Evening lads. Anyone know who took training today ? Or was it taken as a counselling day for the players to seek professional help.
Marsche & Gracia certainly didn't have them playing murderball that's for sure. Those who called for Bielsa's head should really hang their heads in shame when they see what we've become. Fifteen years of dross followed by something so beautiful and virtuous that it should have been cherished and valued until the great man could go on no more. Now...Big Sam minus Little Sam so we couldn't even get that right, same as Clough without Taylor.
Is it true that Radz asked Orta if he had Mike Bassett's number just in case Big Sam turned us down ?
So the club should have let bielsa carry on and not react. I can see how you enjoyed his football but he had lost it.
Would much rather have gone down last season with Bielsa and retained our dignity than what's happened since. Although I take your point
In the words of Sgt Wilco transfer success ratio is 30% or one in three and Orta achieves that. I would also say that quite a few of the “Unclear” players are indeed a hit to add to that number with some of them misses too Verdict Hit: 15 (29.4%) Unclear: 14 (27.5%) Miss: 22 (43.1%)
I posted this back in February which still excluded players from the 2021 season, it excludes one good coach out of how many, and it doesn’t take into account the enormities of Rutter for the future, James on loan and Augustin. Those errors alone costing us well over £100m when legal fees and wages are also taken into account. More importantly it doesn’t take into account the error of undoing everything we’d achieved in getting back to the PL by employing a coach who couldn’t coach then holding onto him far too long
Surely a player has to be judged for the division he is playing in. Some of these recent signings are not fit for the prem. Rutter/rasmus/firpo/Aaronson/Mckennie. Adams yes and Gnonto... Roca?.
Coaching in wilkos time was a different process and indeed 30% may have been a success. Orta had one job only. Recruitment. He had vast technology available. Videos of every prospective player in every game they would have played. Access to their social media accounts to check lifestyle etc. all the technical data from the bras they were. How far they’ve run etc in every single game. With all that 30% is no way near acceptable nor did he achieve it anyway. Given all that material available how could he manage to sign augustin or now rooter for extraordinary amounts of cash we don’t have. His failures were then branded as ones for the future. Great if you’re Man City and can park them in a Creche for footballers for five years and not really care if they ever make it
The thing with the various players, is that we would all have differing opinions on whether a player is a hit or a miss. A 30% success rate seems probably reasonable to me, however you would like to think that the majority of the failures or unclears are players that you have taken a cheap punt on, and that the majority of your major signings will be successful. If we look at players that have cost in excess of £10m, these are the ones where especially with a club like ourselves, need to have the majority of successes. This is how that article posted by Stonkin rates our biggest signings - Hits are in Green, Misses are in Blue. That gives us a 29% success rate and a 35% miss rate, so 36% may still prove themselves to be a hit or a miss. I've included McKennie as even though we havent paid a fee for him as yet (in excess of the £10m level), he would fit in this category based on market value at the time of the loan signing. Koch Harrison Costa Raphinha Llorente Augustin Rodrigo Firpo James Roca Wober Kristensen Adams Sinisterra Rutter Aaronsson (McKennie) Now it could be argued that those in the £10m-£15m bracket are still punts, especially with regards to the EPL, so a 30% success rate may still be considered a reasonable return, providing either that 30% enable you to sell for a sufficient profit to wipe out any losses on the failures, or they become an influential member of the first 11 for the entire term of their contract. However you cant afford many failures at the £20m plus level (unless you are one of the mega rich clubs that is). 1 player out of 7 signed or with a market value in excess of £20m at the time of any loan agreement, is deemed a success by the article in the Sporting Life. There will be many who could argue whether Rodrigo is a success or not, but at best that is a 14% success rate. 4 of those 7 are deemed to be misses , so 57% of the major signings that the club have made. In my eyes that should surely be the other way round, ie 50% successes , 15% that just didnt work out at all, with the other 35% being ok, but we probably overpaid for them category Augustin Rodrigo James Sinisterra Rutter Aaronsson (McKennie) Comparing the above for the same period with Crystal Palace (havent looked at any other clubs, some may be even worse than ourselves (Everton spring to mind)). £10m + signings during the same period that we have been in the Premier League. Whether they have been success or failures, the 3 I have classed as failures have played less than 1000 minutes this season. Edouard I have left as unclear. The 4 successes have all played over 2000 minutes this season, and whilst this is not scientific ( as a number of players classed as misses with ourselves have also achieved this), those same 4 players also have a higher market value (based on transfermarkt.com) than what palace paid. Their success rate for those 8 players of which only 2 cost more than £20m is better than ours for each of the 7 of our players who we spent or could potentially spend significantly than £20m Eze Mateta Edouard Andersen Guehi Richards Ahmada Doucoure Addendum - Just to add that just because a player is deemed to be a miss, doesn't necessarily mean they are a bad footballer. The style of play may not suit them, it may take them time to adjust to the league, the way the club is run and even the clubs league position, could affect a specific players performance. However again you would surely expect your top expensive signings to be sufficiently developed to cope with that, or at least the correct players to have been identified who are able to slot into the team seamlessly. If there is one player I would have any sympathy towards it would be Rutter. It's not his fault we paid whatever sum we paid for him, its also not his fault that he isn't deemed good enough to play for our first team. Those issues should have been identified and weighed up against what the type of player the club needed to sign at that time. It should have been clear that paying a record transfer fee on a potential future star was not what a club fighting against relegation required and even if we felt that he was worth a punt, we could have easily walked away saying that the transfer fee was excessive or that his wage demands were not appropriate
The annoying thing regarding Orta transfers is that we spent circa £100m on players Marsch wanted and had mostly played for Marsch previously, yet only Adams and Wober stand out. Surely Orta can only be blamed for giving Marsch what he wanted? And Gnonto cannot go down as a Marsch buy because the idiot didn’t even think he was good enough for the first team. On top of that Marsch must also be responsible for Rutter as he had first hand knowledge of him in Germany however he agreed a fee of £35m? Not all black and white. Also remember Orta telling Hay that when Radz came he gave him a budget and ordered him to do a supermarket sweep and a lot of failures came from that but after that he convinced Radz to do things more scientifically.
If you continually give the coach what he asks for then what is the point of a huge scouting network and a director of football. I thought the DOF was to do away with the problems you get when you change managers and end up with players playing a style or way the new coach is not comfortable with. We had a DOF, but still to a huge extent did things the old way and this is why we are in a huge mess. I think Orta got the big decisions wrong and my main concern was why are we wasting wages on a DOF who just signs players the coach asks for.
Orta was a complete waste of space I read somewhere that he was backing the big Jesse until the very end same with Javi Was this him trying to save face at the expense of the club’s reputation
