Anyone could play against some of the inferior opposition England play in qualifiers. Phillips has severely lost his edge and even in his last season with us he was out injured for a lot of it if I remember correctly. Apart from his little runarounds with the national team he's barely played for 3 seasons now and it's showing.
Anyway back to the original point which was we made really good money selling Kalvin at exactly the right time. Maybe some credit due to Victor Orta to counter balance some of the stuff he got wrong ?
I think the issue is his success rate was so so poor. I think if you compare it to this season basically all signings bar Spence have worked out whereas you can probably count on 1 or 2 hands over a numerous amount of years the amount of successes. Feel like although Kalvin may look like good value at the time he was one of the best players for England and look how much Rice went for. I’d argue that Raphinha was too cheap too. He does have successes even now when you like at Summerville but just way too many misses. And things like he got Rodrigo instead of Watkins. We could’ve avoided going down but too many transfer and manger decisions ruined it. Look at Villa and they went up just 1 season before us because they’ve made better decisions.
Good points but can't agree on Villa as they should have gone down before getting lucky by appointing Unai Emery. Some of course feel the same about us and Marcelo Bielsa because otherwise Radrizani would propably have fallen flat on his face as an owner. Orta had to go in the end, mainly because of the way he'd made it personal between him and the fans, but he still did a good job in the Championship years. Lot's of people forget he signed the likes of Alioski for peanuts as well as a very young Struijk. The only he seems to get credit for is Summerville but there were plenty more in my opinion.
When looking at Orta’s overall record I think it is only fair to remember he was tasked with rebuilding the youth set up that Cellino had decimated too. As a consequence, not an awful lot of money was probably shared a bit too thinly. When viewed as a whole, his five (I think) years with us actually looks reasonable. First team Play Offs, Champions, decent first season in the EPL followed by two very poor seasons. At the same time, we had Under 18 and Under 21 promotions and relegation. Considering how many non entity seasons we had in the past 20 years, a bit above par imo. You are totally right though, he was goosed as soon as he made it personal with the fans (although he was goaded terribly too) and I am not sad he has left. The current quiet, professional approach is totally correct in my view even if it frustrates some of the red top readers
It would be nice to know who was responsible for the JKA debacle. Who gave the go ahead and who was responsible for not doing due diligence on this panic signing? Orta, Bielsa, the medical team? A combination of all three? Whoever it was, it was an expensive mistake and a decision that wreaks of incompetence of the highest order.
Guess the lesson is whenever a selling club insists on an obligation to buy for a player with a checkered injury record then walk away.
Especially when he's on loan elsewhere and that loan club barely plays him and seems very keen to hand him back. How many red flags do you need? To be fair he's ripping up the swiss league... 5 in 30 last season
Thread closed. Come on Doc get your ass back in gear for next weekend FFS Ps; it's not really closed.
