Ellis H

19?

One was scouted a long time ago and the other was largely out of desperation. Seung-soo Park wasn’t signed for the first team squad. We/Howe almost exclusively wanted Premium League based players and it nearly backfired massively.

It was far from pretty and serious lessons NEED to be learned about the importance of scouting foreign markets but I’m extremely optimistic tbh. In short, Wissa has shown he can cover that other blokes goals despite being in a far worse team and with no penalties so anything from Woltemade will only be a bonus. Better squad depth to handle CL and some money to play with in January for any fine tuning that’s needed, probably in CM. Looking at other clubs’ transfers I’d have us near certainties for 5th, if not 4th.

The point I’m making (however badly) is that we’re struggling massively to acquire the elite players we’re targeting so we should maybe focus on what got us where we are, as it was very clearly working. Every big name signing we’ve made (bar maybe Botman due to injuries) has improved as a player and their value has risen a lot. We haven’t needed to sign the finished article because our scouting and negotiating was top notch, finding attainable near-future stars we could improve and push on massively with. Signing the player before they become *that* player was our biggest strength in the top 6 dominant, PSR/FFP world. Something has unquestionably changed in that regard in the last 12 or so months. We’ve come into this window with a small list of long term, hard to acquire targets and have hyper focused on them for many weeks, mostly one at a time. The Guehi saga last summer has foreshadowed this summer perfectly despite Howe saying we don’t want to repeat it. Mitchell’s job was described as “90% recruitment” so I do doubt that he (or the previously exceptional scouts) hadn’t managed to find a single credible first team target in over a year of employment. Just about every player we’ve been seriously linked to this summer had been mentioned before he joined and if not they’re very well known and required minimal scouting. Mainly targeting proven Premier League players from unwilling sellers in this PSR driven world is a dangerous tactic. I obviously get the idea of buying the best possible players but if you’ve got £50 to buy food for a month you shouldn’t go to Harrods. A great post on here by a Bournemouth fan described Howe as being “a control freak and pretty much directly oversaw all aspects of the club”. Everything since his meeting with the Chairman after the Everton game suggests to me we’re at that stage now, rightly or wrongly. Regardless of any of this extreme conjecture, I love him and I’ll back him till the very end.

He signed for us after we’d finished 11th and he’d had a poor season. If he was so highly courted he’d have been nowhere near us, like most of our targets this summer despite us being in a far, far better position. We evidently can’t afford to buy or attract strikers in the elite pool we’re looking at so what do we do?

We signed Isak for half what he’s currently worth, same with most of our signings. Calculated gambles that Howe can maximise just aren’t on the menu these days.

Howe is extremely picky when it comes to signing players, which he said himself a year ago and also recently as a reason why we weren’t signing anyone. That isn’t conducive to our current situation. We’re pleading poverty while fishing in the most expensive stream.

We’ve either done absolutely no scouting at all regarding first team squad players in the last year or Howe has ripped up the list and is chasing his own players. Mitchell leaving implies the second imo. Either way, for the next year we’ll be hearing about how our PSR issues have hampered us this summer despite us making no effort to look for credible bargains and only wanting to pay shit loads/over the odds for proven Premier League players.

Crazy game if anyone hasn’t seen it. Definitely in the top 10 perfect games I’ve seen us have, one where we got everything we wanted and more. 21:42 then 1:47:31 and 1:51:45 being particularly cathartic highlights at the time.

“I think anger can be a positive emotion” Very appropriate thumbnail.

I’m a believer in there being better value to be found in other leagues.

Fees for English Premier League players certainly have, aye.

Wasn’t Bruno less than this? It really sums up how lazy/inept we are with scouting now.

Very much doubt we’ll be in for Kalimuendo. Our current recruitment strategy is like the bit in Fight Club where they have to stand outside the house for a week. Our targets need to be on the shortlist for at least a year before we’ll acknowledge them.

Im seeing this quite a lot this summer. There are plenty of players in between the “crap” and “£50+million, starting for their clubs Premier League players” range, we just either haven’t bothered to scout them or Howe is being far too picky. Today’s links with Ramsay is another example. Either way, It shouldn’t take nearly 3 months (or a year in reality) to improve on what was left of Wilson.

I think the point they’re making is that we decided at least a year ago that our transfer targets this summer were worth buying and for some reason we haven’t identified any new players that might be both affordable and attainable to improve the first 11 or even the squad in the 12 months. Our limited budget, year-long prep time and genuinely excellent track record for finding “work in progress” gems should have seen us trying to box clever in this window instead of resorting to throwing wild haymakers as the clock ticks down because our shortlist of targets turned out to be a lot shorter than we needed. Sorry for venting, it’s late and I’m tired.

7 points off relegation 5th 5 points off relegation

Adding one or two more players still leaves us with a tiny squad before the inevitable injuries. We’ll be losing a fair few players next summer too so it’s important not to neglect the squad in favour of hyper focusing on 2 or 3 first team players.

Poor recruitment will be holding us back on the pitch very soon if we don’t get a move on tbf. This squad playing 50-60 games will end in tears.

It might not matter if they’re not being listened to.

Bournemouth are very good at scouting. Their “hits” in the last few years put most teams to shame and that includes their manager.

Aye, just desperately want any of our missed transfer targets to fail so we can have a minor, petty victory.

00:30 Long live the Pope.

Can we start saying Liverpool have a Wembley hoodoo? How many games does it need to be?

A good, honest, homosexual hating Christian boy wouldn’t do something like than imo.