I think that's the crux of it folks. If Fulham gave him a cuddle and said we want you for the next 3 years would he say 'oh, okay then'? Probably not, he's tired of scraping the barrel for loanees and not having money to get some decent players in.
I didn't think Southampton was much of revelation either way. I disagree with the posters here who were pointing fingers at him as being, along with Berbatov and Bent, at the root of all our problems, but neither did I think he stood out as a positive. He looked better in the second half when he was moved into the centre, and I agree with others who have said that's his best position. I thought he was no worse than most in a poor overall performance. I'd still be happy to see him in the team, but I'd rather we played wingers who give us pace and width, which puts him in a fight with Kasami and possibly Berbatov to play in the hole behind the main striker. There are arguments for saying he's the best man for the role, but also arguments for each of the other contenders. If it comes to that, if Taarabt gets some form and attitude together, there's an argument for him to play there as well.
If my memory serves, there was general agreement on this board that we needed a new keeper this summer, so I don't think we can hold that one against him. It's debatable whether Stekelenberg's injury record should have been a warning flag, but other than that Stek was an excellent signing, and one which none of us raised any complaint over at the time. His summer transfers are a frustrating mixture of not being quite what we needed while also seeming to be precisely what we needed. When Hughes came on against Southampton, it was as a third centre-back, not a right back. If we had been sticking with a back four, I think Reither would have stayed on (he was one of the few to come through the first half with any credit, along with Amorbieta and Stekelenberg, in my opinion), and if he had needed replacing I'm sure it would have been Zverotic who came on.
Please don't accuse me of defending Mark Hughes, but I suspect what you're getting at, Cravin', is the reason Hughes walked away from Fulham. He realized after a year that Chairman Mo's "ambitions" (to use Hughes' word) were to be a mid-table team, nothing more, and that Hughes would never have the resources to compete with the big boys. Jol's predicament is similar. He wasn't given the resources to go out and buy players good enough to slot in immediately as replacements for our aging, or departed, players. Let's say FFC is a package delivery company needing a fleet of vans to carry parcels to business around London. The owner of the company, MAF, had a choice: he could buy brand new vans from the Mercedes and Ford, giving his firm a competitive, reliable fleet for years to come. But instead, Chairman Mo opted to buy cheap from the a supplier of untested vans built in counties not known for quality. He then added to his fleet of vans the aging cast-offs from other delivery companies (Zamora, Johnson, Berbatov, Bent), buying cheap and hoping these vehicles still had/have a few miles left on them. Should anyone be surprised that MAF's delivery company is suddenly having trouble? I don't think so. Unfortunately for Jol, it's easier to replace the general manager than it is a broken-down fleet of vans.
Buying expensive does not guarantee success, see QPR and others who have gone down this route. Buying wisely does. I am not defending MAF but other teams operate with similar constraints, prime example is Everton. Both Roy and Jol blew it by spending £10+m each on players that proved not to worth the money. Also I don't think you are being fair to Zamora and Johnson comparing them with Berba and Bent. Both they worked their socks off when fit and especially Bobby was crucial to us achieving this Europa League final.
This is very true. Especially on our expensive signing. Every player we have signed for around the £10 million mark has proved to be less than we hoped they would be for the price tag - Marlet, Johnson, Ruiz - have all failed to live up to the price tag and I can see why any chairman would be wary of laying out quite so much one player when we have very limited funds (although both MAF and Khan are Billionaires, let's not forget, so £10 million to them should be relatively small change). It's the rhetoric I find frustrating. Khan saying he wants to take us to the next level - great, but that means putting money into the playing squad as well as building a nice shiny new stand. The stand won't do you much good when its half empty because you are playing in league one. I don't expect his statement to mean we are going to be looking at the top four, but I do expect it to mean that we will be competing with the top 6 or 8 for the smaller European places.
I agree entirely, not only about "buying wisely", but also in your assessment of Berbatov, Bent, Bobby and AJ. Bobby was great for us and AJ, when healthy, worked his butt off, but lumping them together refers to the fact that they were all bench-warmers when we picked them up at the used player lot. The best of our "used" player was probably Murphy - he was underused at Liverpool when he came to us and (IMO) was Fulham's best player in the 10 years I've been a fan. McBride, Dempsey and Hangeland would be amongst the success stories when buying cheaply from non-powerhouse football leagues; Eddie Johnson, Dikachoi and about 20 others would be the gambles that didn't pay off to one degree or another.
Cheer up! Considering our results against Liverpool (A) Man Utd (A) and Swansea (H), I'd say you've got the difficult fixture out of the way!
You say Roy blew it by spending money on AJ then say it's unfair to compare them to our current striking failures? I don't agree AJ was a waste of money, at least not in the same way Marlet/Ruiz were/are. AJ was an England international in his prime when we signed him, did very well at Palace and reasonably well at Everton with less game time. How on Earth our scouting system thought Ruiz would be a perfect fit for the PL is beyond me. Signing AJ made perfect sense, and I don't hold Roy accountable, AJ suffered badly with injuries, but signing the other two made little sense.
I'm with Bandit on this. When AJ was fit, he was a class player. After McBride left, his minutes/goals ratio was better than any of our other players, Dempsey and BZ included. He was a risk because of his injury history, but probably a risk worth taking.
