2020/21 Marcel Brands

[Saint Domingo]

You just listed a load of players who had left when their contracts ended? It's not really my fault if they don't back up your point the way you intended, I can only comment on the post as it is.

I didn’t list the players who were out of contract, I deliberately left them off. No Baines, no Niasse, no Martina. Those players are the players we sold.

 

[Billy Dean]

What’s on the pitch today is the short sighted, wrong way of looking at it. He’s here to ensure the long term footballing future is in place, that the club is self sufficient and producing high calibre youth players

Exactly he has a wide ranging role at the club and not just buying and selling players. And for the transfer that haven't worked out well, I don't think he's buying them in a vacuum. There will be some kind of role in it for the manager too.

 

[Lanolin]

I didn’t list the players who were out of contract, I deliberately left them off. No Baines, no Niasse, no Martina. Those players are the players we sold.

So this list;

Robles - free
Connor Grant - free
Wayne Rooney - free
Mirallas - Free
Jagielka - Free
Williams - Free
Galloway - Free
Sandro - free
Luke Garbutt - free
Stek - free

That’s a lot of players he’s transferred out of the club as it also doesn’t include those who were out of contract (Baines, Niasse, Martina etc.). The ones in bold are the ones we got a higher fee than what we bought them for.

It would be good if we could have got fees for some of the others but Brands can’t control the market for rubbish players that other managers brought in. Regardless of the transfer fees, that’s an awful lot of dross out of the door, an awful lot of wasted wages out of the door.

I’m sure he’d have a far easier time selling some of the signings since he’s been at the club. I’d wager that Richarlison, Digne, Bernard, Lossl, Nkonkou, Branthwaite, James, Moise Kean could all be sold for more than we bought them for and turn quite a profit.

Doesn't include anyone who was out of contract/had their contract paid up, no? Are you sure about that?

 

[Saint Domingo]

So this list;

Doesn't include anyone who was out of contract/had their contract paid up, no? Are you sure about that?

Not according to transfer market, but looking at it again their classification might be incorrect and some of these were definitely coming to the end of their contracts when we transferred them. For me it doesn’t detract from the bigger picture about Brands though (which is where this started). For me he’s done well with our outgoings (whether that be player sales or loans). You disagree, that’s fine.

 

[Lanolin]

Not according to transfer market, but looking at it again their classification might be incorrect and some of these were definitely coming to the end of their contracts when we transferred them. For me it doesn’t detract from the bigger picture about Brands though (which is where this started). For me he’s done well with our outgoings (whether that be player sales or loans). You disagree, that’s fine.

I don't even disagree that much, I just think it's ridiculous to say he's worked wonders. It's like saying Iwobi was world class yesterday or whatever. You don't have to be amazing or awful, you can just be doing OK. If he'd sold Tosun, Schneiderlin, Walcott, Sandro and Niasse for £50m i'd say he'd worked wonders. As it is, he's pretty much turned over what i'd expect for the players who've gone out of the door; maybe slightly more, maybe slightly less, but not particularly notable either way.

Again, i'm not saying it would be easy to get rid of the likes of Besic, Bolasie etc, I'm just saying he hasn't done it. It's a statement of fact that a number of the players we have complained about being a drain on resources are either still here or left when their contract ended/was paid up. There's genuinely not that much 'dead wood' that we've managed to shift in any other way. That doesn't mean he's doing a bad job, but I think it's fair to point it out when he's getting praised for it.

 

[jamieni]

Exactly he has a wide ranging role at the club and not just buying and selling players. And for the transfer that haven't worked out well, I don't think he's buying them in a vacuum. There will be some kind of role in it for the manager too.

I think he said himself there is a transfer committee which includes the manager. The players we brought in this summer improved the team no doubt, although jury still out on Godfrey.

Brands does have a good reputation in Europe but the recruitment here has still been patchy. You’d imagine as long as we have a competent negotiator alongside the pulling power of Ancelotti we’ll be okay. I guess my verdict on Brands so far is meh.

