Jagten

I’m not sure we do when you consider the financial restrictions we have in executing, nor do I think it’s reasonable to assume an elevated profile is a good thing for them. I think it’s much more likely they unwind their sports portfolio, which has mostly been a disaster.

I think this is less a problem with Howe as a coach, but more what he's been allowed to spend money on. No new coach can undo that easily.

The concern isn’t his coaching ability (I think he’s very good) but rather the level of influence he has over sporting decisions, which is something he has shown throughout his career to be much less good at

Recruitment has been terrible for two years.

He’s done really well given how bad the last two summer windows were, but I don’t know how much blame to give him for both - particularly the last one (probably a lot). I’m not quite sure where we go from here, nor do I have any confidence that the technical leadership is capable of the consistent above-average decision making to offset our financial disadvantages. Regardless, I don’t think you gain anything from changing him, unless you have a coherent sporting strategy and a talented leadership group with whom he refuses to comply (first is not true, second might be).

Selling this guy for good money would be extremely helpful. He solves none of our problems.

like buying insurance for your house and then the insurance burning your house down.

Yeah we totally fucked. Ceding power to Howe for anything other than coaching, which he is very good at, is/was a terrible mistake.

Howe is great, but you just can’t have two disastrous summers back-to-back with a ~Europa league squad and expect it to be fine.

It’s just opinion mean-reversion. We were desperate for him to be good - needed him to be good - so people were readily willing to over-inflate their view of him at signs of promise. He was not, and never will be, anywhere near as good as Bruno.

Traore was, at his best, a legit ball carrier. This guy is not particularly good at anything.

Our data team was/is a joke fwiw

“So the objective for this transfer window is not to take the first team up a level - no improvements at all. Simply less good versions of what we have right now, but more of them” - Andy Howe

This is just mean reversion. People were too enthusiastic about his talent.

What are you arguing for? 50th percentile returns? lmao

I think Barnes is actually pretty good, but I don’t think it was great resource allocation given he’s a borderline starter. Wissa is also pretty good, but he just cost way too much.

Obviously that’s not what I was referring to my dude Let me be super clear for you: Howe has been great, being competitive has been great. However, to make the next step and elevate ourselves beyond perma-borderline CL club, we need to get better at talent ID, which has regressed.

Elanga, Wissa, Ramsey, Barnes and (to throw in the Anderson debris) Vlachodimos are 46% of our last three year net spend. The talent ID is getting worse. You’re underrating Minteh.

Strong words when we’ve spent 200m on Barnes, Wissa, Ramsey and Elanga, and financial mismanagement had us panic sell Anderson and Minteh. Bit weird tbh.

An abstraction that conflates many things. Eddie Howe has done a marvelous job; the recruitment has got shit.

I’d say in the last 24-36 months it’s obviously deteriorated, and people mostly overrate how well it’s gone. Since 21/22 our net is ~5th in the league.

Glad you think it’s going well

Missed that lmao. Our recruitment team needs firing into the sun.

Inspiring another major target we tried to spend 70m on made the list.

We are literally #1 in big spenders who buy a lot from the PL. Where’s the relative pull to more balanced and varied there? Howe obviously has a chronic bias and he should be stopped.