I'd quibble about AJ being 'in his prime' when we signed him. He was in his prime when Everton signed him, and they sold him after he had peaked and started to decline. He still did a decent job for us when he was fit - and the injuries were hardly his fault, particularly after the club took about three weeks over his medical. We signed Murphy from Spurs, by the way, not Liverpool. He'd been at Charlton as well between Liverpool and Spurs. I'm still willing to defend Ruiz as well, by the way. The point isn't the £10m signings, it's that we haven't invested enough in the next rung down. Since Dembele (what was he - £6-8m? Something like that) we've made very few signings in the £4-8m bracket. Berbatov and Stekelenberg are the only two who come to mind. That's where we are likely to get players who are less of a risk and who will add quality to our side. I'm all for getting players like Amorebieta and Boateng for free at the end of their contracts, but our reluctance to spend sensible sums on good players, as distinct to £10m fees on star signings is where we have let ourselves down. Think what difference it would have made to our side if we'd spent £5m or so on Huddlestone (or another midfield playmaker of your choice) and slightly less on that Cresswell from Ipswich to play left back. The whole balance of the team would have been better and 95% of what we've discussed this season would have been irrelevant.
He was nota £10m player when we got him. That's my point... His work-rate and what we paid are two different things. Definitely not at his prime.
Not sure why this story that Bryan Ruiz cost £10m keeps coming up, but TransferMarkt who are the nearest thing to an official transfer site, have his transfer as £7.04m. From what I know the Twente chairman at the time was trying to placate his fans by talking the transfer price up, which he knew was not going to be official released to the press, and this seems to have stuck even though later club accounts have proved it wrong.
I'm probably in the minority, but I can't see how Jol's to blame for this - at least not all of it. The drop in our team's form (IMO) stems from the overall aging of our players and the failure to replace quality for quality as our best players retired or left. And you can bet that Jol saw these problems, but he wasn't given the money to buy quality young players as replacements. Is Jol to blame for Ruiz? Yes, but what manager (including Sir Alex) hasn't miscalculated on how a player would succeed in his team? To see catastrophic personnel failures, one needs only look at our neighbors (Torres, JS Veron, Crespo, Shevchenko). As good as Torres was for Liverpool, I certainly couldn't foresee his drop in form. Is Jol to blame for Dembele, Murphy and Dempsey leaving? No, that's on MAF. If MAF would have paid the wages of Dempsey and Dembele (both of whom more than doubled their pay, if memory serves), they probably would have stayed. As for the next manager, I've heard a player named Danny Murphy just retired from football. Yes, Jol's got to go. To survive relegation this year, we need someone to jump-start the team, but I won't blame Jol entirely for what's become of my team.
Some interesting points DR. I would say that while players leaving hasn't been Jol's fault entirely, the players he has brought in, albeit on a limited budget, have not been good enough. Barring perhaps Riether, there isn't a single player he's bought who I can say I 100% want to be at the club next season. Other teams like ourselves have limited budgets also, but where Jol has failed, is putting too much faith in ex players he's managed at other clubs. Everyone could see that Taaraabt wasn't a player we needed to sign, and that's been proven right when considering how much game time he's had. There were better options than Bent also, look at two other strikers that went out on loan this season (Lukaku, Remy) and we got shafted with Bent? Why? Because Jol worked with him before. We would have been an attractive proposition for both strikers as they currently lived in London and wouldn't have had to move. There are quality young players out there who wouldn't break the bank, but Jol has too much faith in his Dad's Army, as shown by the line up against Leicester. Even with 9 changes, we still averaged an age of 29 years old. Where was David/Dejagah/Mesca?
Agree with above - I don't blame Jol for everything that has happened, it's his complete unwillingness to acknowledge any mistakes that annoys me. He plays the 'limited resources' card too often - QPR showed money in itself isn't enough- you need to play with spirit and a system. Hodgson showed that with good coaching you didn't even need to have great quality in every position, you just needed every position to be covered by a player who will do his job. With Jol we've gone the opposite way. We've got more quality but can't seem to find any form or consistency. Under Roy we had a rigid system, maybe predictable, but we were good at it so it didn't always mean it could be stopped. When Jol says about the fans having unrealistic expectations I'm not sure he appreciates that not long before he came we'd seen the team go to a Europa League final not because of big transfers but because of good management.
Your overall point is a fair one, Bandit, but as far as choosing Bent over Lukaku and Remy, I understand that we did make enquiries about Lukaku, and were told that he wasn't going on loan this season. By the time Mourinho changed his mind about that, we had already signed Bent. Like you, I'd have preferred Lukaku, but it sounds like Jol agrees with us. Timing was against us, and signing both wouldn't have made sense.
I hate speculating on a new manager when the old one is still in post, but I think Murphy would be a bad choice right now. In five to ten years, I'd love to see him in charge at the Cottage, but this isn't a job for someone with no coaching or managerial experience, however good a player they were. Others have suggested DiMateo, who I also think would be a gamble and a mistake. He's only got about 4 years of actual management under his belt. His time outside the premier league, with MK Dons and West Brom, was excellent, and then he struggled with West Brom and was sacked to be replaced by Roy, who turned things round and kept the side well clear of relegation. The big plus on his cv that everyone thinks of is winning the Champions League (and I'll admit, that's one hell of a thing to have on your cv), but we should remember how that came about: Chelsea brought in Villas Boas to clear out the old guard and revitalise the squad. By attempting to do so, AVB bell out with Terry and co, and the manager decided to back the players rather than the manager. DiMateo's approach when he came in was to go back to the system the established players already knew and let them do what they were used to. That's not an option for Fulham. The last successful period of 'what the players know' was under Roy, and there are very few of his players left after three and a half years of Mark Hughes and Martin Jol. We need a manager who can imprint his own vision on the team, and DiMateo's great success came through allowing players to go back to someone else's vision. I'm not saying he's a bad manager, but he's another inexperienced one who hasn't shown that he has the skill set we need right now. I have some thoughts about who might make a good appointment, but I'll keep them to myself until we actually have a vacancy for a manager.
