Yet there's been more criticism and scrutiny since by a long way... It's pretty much true that a few loud voices on social media can create a 'certain' narrative. It's ****ing mental. 1.9 PPG in the last 10. Forward line known each-other 2 months. Not good enough Rosenior.
You sure we don't have something in common? You appear to agree with me a lot lately. Just playing hard to get? Kisses x (P.S. Genuinely hope the little ones doing well. )
Mine wasn't, but all sorts of voices and various media outlets were claiming we'd 'won January', but so far not much has really changed in terms of clear cut chances or goals. It can't all just be down to Delap missing can it?.. Or can it?
I agree. He's essentially the difference between our possession being ponderous and our possession being more 'get at them', though you'd generally expect that to be more of a job for the wingers.
I think a lot is down to unrealistic hype, The signings are contributing. It's just realistically gonna take time to create a Rembrandt from a set of quality paints.
I hope you're right. I'm still not convinced our playing style maximises opportunities to win games. If it is more down to the personnel getting up to speed or a lack of balance then I'm already apprehensive that we'll manage to match the quality of the side we've got right now post summer. Though that's we'll down the line right now.
I don’t think it’s as easy as oh we’ll just sell our best player every season, reinvest, and we’ll be even better the next season. Let’s look at what Spurs did with the Bale money; Paulinho Eriksen Soldado Chadli Capoue Chiriches Lamela Eriksen the only player you could say that was worth it, they never managed to come close to replacing Bale. Jaden leaving will have a bigger effect than we realise I think, he’s single handily won us a lot of points. With Jaden in the team we average 2 points per game, with Jaden out of the team we averaged 1.5 points per game. 2 points x 46 games = 92 points 1.5 points x 46 games = 69 points
I'd agree if not for the consistently good business we've done. You can't deny that each window has left us better than the previous one. If the Jaden money bought Giles, Zaroury and Delap with change left over you'd feel confident it's being spent well given we know how those players play?
I would mostly agree although I don’t particularly rate Zaroury, if the decision was between keeping Jaden or signing those 3 I’d still choose Jaden I think
Even just Giles and Delap on permanents improves our team a lot, but I'll take your point on Zaroury, though thought his Leicester game was outstanding. Think there's a few wide players we could look at though.
I think Anass for a full season would give you your money's worth, I think he could have done better this season but he's clearly a talented lad and as part of our current forward line he's got to be in there.
You could use Spurs, but also look at Leicester. The season they sold Kante, an integral player in their midfield and Jeff Schlupp. They brought in Ndidi (who is still there and somehow only 27), Slimani, Musa, Nampalys Mendy and Kapustka. Hard to argue they didn't get a good replacement in Ndidi, Mendy was also a very good signing and Slimani managed a modest 8 goals that season to ease the burden on Jamie Vardy. They had a worse PL season, finishing 12th, but got to the quarter finals of the CL. The season they sold Mahrez, they brought in James Maddison, Ghezzal, Soyuncu, Pereira and Evans. Out of those, only Ghezzal didn't make an impact; Pereira is still there, Evans is now back at Man U, Soyuncu went on to join Atheltico Madrid and we all know about James Maddison.
You could also look at Liverpool selling Coutinho. They brought in VVD, Keita, Fabinho and Alisson. Not shabby. Closer to home, when Norwich sold Maddison to Leicester, they brought in Buendia and Pukki.
It doesn’t help he’s a left winger and we currently have the 2nd best left winger in the division already. We need a primarily right sided winger as a priority and Rosenior has stated this
Zaroury, Philogene and even Carvalho all like to play on the left and drift inside. Ömür can play on the right and drift inside too but is a #10 by preference I think. I think Rosenior’s plan last summer was to have Philogene on the left and Rak-Sakyi on the right. Two inverted wingers with a lot of pace that like to dribble. Obviously, Rak-Sakyi never came off and we were left with Lokilo as the only left-footed right-winger and he was cack.
And Brentford, who sold Ollie Watkins and Said Benrahma for a combined £50m plus add ons, still got promoted and signed Yoane Wissa, Kristoffer Ajer and Christian Eriksen. The season before that they sold Maupay (£15m), Konsa (£12m+) and Dan Bentley (£2.8m). The season before that they sold Ryan Woods (LOL £6m), Chris Mepham (£12m), John Egan (£4m) Nico Yennaris (£3m), Florian Jozefzoon (£3m), Konstantin Kerschbaumer (£1m) and Alan Judge (£1m). The season before that they sold Harlee Dean (£2m), Jota (£6m), Maxime Colin (£3m) and Lasse Vibe (£2m). The reason they kept doing so well was because they invested super heavily in their scouting network and took advantage of the network their club was a part of (the link up with Danish clubs has proved very successful over the years). I read an interview with their chief scout and he said that when a player started doing well, they immediately began identifying his replacement in a like for like role. It's being proactive like that which has allowed a club like Brentford to do so well (and sticking by their manager). Our fans are very possessive of talent, but we often fail to see the big picture that actually, selling these lads not only keeps us in the black at a very volatile time in football but also gives us money to invest back into the club at both on and off field levels. Selling Greaves, for example, hurts more because he's an academy player, but I can't recall the last time an academy player came through and spent their entire career with us. As much as this will probably annoy people, it's something we actually need to see more of. We've had Bowen, KLP and probably Greaves, be great if somebody like Smith followed that path. Slater came in for £50k, he'd easily go for six or seven times that now. Maximising profit on players is really important, but having a scouting set up that can have replacement players identified and ready to go for is equally important. It would appear as though our recruitment team has had a boost and there seems to be a few from the Turkish set up involved.
Brighton do the same. Their scouts say they scout players as replacements years in advance of actually selling their talent. I wouldn’t mind selling Greaves for a big sum if we got Ronnie Edwards or Eíran Cashin as a replacement. If selling Greaves also allowed us to invest money in other areas, I’d be happy too. Morton will be going back to Liverpool and Seri is no spring chicken despite his importance to the way we play. I’d like to see us sign someone like Cheick Condé for the DM position, a couple strikers and probably a new right-back in the summer.
