Agree & strong chance both leave if we dont go up, definitely Clarke....if we go up...i think we keep both
Said it a few weeks ago - Jack Clarke will be a PL player next season. Hopefully with us, but if we don't go up we will lose him.
Its exactly this mate & some of the problems we have now were finding it hard to change as a result....i keep telling people were a different club now & dont worry...said this several times to people leaving at 80 minutes....simply because the craic at the time was, especially during Parkinson's days, if you were still in the ground at full time you would be sold off for slave labour....look this is not the case....but ive accepted its going to take time for some to get their trust back
Yeah, that's a really good point. I am as judgemental as it comes when people leave early/don't go to games etc but we had 6 or 7 years of utter **** before this regime came in so I get it..........
Fingers crossed mate....if not we move on with a good deal, reinvest & go again....KLD aint here to fail or simply make up the numbers....could we ever compete with the top 6 sides?..... probably not....but lets worry about that when were a club capable of comfortably finishing 10th in the PL & im sure KLD will assess the situation then....kids incredibly intelligent in this business area & already keeping the club close to connections around the world, hence in my opinion why hes comfortable Satorini still being around although currently he doesn't appear to offer a great deal, might be door to connections we dont know etc....for a young lad....hes more intelligent in the football business that a lot of billionaire old successful business men without a question....Short put enough money in....would he have trusted nuggets with the money he did who were not specialists in their field in his normal businesses? I doubt it....other billionaire business men cone into football for a play toy & bring people in who know nowt to play with that toy....it might be KLD's toy .....but your not playing with this toy unless you clearly show him you can be trusted & are a specialist in the area your being employed ......the future is very very bright for those who believe!!.....its just currently an unknown journey time to be stable 10th place PL club
Clarke may well move on in the summer and he would be getting a decent pay rise as well. However Think of the Clubs he’s been to before and that it wasn’t working for him. I would expect he wasn’t very happy the way things were going. Here, he’s playing every week, getting great reviews, is very well liked and in short, he’s having a great time, probably the best time of his life so far. The way SAFC are progressing he might just be thinking the grass isn’t greener elsewhere and may want to be part of it. Stay next season at least to see how things develop. He can easily go in a year or two but with the cracking bunch of lads we now have (like Ballard, Jobe, Hume, Huggins and the rest) he could decide he wants to be part of it. It’s working for him here. He might go, he might not, but let’s not assume he’ll be off in the summer to sit on a Premier bench.
Bang on. It’s just unrealistic to think we’ll never sell players because someone once said we aren’t a selling club anymore. We’re a championship club with a bottom half budget. If we weren’t to go up and sold Clarke for a large fee I’ve got the upmost confidence that KLD/Speakman would strengthen us, however if his sell on clause is as big as some have mentioned (50%) then that £25m+ doesn’t seem quite as healthy. Selling a player shouldn’t be seen as a step back. Liverpool sold Coutinho then signed VVD + Salah and still had change in the bank, both of whom have massively impacted them over the last 5/6 years. It’s how the money is spent and at the minute it looks like we’re doing a pretty good job in the market.
Been catching up on this thread, and just wanted to say what a quality post that is, and couldn't agree more. I love the bloke.
Good find that mate, it's hard to believe it's actually Sunderland people are talking about. As I've said before there'll be young ambitious players looking for a move to Sunderland rather than us having to chase them as has always been the case in the past. It may sound far fetched but some, the hungrier kind, will look at a higher paid deal in Chelsea's reserves and choose to come here because of the coaching plus the chance of 'doing a Rigg' and scoring in front of 40,000. And the likes of Hume will be spreading the word with players in their national teams. I'm sure the best is yet to come.
We did brilliantly signing Hume. Paid virtually nothing for him and look at him now, not just a top player but also the model of the attitude you want your players to have.
That's another aspect difficult to come to terms with ... ... how can so many energetic wealthy young lads be so well behaved and dedicated! In the past you'd always be waiting for a back page headline, "Sunderland star questioned ..........."
Spot on Smug. Searching out the players where football is their number one priority, not money, fame or whatever. Couple that with top drawer potential and we are on the journey we are on now. I’ve wanted for a long time to see a Sunderland team that is greater than the sum of their parts and I’m seeing it now. The fact that the players are very talented and likeable is the icing on the cake.
I was just talking to one of the lads, who's gone to Plymouth, and he was saying the same thing. We had a couple of games where we conceded from set pieces and people were trying to make a case that 'we're always vulnerable at set pieces' .... people seem to like sequences of events for some reason. There's been loads over the years hasn't there. Can't hold a lead, can't come back from a goal down, can't score from set pieces, can't score from inside/outside the box, can't win in London, can't win an early kick off or if it's televised, can't win if it's a full moon, can't score if the keeper has a beard
Aye think we’ve cracked all of them now, only one left for me is the biggest home crowd on a big occasion, usually balls it up.
There's also a massive difference between selling top quality young prospects at the first offer that comes in and a young lad thinking he's a superstar because arsenal want him and seems to think moving to a bigger club early in his career than progressing through the ranks. We will not sell any young talent that the club believe have what it takes to make it, there will however be circumstances where young players like the keeper that's just gone to Chelsea. If they can't see they are probably losing out on the best opportunity they have to progress to first team football there's nothing the club can do really. The one thing they aren't doing is flogging them off for a quick buck. I'm not really sure why Bob comes out with silly comments like this other than he's on a wind up
Sorry mate I only have a I phone it’s memory isn’t big enough to get them all on. Maybe you and Iain could share your memory, probably get them all on then
Look KLD is doing a great job, no issue with that. But stopping young lads leaving ain't easy, so when SD tried to stop them its the family and agents who turn heads, promising big money and greener grass. So let's not kid ourselves, it's not just SD or any owner who can't keep younguns agents ruin so many young players and grred takes over.
