That worked though, they haven’t come down since. It would have been incredibly expensive, but buying half the Portuguese national team is a pretty good way to guarantee a place in the Premier League. Just a shame Turkey are nowhere near as good as Portugal.
Yeah there was a couple of homophobic tropes dished out towards Ehab during that period. The bloke’s a twat but I can’t condone that.
Didn't he put three or something past us in our first campaign in the Premiership? Was it for Wigan? My memory is fading.
Well loyalty is one thing however if Acun is to fulfill his l and our dreams and get back to the premier league along with loyalty there has to be a touch of ruthlessness in making sure he has the right management team. Andy is well liked and I suspect may well be a better manager/coach than Shota however he has little experience and if need be he may well have to be sacrificed for a more experienced manager along with his team. If that’s the case we would expect Acun to compensate him appropriately. You see it many times new manager comes in brings his own team and the the old manager departs along with his team.
He had a good game and that was Wayne Brown’s one and only PL start for us, who was utterly appalling that day.
Like most things, it’s fine in moderation. There is always a risk of owners trying to rebrand the identity of English football clubs in their own image though. The Tans did it at Cardiff and Allam did it with us. Signing players and coaches because of their nationality and links to a particular country to market a club to people in that country is always a bit iffy and can leave the door open for accusations of ‘jobs for the boys’.
Elmo, Gedo and Fathi were all decent signings imo. Elmo was great for us, Gedo scored important goals for us and Fathi was good cover in midfield and full-back.
I agree, but I think their plan was just to stuff their squad with players that were far too good for the Championship, like Neves, Cavaliero, Saiss and Costa, get promoted and then sign even more talent. That’s what they ended up doing, and they shipped out a lot of the old guard like Dave Edwards, McDonald and Byrne to make room.