A Comment On The Transfer Business to Date

[Kaiser Soysauce]

In reality Moshiri cannot win. Last summer most of us were pant-wetters at the dash and verve of the club. Buying early, promising players with what appeared to be a Good manager, even the pundits were talking of us breaking into the top echelon. Given how they hate us, this was remarkable.

Then the season started. A cruel set of opening fixtures really did for the confidence of not only the squad, but crucially the manager and the supporters.

Cue panic. Somehow we ended up with the alleged crook and actual gravy guzzler.

Now those players we all (mostly) thought were going to see us break through are largely dead wood and mistakes. How wonderful is hindsight.

Now it is necessary to undo it all and start again. Hands up those of us with 250 million to spare, so no wonder we have to cut the wage bill.

Truly wonderful.

 

[Verbal Kint]

Walsh didn't work out that's obvious but Moshiri can't be blamed, he poached the man that helped Leicester City win the league. We all thought it was going to be brilliant, trouble with wanting success so quickly is we paid ransom amounts for absolute garbage. Needs a total overhaul now, Brands will need to sell sell sell and get quality instead of quantity. Might well take 4 transfer windows before we can even see us challenging for top 4 again. What's another 2 years when we've waited 23.

 

[catcherintherye]

Two reasons... Swansea wanted (and duly got) major league money for him and Koeman was practically obsessed with signing him to the point where he didn't care about the fee.

The Sigurdsson saga was extremely damaging. It showed we hadn't really changed the system much and as Brands hinted
"they are going for a new model now" on his arrival seemed to acknowledge that.

A DOF is meant to negate managers selecting players and getting them irrespective of the cost and value to the club. That was what went wrong with Niasse and what we tried to correct. Oddly I think Sigurdsson will have a much better season next season and like Niasse may prove his worth in time.

However I'm not sure it's an excuse to say it's not Moshiri's fault for Walsh. He brought in a guy who couldn't do the job, and allowed a manager to dictate whatever he wanted.

 

[catcherintherye]

It's quite simple really, we would all like a rush of quality signings in the areas we need most, now.

But Brands and Silva are having to deal with the incompetence and errors of Koeman and Walsh, and the naivete of Moshiri.

I don't believe there is a large transfer budget to play with, especially not with last summers excess and the wage demands that go with such a bloated squad and nobody amongst them we could cash in for big money.

Add to this reduced prize money from league placing, no European football next season and an early exit last, as well as FFP/STCC restraints already mentioned and its not hard to do the maths. Without any mention of the new stadium supposedly (far) on the horizon.

Moshiri is not a game-changing investor, I never thought his arrival would herald a slew of big-money, glamour arrivals, and whilst he is to be congratulated for loosening the purse strings, a large part of the outlay to date has been financed by sales and TV revenue. All I ask of him really is that he finally does the necessary to get to grips with the financial and commercial operation of the club, and learns from previous mistakes with his chosen appointments, to make us sustainable and competitive, in a world where TV rights and the future is very much open to question. I hope he has finally gone some way to doing that with the new appointments, most particularly Brands.

So, with limited money to spend on the squad we have to buy young and cheap-ish and look to sell at significant profit. Spurs, Atletico, Monaco, Dortmund, and also Porto,and yes, PSV are the templates for this. The players that fit this template are out there, as these mentioned clubs have proven, we just have to be innovative, bold, aggressive, and creative in both identifying them, and financing them.

I think the problem is mate in many ways he was sold to us as a game changing investor. The continued links to Usmanov suggest as much, as did a slew of articles obviously leaked to the press. The way we approached the last two seasons, spending money like it was going out of fashion on lads who's resale value would decline almost the moment they joined us seemed to underpin that.

I'm glad we've gone for a different model now. I hope we hear more from Brands and the new system is re-enforced with each press conference we make with a new signing. Even if more money is available and Usmanov (or another investor) formal comes in if we have the right recruitment system in place we will be in a far stronger position than trying to do a bad impression of Roman in his early days at Chelsea.

We need to get back to what we did under Moyes, but with the ability to plan transfers summer to summer and if we get momentum to maybe a key signing as and when necessary.

 

[Jokerdan]

I am sure we will get the players Silva and Brands REALLY want - sure, we need to offload players but IMO that is not a pre-requisite to buying in new ones. We're simply using this as a smokescreen to avoid being ripped a new one like we were last season especially over the Siggy affair. It's like a game of poker and whoever blinks first. If we go in brandishing big wads of cash then be sure someone will gladly lighten us of it plus. But if we adopt a more conservative approach...and show that we are ready to walk away...then other clubs' expectations are immediately harnassed. Better to sell a disgruntled player or one nearing the end of a contract for £20m than try and hold on for an extra £10m and perhaps miss out.

Let's face it, at this moment in our history we are never going to be in the market for 'worldies' (would rather we made them, anyway) but there are plenty of very good players out there still to be had and, after all, it's a team game. Getting the chemistry and balance right is more important than flushing £50-60m on one player who doesn't fit the plan but just happens to be well known and a recognised 'face' on the football European/World stage. Square pegs and round holes springs to mind. Fingers crossed that Brands and Silva have already identified such players 'under the radar' and are happy to let the media continue with their 'slow news day' speculation.

