Key players going out, players coming in without PL experience, going to Aus on a stupid tour, will take a week to get over on return due to travel, what the fck is the club thinking, it’s fkg £ signs as usual, just be careful Radz the Tower of London may await you.
If we let Rapha go too then it's our two best players. I'm not over worried by Phillips leaving although I feel we had our pants pulled down on price. He didn't play much last season, has become increasingly fragile in his calf and other muscular areas. We need a replacement. Maybe two replacements as we are weak centrally. If Rapha leaves too then the club are gambling again, just like they did in January. They've not learnt.
The rights and wrongs about selling Raphinha and Phillips are many. However when players like that say they want out you need to act. Argument for keeping both until January but their value reduces. Phillips was adamant he was going to City even though bigger offers came in, so he was allowed to go simply because he would have gone in January for even less money. We are in a similar situation with Raphinha although Barcelona dont have the money so up to him if he goes to another prem club or abroad. It looks like he is going and why Orta is trying to find his replacement, lets hope he has also found Phillips replacement
Phillips was probably worth more to us over the next two seasons than a measly 45 million. Having him in our side vastly improves the chances of winning games. If we get 65 million for Rapha I think it's decent money. If its 50 million I'd rather keep him here.
Vastly improves a win rate in a Bielsa side. The only ray of hope I'm clinging to is we may find a better fit for a DM in marche set up and may even have change to strengthen elsewhere Kelvin is replaceable in this system by what I have seen as it doesn't play to his strengths.
I agree. There comes a decision on these players where, in Kalvins case, would we pay 21 million a season for him to keep playing for us? Given his record and the fact each season in the PL creates 100-150million a season I'd say it wouldn't be a bad idea. Overall though, he was missing last season and was covered by an out of his depth Koch and the likes of Forshaw (who performed very well) and Klich. To improve on last season I guess we just have to improve on Koch as a midfielder. Roca can play there but I'd expect another midfielder in now.....and a marquee signing at that. Probably Sander Berge who is a beast when fit. That would give us Forshaw, Klich, Greenwood, Roberts, Rodrigo, Aaronson, Roca, Berge, Berge, Bate, Gyabi that could play centrally. Starters would be Roca, Berge and Aaronson.
Copied from someones post If you analyse Orta's 69 signings for Leeds over 5 years, they fall into 5 Broad categories: A) 1x mega success - Raphinha; B) about 20 good or ok; C) 4 unknown for this season; D) over 40 flops- most of which never kicked a ball for the first team and E) 1 total catastrophe JK Augustin. His success rate is, being very generous, 1 in 3. Howard Wilkinson said you should aim or hope for a success ratio of 1 in every 2. By that metric, Orta is an expensive failure!
And based on that we need three more signings to add up to two successes in this window. To move club forward a bit he’ll likely need to sign about 15 players
Strange story but thinking about it, its feasible? Isnt it? The new yank owner at Chelsea is offloading Zyich to Milan which leaves space for Raphinha, who is also speaking to Leeds. The twist could be using Pulisic as a makeseight. Another USA player coming to Leeds. He can play as an AM and winger and false 9
On a serious note, all the euphoria of staying up on the last day, the excitement of early transfer incomings has somewhat evaporated with the sake of Kalvin and the likely sale of Raph. I’m now feeling nervous about next season as our signings might need time to adjust or might not hack it at all, particularly after wakey’s post on VO record.
Am i concerned of the effect of losing our best 2 players... yes of course it's an issue, because the replacements are unlikely to be as good. But given i was expecting it, it's not changed my outlook for next season. We know the club likes to buy young and hopes to turn a profit on them in order to reinvest and progress. You only turn a profit if you actually sell them. So a bit nervous because you know it's a risk? For sure. Disappointed? Nope. You better get used it guys. It's the formula. We have to hope that the overall squad improves so we're less reliant on 2 star players.
Correct. We have two kinds of players we buy. First kind is a money maker like the two we’re losing. We don’t get many of those . The balance of the 95% we get in can only be given away at best. Don’t think it’s quite the Leicester model. Anyway we have to keep fingers crossed we can land enough above average to improve on last season
I see there are people who love to have a go at Orta and then make up stats about success strike rate on transfers. 1 in 2 or 50% is total bollox, ghe best I have ever seen is 1 in 3 but never mind. There are other things to take into consideration too, like where you shop. If you shop in poundland like we have done since Orta arrived you will find more defective products that fail, especially when we were shopping with less than a million. He then got to shop Home Bargains and his strike rate grew a bit. Man Utd have wasted over a billion quid in the last few years and it seems only Fernandez was a success all the rest were gash. Ronaldo was free. Nobody is perfect but for once in a while it would be good if the critics also gave praise sometimes
A valid argument except scum are in no danger of being relegated, we are and selling your best two proven premier league quality players doesn’t help. A more like for like comparison might be Norwich who gamble on players from smaller leagues. Possibly doesn’t fill you with confidence that VO failed with this approach once before at Middlesbrough
What a load of old tosh! The signings your chum refers to has a heavy presence of u23 signings, so that skews it terribly. u23 signings by their very nature will be mostly duds, for that is the way football goes - very few u23s actually make it into a PL team. So you are judging Orta on a mixed bag, but those you compare his efforts to were only signing for the first team! Why not ask your chum to do a comparison with other PL DoFs? He might find that Orta does much, much better in the comparison. Was it not Orta that was ordered by Cellino to get 16 players in on the cheap one summer? That, too, would skew the stats, as no other PL DoM has had to deal with a nutter like him. Ask your mate to re-do his stats based on 1st team squad players only, if his obvious hatred for Orta will allow him to do so.