Clubs with low player turnover are most competitive

[Jamalio Danubio DiCanio]

Most top teams have a strong base XI and then only need to add a couple more.

Teams like us can’t keep their best - as well as manager hopping - so we’re constantly shipping loads in and out so fit.

It's not just losing the better players that hurts. It's having to replace poor ones. Or ones ill suited to a new manager's style of play.

A lot of team struggling to reach their level - whether that's top 6, top 10 or just staying up - go through too many players and managers. The flip flopping of style of football between each manager seems to hurt a lot of teams and results in large turnover of players. Teams who stick to a more defined way of playing (Bournemouth, Burnley), or a more defined football structure (like Watford) seem to have more success in the long run. The Watford example is one where their change their manager often but the style of manager doesn't change dramatically and they don't let the new manager overhaul the playing staff.

The likes of us, Sunderland, Southampton, West Ham have changed manager and playing staff a lot. Probably due to poor decisions at boardroom level. That seeps into a significant turnover in staff just to accommodate the new playing style. The best thing Moshiri and the board could do, in the long run, is that they stick to the style of football being implemented by Silva and Brands. Even if Silva leaves for a better opportunity or because he's sacked. Get on a path and stick to it. The churn will be less in playing staff and that consistency in playing staff should eventually pay dividends if your scouting team are doing their jobs

 

[Martin Alvito]

It's fairly obvious that if you already have good players, you don't need new ones until they age out of being good or are sold.

It's also obvious that the clubs at the top of the food chain can more or less afford whoever they want. (Though there are limits; it seems that United can't afford to remake its squad to suit a new manager every three years.)

What's less obvious are the inherent advantages of continuity in midfield and attack - every attacking play requires numerous passes to succeed, and a single miscommunication can transform a play that would have ended in the back of the net into a turnover. One does not get the telepathy between, say, Xavi, Iniesta and Messi overnight. Similarly, if your back four are not on the same page, you will leak bad goals due.to miscommunications and players generally being out of position.

All of that said, if you're in the situation that we're in where the squad's underlying quality doesn't match its ambition, then you have to throw signings at the wall and hope some of them stick. Our situation at the end of last season was not dissimilar to that of That Other Team when John Henry took over from Hicks and Gillett. The squad was in disarray, the most talented players had been sold, and a full reboot was in order.

We seem to be on a similar trajectory - the initial capital injection was largely wasted due to poor decision-making at the director of football level, but they seemed to learn their lesson quickly and we seem to have done the same, judging by what we've seen so far from this crop of signings. We also may be ahead of them on getting the right manager in place. Or Silva may prove to be our Rodgers - good enough to right the ship, but not good enough to take the squad to the next level.