Huh, what mouth? I don't recall Levy or ENIC saying they were going to throw a load of money and hope it improves the club so there's no need for them to back up what they're saying with cash. Our wages have already gone up from £50mill to £90mill in a 3 year period just to make us more competitive and able to keep our best players and attract more. You can't expect us to spend big on transfers and keep running up the wage bill, just look what happened to Villa.
We have been told the club wants to get to the "NEXT LEVEL" Hence the master-stroke of AVB and Harry pushed out. Nobody and Nobody does it on peanuts , or do we have the new Messiah combination of AVB,Levy, Lewis. Maybe they will turn water to wine as many think Levy walks on water.
Yes they do want to get us to the next level and so did Villa and so do Everton, amongst others. Villa decided to offer their best players huge wages to keep them and allowed O'Neill also to spend big too but eventually when the results didn't come the club had to reign in it's spending, lost it's best players and has plummeted down the table to much lower than they were to start with. It could have gone right for them too had they started getting regular CL places but that's very difficult. Everton on the otherhand had a taste of CL, spent responsibly and whilst they haven't been able to keep their best players they have been able to spend the profits on getting new players in of equal quality helping them remain a quality side for the most part. We're somewhere in the middle as we've always spent a decent amount. When we had low wages we spent high on transfers each season and now we've got quality players we're tying them into expensive long term deals to keep as many as we can at the sacrifice of our big transfer spending. Do you really not see how spending £40mill more on wages a season even without CL football is the same as keeping the low wages and spending £40mill in the transfer market. At least this way we stand a chance of keeping some of our best players, there aren't many Everton players that have been coveted by top clubs for years because they almost immediately leave, just like we had with Berba, Carrick and Keane. For the record we clearly were trying to spend money this summer it's just through bad luck or Levy messing things up(depending how you see it) that we didn't end up with one or two more top signings.
Sorry - in all this I seem to be missing something - was it Levy who distracted Harry with the England Manager's job - because it was that and that alone that stopped us getting Champions League football this year
Yes you are missing something, it was the fact that Chelsea won the CL that prevented us getting into the CL.
it was a factor, yes, but by no means the only reason. What about the season before when we were in it, but didn't get in it again the following season cause we did nothing about capitalising on the opportunity presented to us by strengthening? Harry distracted then?
We really should NOT have put ourshelves in a position where we were depending on Chelsea to lose. The fact that we did not get CL this season was the 'one single point' finish behind the Arse.
No it was not that - it was the fact that from Christmas onwards we chucked away points that would have got us into the Champions League whatever Chelsea did - they could only stop us because Harry cocked up the last half of the season
Harry may have worked wonders to finish fourth in the 2009-10 season, but he underachieved after that. The squad was improved for the 2010-11 season with the additions of VDV, Sandro and Gallas whilst Bale was coming into his own, yet it finished in fifth whilst performances in the cups were nothing short of embarassing. In 2011-12, we kept the squad together whilst adding Parker and Adebayor to improve it, and in March third place was Harry's to lose - and he lost it by placing his ambitions to be England manager ahead of the fortunes of the team he was managing. He also threw away the League Cup and Europa League, and any benefit from blooding some youngsters was swiftly lost by him loaning them out en masse in January for the remainder of the season. If we didn't piss away third place that wouldn't have been a factor.
so you'd say that the squad ability and depth was strong enough to play Wednesdays and Saturdays, HBIC? I don't see it myself. We didn't get sandro until the season started, and it was a while before he was settled in and playing. VDV was a great signing, but we were still in need of a top striker who'd get us 25+ goals a season, especially as we were now in the CL aswell. Same goes for another creative midfielder. Modric was left to do everything with no cover, and again, the same could be said about a backup winger. yes we improved and made a couple of shrewd signings, but it wasn't enough to deal with a CL campaign and retain a 4th position to qualify again. With a £30mill cash injection of whatever it is, we should have thought more carefully about how we were going to get back in the competition the following year to receive another £30m. There just wasn't enough investment, when the signs of what we needed were there already. but to be fair, at this point city had missed out and started spending fortunes to make sure they got there and there was no way we were competing with that. However, that little bit more of an input and we could have got there over Arsenal. but hey, if we don't have the power to compete, then so be it. but lets be realistic and stop demanding a top 4 finish when we're out muscled!
Whilst we didn't have a striker who could score 20+ goals a season for us, we did have three capable of scoring 12-15 which, in theory, would negate that. Sandro needed time to settle in, but we had Palacios in situ when he arrived, and if we were desperate there was O'Hara to fill in. We did have reasonable cover for Modric in Kranjcar and Huddlestone (both capable of creating, especially in a 442) whilst we had Dos Santos and Townsend as options on the wing. Whilst none could be classifed as guaranteed starters, they all had the capability to fill in for a few games here and there, or even come on to see out a game - but never were. We were in the market for a new striker in this period, but missed out either due to shenanigans (Leandro) or being priced out of a move (Rossi, Llorente) - the latter two would have swallowed up the majority of the £30m which couldn't be invested in other areas of the squad, whilst Leandro is a saga that doesn't need to be gone over yet again. However, for last season Harry really didn't endear himself - missing out on Vertonghen in January was a pain but not unexpected as Ajax flat refused to sell until the end of the season, but bringing in Ryan Nelsen to compensate is the sort of move that still baffles me, especially since he hardly played when he was brought in. The same goes for Saha - the aforementioned strikers couldn't be brought in due to shenanigans/long-term injury/huge pricetag, if the best solution we could come up with up front was Saha we should have looked again. We got a top four finish last season - it's just, thanks to Harry (and UEFA being idiots that think nobody checked there was precedent for five Premier League clubs being in the CL before...) it wasn't good enough.
Fair one HBIC. whilst I completely agree with you over the strikers and scoring 12 or so, the issue was that there wasn't anyone who you could really rely on. Defoe and Pav made a fairly decent amount of appearances and scored some goals, but we really needed that killer player. every other club had at least one. Rafa was the only one of ours that would have got into a side competing against us in the league, and he wasn't an out and out striker. - that's the difference I'm getting at, and this is what I was surprised we didn't sort out. As for the midfielders, again, there were options. but at this point we were in the CL. cover options like O'hara and Huddlestone are exactly what I mean. - you just need that little bit more and this is what I felt we should have done to give ourselves the most hope of re-qualifying again.
Plenty of teams have players that aren't guaranteed first team players, but can be brought in to do a job when required - Wes Brown, John O'Shea and Johnny Evans at Man Utd, or Jon Obi Mikel Obi Jon Mikel Obi or Paulo Ferreira at Chelsea, being good examples. A team needs its workhorses as well as its headline players...of course, Man City sort of blow that concept out of the water with Rodwell et al waiting in the wings.
agree HBIC, but IMO, Mikel is a better replacement standard than Hudd and certainly O'hara. (i've used him as he's the midfield example you've mentioned) he's got that little bit extra for me.
