Christ there’s some ****e on that list. Liam Walsh was personally one of the worst signings for me. It’s as if he just forgot to get on the Swansea team coach back to Swansea and we said **** it, we’ll sign him.
Definitely, all I’d say that period really sums up the direction the club was going in. Albeit Christie aside the domestic recruitment has still been pretty cack since Acun took over
I seem to remember Baxter being interviewed and he said he preferred to play out from the back, he trained and played this way with Chelsea. Only I watched him earlier this season and he didn't look happy with the ball at his feet playing out from the back and looked dodgier than Ingram. I don't think I would miss Baxter, Simons, Vale and even the invisible man - Mr Oulad M'hand if they all returned back to their parent clubs. As it appears we are paying nearly £50K per week for players not to play for City, I can't see Acun enjoying bleeding cash week after week.
I think Baxter just said what the management wanted to hear so he'd get signed. Salah is as good as our player, I don't think he's going anywhere.
See, I'd feel at least some sympathy for Darnborough if the other clubs of a similar size and operating budget weren't making much better signings than we were. In the 2018/19 season, while we were signing the likes of Milinkovic, Todd Kane, Ridgewell and Martin, Boro signed Aden Flint, Djed Spence, Jordan Hugill, Muhammed Besic, Danny Batth and George Saville. We had both come down from the Premier League at the same time, so we weren't short of cash so to speak. The Liam Walsh signing I think was to replace Matt Smith, I don't think Acun thought anything of it other than "ooh, sign him, he scored against us" and it just so happened that he was available. I mean he's gone on to make a grand total of zero appearances for Swansea this season. In fact, he's made SEVENTY EFL appearances across SIX Championship clubs in EIGHT years. What the **** were we thinking?
Salah I’m fine with as it seems we have an option to sign him permanently and he’s not on 5 figures a week. Vale though… Cannot believe we’re paying him his £25k-a-week wage in full and he’s played maybe three times and only one of those was a start. Absolutely shocking. I’d expect that to be what Seri and Tufan are on. I must say, Acun’s almost maxed our FFP headroom and he’s spunked a fair share of it on dross and dead rubbers in one window. I think the club got recruitment massively wrong. We should’ve replaced Smallwood with a younger, more talented defensive midfielder, even if it meant offering wages equal to what we offered Seri and Tufan. We should’ve utilised our loan slots more efficiently. Injuries haven’t helped but we’ve ****ed ourselves with how we recruited in the summer.
Salah will be fit in a few weeks (barring yet another setback) and we've agreed a fee for him as part of his contract. If he can put this injury hell behind him and crack on, that fee will be an absolute bargain. He's not costing us much at all, in fact he's probably the lowest paid first team player (outside of our academy products) we have.
I don’t think a loan player will imperil us in terms of FFP. It’s the longer term signings on big contracts that are the main problem, in 2 or 3 years time when the influence of the previous owners’ tight finances disappears.
Patino was absolutely shocking in the match at their place. Obviously a good player but evidence that loan players are rarely anywhere near the finished article. Woods at least offers consistency.
That one wasn't even bad in hindsight, it was bad at the time. As you say, he'd barely made any appearances because he was ****, and I think it really was a case of "Yeah he scored against us" which worked so well with Dicko..
Yes, as FFP is judged over a three year window, a one year (or six month) loan will have very minimal bearing on FFP. But I suppose anything to try to bring that chestnut up again..
I see that the Enzo Fernandez release clause from Benfica is a mere £106 million. Come on Acun, put your money where your mouth is.
Walsh had about ten minutes at Peterborough when I thought he might have something, but that was it. Shocking signing.
I know, wasn't talking about you. In fact my post was agreeing with you that bringing it up was irrelevant.
He's only been on the payroll since the end of August too, so it's a 4 month loan assuming it's ended in the next few days. FFP wise, it shouldn't do much damage I know in hindsight it's been a horrible deal for us, but he was very highly rated and if he'd have turned out to be another Mount, Abraham, Gallagher or James level of player at this level it would've been a great deal.
They had a great crop over recent years, the crop he falls into however just isn’t that great. He and Simons are the best that age group has to offer and they’ll have football league careers but are hardly destined for the top unlike others in recent years. I’ll never forget Reece James at 18/19 pocketing Turbo with ease when he played for Wigan
I still can't agree with that. Even if he was the leading scorer in the league I would think 25k for a kid is too much to be paying. The only way I don't think it matters is if we're top of the league and we know we're heading into PL money. The fact we turned down signing a player in a role we needed because of a wage dispute but then happily agreed to paying this is just a massive head scratcher.
