Moving to five subs next season is arguably going to make it more important than ever to have a deep squad (of sufficient quality). Sides who are finding themselves with lots of inexperienced kids, or Championship level fodder, within their 18 on-field players are going to suffer. Not at the hands of the likes of City and Liverpool (who they'll suffer against anyway), but against any direct rival for league position where said rival does have a stronger, deeper squad.
So,Ralph chose to spend £75k pw on Theo for 2 years contract - and couldnt get another player for £75k pw on a free. Dont be silly, youre making stuff up to defend him.
Liverpool’s net spend is also probably influenced by the fact (not checked so not ‘fact’) they have a few say £80m players to sell and may buy 1.5 £60m players. For that. We only have potentially 1 £50m player. It actually makes us worse as net spend is from offloading **** cheap players.
Agreed Brendy, and the net spend over 5 years is subjective as the £75m VVD windfall is included which skews the figures massively. I would rather see how much was spent on each PL team not the net figure as that is a fairer assessment of the quality. Ralph has never got to grips with the defence since he has been here and we have always been vunerable to dropping points even when we have played well and scored goals. Since the Villa game the performance levels have dropped off a cliff and it's difficult to argue that we have deserved many points in that time which was not the case at the start of the season.
Pretty sure Ralph would happily take only having ten of our first team, and £75m to spend on new players.
I've quickly totted up how much we have spent on the current first team squad and it totals £170m which obviously doesn't include JWP or Theo's wages.
Its not hugely subjective as it shows that we have been selling a lot of players rather than just adding to the squad. Every summer we tend to lose at least one of our top players from the previous year, so the net spend factors that in. We might be quite high up just the “spend” list but that doesn’t show that we have had to replace our best players every year way more than any other team
What if we just talk about Ralph's time here and not include VVD's fee? How many "top" players has Ralph lost?...Danny and Pierre (who was not considered much of a loss at the time)
Yeah he might do, but to say that Vieira has a similar record and getting loads of plaudits is hugely over simplifying the situation. Palace were in a real mess/opportunity/unknown depending on your take at the start of last summer. He has got them playing well with a new side in a short space of time. Ralph had a settled side and added to it this summer and at the end of the window most people thought we had the depth we had lacked last year (albeit without some of the star quality Ings provided). I don’t think it’s fair to compare Ralph and Vieira as the circumstances are wildly different. Potter and Ralph might be fairer but I don’t know enough about Brighton to really say. I think they’ve been in the jobs a similarish length of time?
Obviously the transfer situation is dire, and nobody disputes that. But we still have a Premier League quality team, that went relatively injury-free this whole season. And look at individuals. Salisu is so obviously, potentially one of the best defenders in the league. He was incredible early in the season. What has happened to him? It has to be the coaching, because he looks half-arsed and he keeps making the same mistakes. And Adam Armstrong. Just give the lad a consistent run of games instead of 15 minutes here and there. Hasn't started a league game for us in 2022. Hasn't started two games in a row since November. Starts yesterday, scores with a nice finish (yes, I know).
Yeah those are the only two I can think of. Vestergaard and Targett are the others off the top of my head who brought in £10m+ More an indictment of our squad really though. Now we have 2 or 3 who may attract massive bids this summer (JWP, KWP and Tino though he won’t now due to injury) Remains to be seen if anyone is sold this window we don’t want to lose.
I’m on the fence still. Also, although I see the performances I don’t have all the background facts. The way I see it is that the new owners have invested in us, want us to be successful so I am going to let them decide. No point arguing on a gorgeous Sunday. I’m going to take a look outside and be thankful for what we have. Let Sport Republic have a bad Sunday arguing how to go.
I’ve said twice now that I’d get it if the ownership decided to change it. It’s impossible to say what the opportunity cost of getting Walcott was. We don’t know what alternatives were considered or if any were at all. And as our transfer business is decided by committee it is genuinely “making stuff up” to pin signing Walcott on RH, or say that the only reason Armstrong may not be playing is that he’s an arrogant megalomaniac. Settle down.
Am glad you wrote about the 'net spend'. Its not a representative number to justify the performance of Ralph.
It really isnt making stuff up pinning Theo on Ralph. He is the manager, if he didnt want him we wouldn’t have signed him. Think you are being a little naive with that one. I’m happy to leave it there though with you, we’d likely go round in circles.
On paper I’d say our squad is better than Norwich, Watford, Leeds and Burnley. Possibly Brentford and Palace aswell which if you include those 2 would put us at 14th position in the table squad wise imo. We currently are 15th so if you look at it from that high level perspective he’s not doing too bad a job, either one place below or above where we should be dependant on your opinion of Palace and Brentford. Yes weve had some piss poor results/performances/runs under him but we’ve also had some pretty great results/performances/runs under him as well. And overall picture is he is doing an OK job in my view based on the team he has. As mentioned before the big question is if we are planning on spending some real money this window whether they want to trust it with him or go in a different direction as the overall performance alone aren’t enough to sack him
It's more than just points totals and positions. It's that we rarely seem able to put together a solid 90 minute performance. And that we constantly drop points from winning positions. It's the fact that for the second season in a row, we have completely capitulated. It's that certain players aren't playing as well as they should. It's that our defence is still so bloody weak, despite having a load of quality defenders and two of the best defensive mids in the country. We have all seen how well we can play. So why is it that only seems to last for a handful of games each season?
I am still very much in the Ralph in camp even if he is starting to test the patience of a few thousand Saints. I know at the end of the day the buck stops with the manager but how much of it is also down to the players? Perhaps we should have an in or out thread for every first team player too.
