Club Direction

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Club Direction

  • The board have been great, and we've progressed for the last 7 years. I trust them.

    Votes: 84 70.6%
  • PL money has gone up exponentially. We should be recruiting far more aggressively.

    Votes: 12 10.1%
  • I'm a random on a forum, in reality I have no idea. Let's see what happens.

    Votes: 23 19.3%

  • Total voters
    119
Yes, you did. My point was spending big on a creative player would make me happy, not that it was a necessity. And yes, we have been good at replacing players we had to sell. I don't agree we had to sell Mane and I think we got a poor price. I also think selling good players and buying cheap is a gamble which we won't keep winning.

You think we did it before so we'll do it again. I hope we'll do it again. You think what the board has put out since the end of the season has been good. I have been underwhelmed. Not much further to go with this personal debate.

So it comes down to glass half full or half empty
 
So it comes down to glass half full or half empty

Or "who knocked my glass over, because it's empty ".

I don't see why so many are getting so upset, when the transfer window still has 6-7 weeks to run.
I don't see the concern over bringing in young players to fill the academy, because if they are better than what we previously had, that's good. Isn't it?
I don't see why the bringing in of a coach, who is good at developing young players, automatically means we are going to abandon all our years of progress, and take unnecessary risks by filling the team with kids.
Why is so much faith being put in an article, in the Echo, when they regularly spin reports in order to maximise infighting amongst readers, creating more advertising income from repeat visits?

I will do what I do every year. I will judge the board's transfer strategy on September 1st, when I can comment on truths and not "what ifs".
 
Just 2 months ago i was standing in the kingsland ecstatic after a 4-1 demolition of palace and qualification for the Europa league.

Koeman, mane, wanyama and pelle now out. Key personnel, yes but all gone nice and early to allow a re building processes. Annoying - yes but decent sums received.

No-one knows how next season will go. Just because clubs like palace are splashing the cash does not mean they will finish above us. 2 of our biggest signings were disappointments.

If the last few weeks have taught us something, then is about the team, not the individual players as shown by ourselves, Leicester, Iceland, Portugal and Wales.

The club are in a healthy position. The team that steps out against Watford will get our full support whether it includes a marquee signing or an untried academy player. Just let things unfold and enjoy the summer.
 
The club's direction is towards becoming a profitable business. There is little to no doubt of that. The club believe last year's squad - minus its two most desired assets and with only one fit striker with a fairly poor goalscoring record - will be able to replicate the performance last year and also push on in Europe. The ambition is to make our Academy work - not to compete with wealthy clubs like Stoke for big talent. If we had a load of talent in the Academy then I would give this the big bravo. We don't.

Yes, I am being pretty negative, but my assessment is that the board lost Koeman because of its desire to slow spending. I saw us do exactly the same thing under Rupert Lowe - the man who created the most successful spell in the Academy's history - and that didn't really go to plan. If you'll remember WGS decided he couldn't get anything done in that situation and we began to slide quickly from promise to obscurity. People are saying we have learnt from our previous economic catastrophy, but to my mind that is a misunderstanding of what caused the catastrophe. A decline in squad quality and a drop down ans out of the Premier League were why we ended up on the brink.

Now, careful, I am not stating we are going down, but more that the club is making a huge gamble this year. Those implying spending is a gamble need to look at the history books again. Spending to excess is a gamble, but spending at a loss is actually a necessity in a massively difficult market. Last year we were the only club to profit on transfers, but we had a steady manager and a little luck (it was an abysmal year) and more than got away with it. This year may see the beginning of the slide.

All of this is hopefully wrong. Hopefully "decent" actually means plenty in transfer funding terms. Hopefully we are not so ball-achingly stupid to think an above average English winger is a replacement for the massive talent of SM. If we spend big on a good creative player I will be satisfied. But spending below sales esch year is a huge gamble, and should be avoided.
Be careful making objective and insightful posts around here! You may be shot down for this.

I agree, have thought for a long time that business comes quite a way in front of football. Mane will be very very difficult to replace and I hope the club are not so naive to think Redmond is a like for like replacement.

Like you say I'm happy to be proven wrong but this feels like a big gamble.
 
We may well sign some fantastic player, we may well pay over the odds for a dud, we don't know as yet. But, there are a lot of signs pointing towards the academy route, that is why people have it in their heads that we may well go into this crucial season a little under prepared.

But I don't get that. It's not an either/or situation.

We've said that we wanted to re-focus on the academy, but how did that become a negative? Is there anyone who actually believes that improving your pipeline of talent is a bad thing?

Barcelona pays a lot of attention to La Masia. They buy up the premium young talent from all over the world. No one is calling them cheap.

I'm just against this whole idea that the club is supposed to have "a direction" which is just another way of rehashing the silly "show ambition" concept.

The direction we need to go in is "get better." That's all. Sometimes that means investing in the future, and sometimes it means investing in the now. Sometimes it means we need to try and hang on to a player, and sometimes it means we need to sell. And sometimes, the choice is taken out of our hands.
 
Last season we lost arguably our three best players; players who were always going to be next to impossible to replace.

This season we have lost three players who have served us well, but of the three only Mane, imo, is anything like irreplaceable.

Oh yeah, & we have lost another manager, which is a bit frustrating. But he wasn't quite ib the class of the manager we lost 2 seasons back.

We're in a better position this July than we have been for the last three years I reckon. I'd certainly rather be us than Everton.
 
Be careful making objective and insightful posts around here! You may be shot down for this.

I agree, have thought for a long time that business comes quite a way in front of football. Mane will be very very difficult to replace and I hope the club are not so naive to think Redmond is a like for like replacement.

Like you say I'm happy to be proven wrong but this feels like a big gamble.

Perhaps you should also warn people to be careful posting insightful posts too early :)

What exactly is it you think is a big gamble? We don't know what the club are going to do, it's guess work. If you mean that selling players who want to leave and are near the end of a contract (and won't sign a new one), then that's what we've done for a while.

All we've been saying is that it is too early to worry. And worry is what has been happening. Nobody knows if Redmond is a replacement for Sadio. We won't know until later in the window.

If this news yesterday that we look to be signing this Bayern Munich player doesn't encourage people to hold fire on their concerns, then more fool them I'm afraid.
 
Last season we lost arguably our three best players; players who were always going to be next to impossible to replace.

This season we have lost three players who have served us well, but of the three only Mane, imo, is anything like irreplaceable.

Oh yeah, & we have lost another manager, which is a bit frustrating. But he wasn't quite ib the class of the manager we lost 2 seasons back.

We're in a better position this July than we have been for the last three years I reckon. I'd certainly rather be us than Everton.

All of this post is true.

The only surprising thing is that some fans seem to forget this over the course of a good season.

It's not as if it's a new thing.
 
But I don't get that. It's not an either/or situation.

We've said that we wanted to re-focus on the academy, but how did that become a negative? Is there anyone who actually believes that improving your pipeline of talent is a bad thing?

Barcelona pays a lot of attention to La Masia. They buy up the premium young talent from all over the world. No one is calling them cheap.

I'm just against this whole idea that the club is supposed to have "a direction" which is just another way of rehashing the silly "show ambition" concept.

The direction we need to go in is "get better." That's all. Sometimes that means investing in the future, and sometimes it means investing in the now. Sometimes it means we need to try and hang on to a player, and sometimes it means we need to sell. And sometimes, the choice is taken out of our hands.

Great post.