 

[Igrok]

So, what does it all mean?
Everton that?

 

[brieverton]

I think the problem is mate in many ways he was sold to us as a game changing investor. The continued links to Usmanov suggest as much, as did a slew of articles obviously leaked to the press. The way we approached the last two seasons, spending money like it was going out of fashion on lads who's resale value would decline almost the moment they joined us seemed to underpin that.

I'm glad we've gone for a different model now. I hope we hear more from Brands and the new system is re-enforced with each press conference we make with a new signing. Even if more money is available and Usmanov (or another investor) formal comes in if we have the right recruitment system in place we will be in a far stronger position than trying to do a bad impression of Roman in his early days at Chelsea.

We need to get back to what we did under Moyes, but with the ability to plan transfers summer to summer and if we get momentum to maybe a key signing as and when necessary.

The links to Usmanov are unfortunately yet more examples of lazy, very lazy journalism and people in social media circles having too much time on their hands.

It's fun and interesting to speculate, but there has been nothing of substance regarding Usmanov.

I learned on the evening of the announcement of Moshiri's share acquisition that he was worh less than Peter Coates, the Stoke Chairman, and as far as I was concerned, that set a very definate ceiling on the type of spending we could anticipate. I was still pleased though, and hoped that Moshiri could use his business acumen and contacts to good effect and run us in an efficient, lean manner with everything focussed on providing support to the manager for signings and the new stadium.

We are coming to this new model 2 1/2 years late, and those are wasted years where we have fallen further behind. But better late than never. I still hold Spurs as the model, its not long ago that they too were changing managers and DOFs with regularity and were seemingly nothing but hype. They have learned from past mistakes and have an excellent calibre of executive leadership and management. You get the feeling there that the whole club is moving together in unison and whilst no club will get every decision right, they have beeen correct in all of the key strategic decisions made over a period of several years.

They are the template for us. Whilst I think Brands is potentially a very shrewd appointment, I remain very sceptical of the abilties of people like Barrett-Baxendale and Ryazantsev, and the board as a whole, no disrespect to them personally, to be able to drive the change and reform agenda we need to transform the club from being set up for continuous middling mediocrity to being set-up to sustain progress and growth, as well as success on the pitch ultimately. I hope I am wrong with those doubts.

 

[Carl O'Ancelotti]

No comment.

 

[Mitch Ward's Minder]

I am sure we will get the players Silva and Brands REALLY want - sure, we need to offload players but IMO that is not a pre-requisite to buying in new ones. We're simply using this as a smokescreen to avoid being ripped a new one like we were last season especially over the Siggy affair. It's like a game of poker and whoever blinks first. If we go in brandishing big wads of cash then be sure someone will gladly lighten us of it plus. But if we adopt a more conservative approach...and show that we are ready to walk away...then other clubs' expectations are immediately harnassed. Better to sell a disgruntled player or one nearing the end of a contract for £20m than try and hold on for an extra £10m and perhaps miss out.

Let's face it, at this moment in our history we are never going to be in the market for 'worldies' (would rather we made them, anyway) but there are plenty of very good players out there still to be had and, after all, it's a team game. Getting the chemistry and balance right is more important than flushing £50-60m on one player who doesn't fit the plan but just happens to be well known and a recognised 'face' on the football European/World stage. Square pegs and round holes springs to mind. Fingers crossed that Brands and Silva have already identified such players 'under the radar' and are happy to let the media continue with their 'slow news day' speculation.

Those types of players were available last summer, Maguire and Robertson from Hull spring to mind who we could have bought for the same price as Keane. I think with Moshiri's fat wedge burning a hole in the back pocket of his Farahs, we obviously thought if we flexed some financial muscle top players would flock to us. How wrong we were! I'm still confident in our younger players however, who just need good experienced (not over the hill experienced) players to work alongside.
We were ultimately mugged off last summer, but hopefully we have learnt to be a bit more savvy in the market.

 

[Blue Juice]

Not too assed about the ins, would really have liked more of the utter guff we've collected to already be out of the door

 

[Papa Shango]

Those types of players were available last summer, Maguire and Robertson from Hull spring to mind who we could have bought for the same price as Keane. I think with Moshiri's fat wedge burning a hole in the back pocket of his Farahs, we obviously thought if we flexed some financial muscle top players would flock to us. How wrong we were! I'm still confident in our younger players however, who just need good experienced (not over the hill experienced) players to work alongside.
We were ultimately mugged off last summer, but hopefully we have learnt to be a bit more savvy in the market.

To be fair the Keane signing made perfect sense last summer at the value was about right. We were not to know that he was going to leave his balls in Burnley.

 

[Eggs]

..amazed you could write so much, I was half expecting a blank page.

 

[Baines' left foot]

Screenshotting this to read on the tube later. I always enjoy @catcherintherye ’s posts.

 

[Goat]

 

[Toffe3m4n]

Good read mate.

I'm willing to be patient, simply because there's not been an awful lot of transfer activity elsewhere yet anyway.