met who have my face from 15 years ago as their avatar.

Same Always assumed the true ITKs reconstituted it without all the borderline folks and security risks.

He kind of is the perfect complement to Osula, but playing more as a 10 than an 8.

Attended the 08/09 iteration of this fixture. Kinnear had just taken charge and the away end still kinda liked him. Shola scored but we lost 2-1. Was certainly the second best London away game I've ever been to in person.

Tonali going from "best CM in the league" to "eh i guess he's fine" is arguably just as big of a reason for the overall quality decline in the team this season as Isak leaving was. I think he's clearly unsettled and I don't think that's going to get any better with no European football next season. Sucks that it has to be this way, but even if he's not agitating to leave, we have to consider moving on and reinvesting on our end.

Best goal I’ve seen since Cisss at Stamford Bridge

The bad news is that we spent 110m looking for an Isak replacement. The good news is that we found our Isak replacement.

He’s a young player we spent 65 million on. Given various spending rules, we won’t have the luxury of selling him at a massive loss and moving on to someone else. As long as there’s even a chance of him becoming quality, we have to keep trying. We don’t have a choice.

It’s time for him to go and sounds like we’re getting a good fee. He’s hit his ceiling here. Benefits all parties really.

They look unmotivated and stuck in a rut and I imagine that's not getting any better next year with no European football. Just seems like the logical time to pivot. Get a big fee, bring in younger players who are hungry to improve.

Given his age it's already impossible to justify the fee even with just one lost season. We can still hope to recoup as much as we can value-wise though.

I'm just going to go ahead and assume that Tonali and Gordon are out the door. Just the way that they've been playing this season gives me a sense that the relationship has run its course. It's a shame because they were both incredible players when applying themselves 100%, but based on this season alone it would not be difficult for us to replace their performance levels with younger, hungrier players. Maybe Livramento too but I suspect his injury record will scare off the big clubs.

I'm mostly just gobsmacked by the fact that it's still mathematically possible for us to qualify for the Champions League. The league table is completely absurd.

Theoretically yes, but it wasn't impossible to improve on Isak (in the aggregate) while spending less than we got for him either. These things are hard.

We'd also be selling two of our best players though, so we would need more funds to make the squad whole again.

The Conference League would be super chill. We can walk most of the group stage games and probably even some of the knockouts without playing any of our ten best players. Would actually be a great stage to give the likes of Elanga and Wissa some confidence in hopes of turning them around. Think it would be a net positive to have even with the congested schedule.

I think he deserves one full season of grace given what he's achieved and how poorly run this past summer was (and a lot of that falls on ownership for not getting the right staff in place at the right time). If we underachieve again next season that is time for difficult conversation to be had. No idea what realistic expectations are without seeing what we do in the summer though. Who knows how much money we have to spend.