You’re right of course, I’m just stating our dilemma, it would be near impossible to keep such players, but we then can’t moan, with the players we have making mistakes.. At best, most are the level we’re at.. you said it yourself regarding Bentley, he’s with us and not playing at a higher level for a bigger club or one in the Premiership.. so with that level in mind it has to be accepted, mistakes are inevitable..
Not if the recruitment improves and the signing of James, Atkinson and Tanner seems to indicate that it might well be going in that direction. The previous 3 years has been patchy at best, if we sell our best players for good money and SL allows us to re invest that money then we have to spend it wisely and look for players like Atkinson and Tanner, who will hopefully improve ala Webster or Brownhill and show another profit, to reinvest again, it's the life of a championship side. The truth is we had a great chance to move out of this division in the 2017/18 season and blew it in the January window, those chances don't come along that often and we are living to regret it at the moment.
We need the likes of ODowda, Palmer and Williams (if he can stay fit) to do what Scott, Pring and Massengo have done so far this season and Wells, DaSilva and Semenyo have done today and that is to take their chance when it comes their way and over a long period of time 2 of them have failed to do that under 3 managers.
There is a still money in the PL and teams relegated from the PL as their income wasn’t so badly affected by the pandemic as largely from TV money. We have to ensure if he or other players move to a higher level, we negotiate a good deal for them. If we’ then invest the income wisely on other players that in turn will progress to a higher level, either with us, or if sold will also again generate income. Unfortunately we failed to do this with the money we had for Webster, Browhill etc which is why we find ourselves in the situation we’re now in.,
Spot on the Leicester/Southampton and now Brentford model is the one to follow, produce, sell, reinvest and produce some more etc. The fans might not like it but it makes total sense financially. Toney for instance on yesterdays showing v Wolves looks every bit a premiership player and I expect him to be moving on probably next season and of course they will bag big money for him. Our problem is we have to probably double the 7mil we paid for Massengo to show a reasonable profit. The good news is, I never realised that his parents moved over with him to Bristol and of course that might be an influence.
My worry is PL clubs know how desperate the situation is for clubs in our position so will drop the amount they are prepared to pay despite they’re income not being particularly affected. This will make it increasingly difficult for clubs in n our position to use this method. The gap between the parachute payment teams and the rest in the championship will be such that it won’t be fair competition, that’s true already , but unless something is done it will become much worse. Our chance, and teams like us, of finally getting to the PL will become almost impossible.
There’s a good match thread on the QPR board if you are curious to read the opposition fans views: https://www.not606.com/threads/qpr-vs-bristol-city.395650/
I suppose our best hope is that more than one team are prepared to enter a bidding war for players like Massengo and Atkinson. As for the parachute disparity, that is another reason that our 2018 January window failure has come back to bite us squarely in the arse, I know that there were never any guarantees that better investment could have changed things but Diony, Walsh and Kent were all failures for us and 4 wins out of the last 22 games of that season even screwed up a play off place, that failure has made our task far more difficult, that's for sure.
I agree, to a point. In their defence January is a notoriously difficult, and expensive, time to buy players.
IMHO that is no defence if you are genuinely pushing for promotion, either we are or we are not, it's that simple, if we are not genuine and awaiting a miracle then say so and remember the 5 year plan?, if the owner makes bold statements then at least back it up for the final push, I am aware of the difficulty in January but again the owner and the fans can't have it both ways, a bit of honesty now and then wouldn't hurt would it. Of course unless the manager and Ashton knew the total recruitment budget and blew it all in the summer?
Great result and good to see Wells on the scoresheet. The through ball from Weimann for the winner was absolutely superb !
Hopefully it’ll give Wells confidence and he can kick on, if he does that will make a hell of a difference to our fortunes this year IMO
