Most players who lose their spot in the XI/ squad generally become discontent and eventually want a move though, it's why Lucas wanted out of PSG despite seemingly having a good relationship with a number of players. I think Rose is just different because he has a vendetta against Levy and would rather suck up a wage than accept a deal elsewhere. It's not as if he's not had interested parties. Disagree on the others being slightly too good to be replaced with youth though. If we'd properly managed KWP well enough he'd still be here and above Aurier/ Doherty. Likewise if Skipp had a loan or more game time last season he'd likely be here above Winks and Sissoko. There's probably an argument for Edwards too, we all could see his talent and even though he certainly had an attitude issue he spoke out after leaving saying he felt that label lasted longer than it should have. We've not handled our youth well enough really in recent years and that's come back to bite us pretty hard. I said the other day that looking at the likes of KWP, Madueke and Edwards, could maybe chuck Binks in their too, they probably have a combined market value of around £60m-£80m at the moment, meanwhile we're stuck with Dier, Lucas, Lamela and Aurier/ Doherty because we've persisted with players whose use by dates are well long gone.
The players are getting enough time though, that’s half the complaint - filler material playing too much because we can’t shift them and recruit better/more suitable players. I think the youth point stands because there is always a bedding in period with young players. Skipp looks like he’s doing well at Norwich and I look forward to him coming back for us but he’s not going to get to that level playing cup games and the odd PL last-15 for us, he needs playing time. Which brings us full circle to not loaning out players enough over the last few years because we now, for example, have confidence that Skipp would be a better option for us than Winks or Sissoko a lot of the time, but we couldn’t have said that if he hadn’t gone on loan. So basically we should have given more of the youth opportunities to show their quality at well-chosen loans and then that might have allowed us to make the case better to players on the fringes that they should move on. As it is, we haven’t been able to do that, so the fringe senior players have continued to get plenty of minutes. So they stay and the squad composition remains extremely unfavourable towards making significant structural change.
There's very little point in looking back and assigning blame, but we do need to learn from our mistakes and move forward. We can't and won't pay what a number of our domestic competitors do, so we need to find alternative methods. The academy and loan systems worked well for us and we need to get back to them. We also need to find good value signings and avoid getting into competitions for players.
That's sort of part of my issue though, we're not shifting them because we're still playing them, it doesn't feel like we're actively trying to get rid of those who it's easy to see just aren't good enough, so it isn't a case of not being able to shift, it's a case of we're not even trying too. The Amazon doc raised eyebrows when Jose and Joao were saying you can't get much better than Lucas, Lamela and Dele, when realistically you definitely can as you can just look at some of the other teams (including smaller/ lesser clubs) in the Prem who have better players/ better performing players in similar positions. With regards to Skipp, I think he could've/ should've got a lot more chances and starts last season than he did, especially when the only two regular options were Winks and Sissoko seeing as Ndombele and Lo Celso were injured or not in favour. There were quite a few fans at the time calling for him to be given more inclusion - or equally given a loan. It's just been a case of terribly mishandling things and we're paying the price for it now - and will likely continue to do so for quite some time.
Part of the blame lies with Poch who always had a bit of a 'silo' mentality in that whilst he was always willing to give youth a chance, the player had to get up to speed VERY quickly, and stay there. The same applied to senior players too. He inherited this from Bielsa who also prefers a relatively small, streamlined squad of players fully 'bought in' to the system and all rowing hard in the same direction. It is telling that Leeds last year largely relied on the same group of 16-17 players in almost every game with the fringe players barely getting a look in. It is telling that 6 Leeds players last season clocked almost 50 appearances, which is a ridiculous amount. But that was exactly what we were seeing year in year out from Kane, Eriksen, Toby, Dele etc. - all playing 50+ games a year. The Bielsa philosophy works when the streamlined group of 16-17 are of the necessary quality to carry that burden. But by the end of his career here, Poch started to confuse loyalty for quality, often picking the players who caused the least trouble and showed the most loyalty to him. I think this only got worse in the wake of the CL final defeat as the silo mentality became more of a bunker and certain players were completely frozen out. The Colchester debacle demonstrated this horribly - you will never see fringe players look more disinterested, more certain that their performance would bear absolutely no relevance to their chances of more appearances, than that game. I was hoping Jose would have the clout to break this pattern, but if anything he is actually reinforcing it and making it worse by not only continuing to rely on Poch group of loyalists who work hard, sweat lots but contribute very little...has has added to that by bringing players Poch was clearly trying to phase out back into the fold (Dier, Toby, Lucas, Aurier) and made them his new group of under-achievers.
Well I did say I expected us to focus primarily on outgoings this window, I was just hoping there’d be a few more of the deadwood involved in that in order to help start freeing up some space for summer arrivals so that we didn’t have so much to do in one window with regards to both outgoings and incomings. Let the good times roll!
I just read that Gedson's move to Galatasaray went through even though he has tested positive to COVID-19
On the subject of shifting deadwood, it has to be said there's a bunch of U23 players who we should've moved on a year or two ago such as Sterling or Georgiou who are either still on our books or have only just been moved on This is the issue with our using loans to get value up on players we were looking to move out: for every player who got a run of games that led to a move, for example Connor Ogilvie played 20-30 league games a season before joining Gillingham permanently, we have loans like Sterling or Georgiou a couple of seasons ago or CCV this season who sit on the bench every game, meaning we aren't raising their value nor are we generating interest in them, so they stick around for another year and the process repeats itself
Cut to this time next year when Real Madrid have built their team around him on the way to another Champions League.
