Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

Nothing is essentially easy in football I suppose but when your defence is as bad as ours, it really shouldn’t be difficult to improve either. We have relegation calibre defenders yet title winning calibre forwards, that awful defence will have played a huge factor in the reason we could be set to lose arguably the club’s greatest ever player.

We cannot head into the Brentford game with any of the current options at CB (bar Romero obviously), it’s suicidal and massively detrimental to Ange’s chances of building a good team and getting off to a good start. Though by leaving it so late, any new CB won’t have had a lot of time to settle in, so Ange is already up against it which he has my sympathies over.

Levy is currently letting down his manager and this isn’t the first time such a sentence will have been said.

 

Once more I get that sinking feeling that we will be starting on the back foot again , if we do sell HK and get a replacement plus the addition of a couple of decent CBs not including the youngsters from Blackburn and Bristol City they are going to take time to gel and get up to prem speed .
I hope the crowd see what has happened and not get at the manager , he will need 2 more windows after this one to ship out the surplus and form his team and philosophy

 

Oh we are, that’s for sure. No new CB and a strong possibility of not having Kane means we’re right up against it already.

I can only gauge social media but there seems to be both tons of support and huge amounts of sympathy for Ange so early on. He’s brought a real positive aura to the club but equally fans are well aware he’s already being let down and it’s just unacceptable. Any vitriol from the fans at games if things don’t go our way will be aimed at Levy I think, it was at an all time high last season and I don’t see it changing. He’s burnt too many bridges now in my opinion and only seems to be burning more rather than trying to build/ rebuild them.

 

In defence of Levy, can we really buy any more players without getting rid of some first?

 

This has been true for years though.

Opposition clubs are playing exactly the same game Levy likes to play. They know we're desperate to offload players, so are lowballing or stalling in order to force a panic sale.

Ultimately I would have more sympathy for Levy if we were talking about a luxury signing - an extra addition or two who would be lovely to have but not essential. By all means, sell before buying.

But we're talking about a basic component of a standard team here. We have one CB who resembles a professional footballer and he is a headless chicken. The rest are simply not good enough and we have upwards of 3 years' evidence supporting that.

This then becomes the equivalent of not installing running water in the stadium until we've sold more burgers. The season is two weeks away and there is no running water. It's as basic as that and whilst waiting to sell more burgers is a nice idea, it is naiive to equate the importance of the two - especially when the burgers are cold, undercooked and missing the pickles.

 

There's no question Ange will avoid the blame. I'm still amazed Levy survived last season, especially the farcical manner in which it concluded. I think it was only the fact that many of the perceived problems were blamed on Conte's irrational stubbornness that gave him another chance.

But he has run out of places to hide. He cannot plead poverty. He cannot plead ignorance. He cannot continue to blame managers and DoFs when he appointed them in the first place.

The only place left to hide is behind Kane signing a new deal, which is why I hope he doesn't as it immediately gives Levy breathing space and he can bask in the reflected 'glory' of securing one of our best ever players and club icon to a new contract.

 

The problem is that whilst we can’t sell players (for whatever reasons), we can’t keep bringing in new players. The wage bill will be ridiculous with millions being wasted on players who aren’t playing. I think we can only register 25 in a squad but I’m not sure how many we currently have.

We can’t have players that cost 100s of thousands a week in salary that aren’t even registered to play.

It’s not as simplistic as simply buying players that we fancy. We need to concentrate on outgoings MORE than incomings before we can improve the squad.

 

Davison Sanchez is on around £4m per year and has one year left of his contract.

Joe Rodon is on around £1.5m per year and has two years left.

I agree it isn't a good look at all for a supposedly elite club to start tearing up contracts, but £7m is probably the margin of error on our annual accounts report.

It wasn't so long ago we went into a season with Janssen and Nkoudou on the pay roll but without a squad number as we didn't have space. Our need to do similar is greater now than it was then.

 

Only if the lesser defenders are actually better than the ones we already had. I don't think it is obvious that even Tabsoba or Van der Ven are a clear improvement, never mind more easily obtainable ones.
I happen to think that our main defensive failings have been in midfield and wing back rather than center back and a shift to four at the back might well help that.

 

The only reason to shift unwanted players out is if it costs less to do that than keep them and not play them. It shouldn't affect our ability to bring players in either way.

 

Don’t we have more than two who wants to leave or need to leave though?

 

Levy will survive as long as he wants to. No-one is going to sack him and no-one can buy the club without his agreement.

 

Paying up their contracts is definitely worse than either a free transfer or a loan though so it's not a sensible thing to do.

 

We aren’t going to be a successful club if we are paying millions each year on salaries on players that aren’t in the squad.

It will cost less to get players out but of course Levy needs to be prepared to take a loss. This is the stumbling block. We let Doherty go and whatever the agreement was between him and the club, it demonstrates that it can be done. We need to do more of this!

 

Agreed but...

It wasn't sensible to sign them and others in the first place.

It wasn't sensible to hang to them and others for as long as we have done.

It isn't sensible to tie Ange's hands because of poor decisions made by other people.

 

Sunk costs never matter in future decisions. Levy knows that.

 

We only let Doherty go because someone in a very fancy office paid a very handsome salary apparently couldn't count to eight.

 

Our recruitment strategy is no better and no worse than anyone else's. At least half of signings won't work out. That's life. For some bad signings, keeping them is the least worst option.
You have no idea why we've not signed a centre back. It may be Ange's choice to wait for the player he really wants.

 

It was the right thing to do in any case.

 

80% of transfers we've made in the past 4 years haven't worked. Some haven't worked *yet* but waiting around for a year or three in the hope that they do work is hardly successful.

Ange is on record over two weeks ago saying that he is expecting additions at CB and supports that idea.

I am willing to be patient and wait until the end of the window before throwing the toys out the pram. But I know others will be apocalyptic if we don't have someone in before the season starts, and I respect that. There really is no excuse especially when all sources have indicated that the clubs of our prospective targets are open to negotiation if the bid is acceptable.

Those last five words are what makes Levy break out in a rash though, so we'll see.