 

[BarryThompson1]

United are after him . https://www.yardbarker.com/general_...chester_united_for_dof_role/s1_15962_33382199

 

[MikeH72]

United are after him . https://www.yardbarker.com/general_sports/articles/marcel_brands_is_being_courted_by_manchester_united_for_dof_role/s1_15962_3338219

What the hell is that website you keep quoting?

 

[Toffeelover]

Not being funny but this line of argument is coming up all the time and it's absolutely batpoo crazy. Do you think Moyes and Martinez used to do all the negotiating of deals themselves?! You can't be paying a director of football just to haggle over prices, there's people already at the club who can do that surely. And if you're better keeping the one you know than getting one you don't, does that mean we should have kept Walsh?

Moyes did not have a DOF, neither did Martinez or first. So who did the chat?

 

[Lanolin]

Moyes did not have a DOF, neither did Martinez or first. So who did the chat?

Seriously? I mean I wasn’t there but it will have been kenwright/wyness/elstone etc. You thought a manager could just ring up Chelsea and say we’ll give you £28m for lukaku? Jesus wept.

 

[Toffeelover]

Seriously? I mean I wasn’t there but it will have been kenwright/wyness/elstone etc. You thought a manager could just ring up Chelsea and say we’ll give you £28m for lukaku? Jesus wept.

The point is we did not have a dedicated DOF position. Lukaku at the time had been on loan Chelsea wanted rid and we came along. Think you will find that Martinez wanted him and BK did the dealing.

 

[Toffeelover]

It put Sidibe in with the Bad list, i have never seen a defensive player who was that bad at defending, fine going forward though.

He was just a loan, wasn't he?

 

[Toffeelover]

United have had managers who wanted players but Woodward couldn’t deliver them, all the way back to Moyes wanting Bale and Herrera. Ancelotti himself has said that Brands delivered the players he wanted. If they are working well together then why would we want to mess that up and road to a situation where Ancelotti isn’t getting the players he wants because our DOF can’t get them over the line, or he can’t work with the DOF as well as he is with Marcel.

I just don’t buy into this line of thinking ‘Richarlison was a Silva signing, James was an Ancelotti one, but Brands bought Delph’ ‘if Ancelotti is picking the players what does Brands do?’. No decent manager in football will accept a situation where they cannot pick their own players so this idea of Brands being somehow undermined because Ancelotti picked the players he wanted doesn’t sit with me, I can’t understand that line of thinking. A more logical reaction would be to say that Ancelotti had a pretty ambitious wish list when he arrived containing James Rodriguez and Allan, and Brands delivered on it.

I’ve posted before that I don’t see an either or situation here. Moyes was able to effectively fulfill both roles in his earlier days when scouting was him and Alan Irvine getting in a car to see a championship game. Now the game is far more global and I doubt Ancelotti has the time to be overseeing a global scouting network, a massive academy operation, players contracts and image rights, the financial side of complying with regulations, the actual negotiations of transfers. Ancelotti says who he wants, trains the first team, and probably gets involved in selling the vision to incoming transfers etc. Brands will be directing the operation on everything else so that Carlo can just focus on the first team.

If we get rid of the DOF all that football infrastructure will have to sit with someone else. Now do we want our world class manager taking time away from coaching the first team to deal with this stuff? Do we want to give some of it back to Bill? Maybe to Denise, we can distract her away from delivering the stadium and running the business of Everton. Or we could maybe leave it with the one person at Everton who is qualified to do it, has done it before, and negotiated James Rodriguez on a free. Maybe we just let him get on with it rather than come up with ever more creative ways of criticising him.

Well said, a bit of commonsense.

 

[Simon Buttle]

He was just a loan, wasn't he?

Yeah, there was talk about us signing him at one point thank god we did'nt, i only mentioned him as the original post i responded to had Zouma listed in it and we only loaned him.

 

[Wayno]

I reckon Carlo, his lad, Brands and a couple of others have a WhatsApp group where they screenshot posts in threads like this and collapse laughing all over the place.

Absolute madness lads, keep it up. Proper BAWK stuff