Sheffield United's accounting was so bad (and they were in the middle of a very messy takeover) that it was basically the only way they could get a £20m signing in the door
I mean you can to some extent. We are where we are because two seasons ago they spent over £100m on Lavia and a load of players who simply haven't performed and are still limiting us. You can list them off. Bree, Onuachu, Aribo, Larios, Edozie, Mara, ABK, Alcaraz, Bazunu, Sulemana. One or two of them are half-decent and a couple are halfway out of the door but that's almost a full 11 of largely underwhelming signings.
And all of those signings fall into the “are pretty cheap and hope they are a gem” category too. SR took the approach, presumably due to lack of investment in the Gao years to spend a fair bit of money, but spread it very thin in terms of PL teams. We bought potential rather than current ability in the main and hoped that our more experienced players would be able to keep us in the league whilst these guys developed. Obviously it didn’t work and it was a terrible season, but we are still doing the same thing in terms of our price point, it’s just hard to find players at that price who can be effective in a PL team with any regularity. For every Lavia there are probably 15 “did not make the grade”
The spreading thin is the issue and it might well take a few yo-yo seasons to get the foundation back. Hopefully not though
Yeah I agree with this. Our recruitment has been **** for years. I meant in the short term, it seems like an OK option. I’m not sure who else is available for our budget
Yes and no. To be fair the younger players have probably been less disastrous from a business perspective. Alcaraz doesn't seem to fit with Martin's style of play but has talent and we may be able to get a goodish fee for him and we don't seem to be losing money on ABK or Mara. Problem is, none of them (or the other signings) really improved the first team.
I'm reserving judgement until the transfer window is closed and we're someway into the season. The usual suspects have us as "****ed" not a description I'd use.
I'm not really commenting on this summer, that post's about the players we signed a couple of years ago that I listed a few posts up the thread.
Well yeah that’s exactly it though. We still spent the money so couldn’t spend more and they didn’t improve the side as we bought potential, and went too far down that road. We could’ve opted to spent the £140m on say 3 or 4 players instead of 12 or whatever it was in total, but we took the quantity approach. I think because there were holes everywhere due to lack of investment. Relegation obviously set us back as all the good players left so we are back to square one with loads of holes for a PL team and trying to survive to hopefully address these in the coming seasons. This is why I don’t mind SR, they actually spend some money which always gives you a chance. Whether they change approach if we have a more complete squad in the next year or 2 and sign less for higher fees remains to be seen
Skeptical on if we really could have signed 3 or 4 players for the 140m. That is 35m+ per player. Those players don’t want to join us. This was shown by the attempts for Gakpo and Ramos. We wanted just one and couldn’t get one. Let alone 3 or 4. We could potentially have overpaid for players who weren’t quite “35m” players and might have wanted to join. But then we might well have been in an even worse position than now. Think lots more Sulemanas at close to 25m a pop rather than in a lower range. Players who we can’t shift but who are even more expensive and even higher wages Note how it seems like Sulemana doesn’t even come up in discussion for this season. Is his injury one that is going to stop a sale ?
Fair comment. We won't be spending £100m every summer so I'm quite happy for us to sign one or two youngish Edozie/Lavia/Larios type players every year to take squad places and focus the rest of any spending on quality players. Not that our record is great in that area.
Well looking at this summer we could’ve got Carvalho and Evanilson off the top of my head in the higher price bracket if we were still a PL team. O’Riley as well of course we could’ve just bought him if we were happy going up to high 20s early 30s. I’m sure there are other players who have joined teams in the PL this summer for £30m or so who would’ve come to us if that option was there. Gakpo and Ramos were unobtainable not just because of the price, it was because teams like PSG and Liverpool wanted them. There will be players who would still cost £30m+ who the top teams don’t want, whether they are any good or not is another matter
Alfie House says it's £15m initially, some add-ons based on performance and a small sell-on clause. No buy back opportunity this time, so he will be with us for more than just one season, presumably even if we do drop back down and he doesn't have a good season
