A sizeable war chest for Walter, and some big earners off the books. Transfers take time. In all likelihood, the top loanees won’t arrive until the last day of the window. And even then, as long as we are in the top half of the table, reaching the playoffs will be just as dependant how we do in the January window.
I never understand why people use the 'Big earners off the books' as a badge of pride that we're 'doing well' with our sales. Unless the big earner is someone like Woods, most of them are actually contributing positively to the first team's performance (Seri, Tufan, Philogene). Losing them isn't necessarily a good thing..
Ipswich trying to build a pretty fun team, good luck to them if they manage to get all their targets.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. People said the same when Tufan left. So what if he was on £20,000-a-week and one of our highest earners? That’s standard for a good player at this level.
The more I think about the discussion the other day about us having no money to spend until Philogene and Greaves are sold, the more I think Acun royally ****ed us up since he came to the club. We were bought on the basis that we had the largest headroom in the league following the sale of Bowen and a few years of profit (before a reasonable loss getting back out of L1). We then sold KLP for pure profit for 16-17m. To Acun's credit he then massively increased commercial and matchday revenue. So to suggest all of that headroom, plus KLP's sale, plus the increased revenues, have all culminated in us having to basically have to strip our squad to the bone in order to bring in players this season screams incredibly poor management of the squad and financials. I really hope we've learned our lessons and this summer's recruitment is not as scattershot and much more calculated. It's all well and good saying that Philogene's purchase worked out and netted us a huge fee, but it's irrelevant if it means we are then using his funds on a range of speculative picks as there's every chance none of them work out - since the body of evidence would suggest we've had a lot more misses than hits in the recruitment department. When KLP was sold, Greaves was already a first team regular, just as when Bowen was sold, KLP was already making his way into the first team. This time around, who is there? Matty Jacobs? The hope that Ashbee or Smith becomes the next big thing? It just feels like we're almost in a more unknown position now than we have been for quite some time. It could all go really well and Walter brings in half a dozen German guns he's worked with before and we storm the league, or we could bring in a raft of players from across Europe as we have the past few years and not only fail to deliver on the pitch, but end up having lost the connection to Hull with no decent youth player in the team. I just can't get my head around how the squad has been left in such an exposed position two to three years into Acun's reign. I imagined we'd be a selling club, but that we'd have a strong 10-15 player core and would be selling players from a reasonable position of strength, not all but forcing players like Greaves out the door in order to have a pot of cash.
Agree. It’s terrible when you really think about it. At this stage, we should have a strong core. Sure, selling Greaves and Philogene should be expected but even after selling them we should still be able to field a strong XI even now. Look at Coventry’s squad. If the transfer window closed tomorrow, they still would have a very strong squad. We don’t. How is it that this is Acun’s 3rd year in charge of the club and we don’t have any continuity at all? I don’t think he has a clue what he’s doing regarding football decisions and neither does his ‘brain team’.
In this sense I'm actually glad he's focussing on Fener and leaving us to be run by others, it will hopefully lead to less impulsive and erratic transfers, but who knows.
To be fair the recruitment was a lot less scattergun last season. Summer was decent, had us looking like top 6. January we tried to build on it and we failed. It happens. Coventry had a big budget last summer to use after Hamer and Gyokeres left they failed. Boro the same. It’s the unfortunate world of the championship without parachute payments. The entire top 6 bar Ipswich last season had them. Margin for error is so small without sellable assets you’re a few signings going wrong away from a summer like ours now.
People won't like me saying it but that felt to me like Rosenior was a strong voice in the summer recruitment policy. January felt a bit more scattergun again as Acun got excited about our league position, but it felt like in the summer we had a clear identity and vision for our targets. I think our scout on 1904 said as much.
He doesn't, he's so far out of his depth it's unreal. The managerial decisions, all 3 of them, prove it too.
Were Cov worse last season than they were the season before, or was the league just stronger? Boro lost their top loanees but they've definitely built a stronger core in the meantime and if there have been another 6-8 games of the season, they'd have made the play-offs.
Could be argued he gave Jaden a level of discipline, developed his defensive side and now you have a premier league player that villa probably regret letting go under the circumstances they did. .
So if we sell Phiolgene for £20m, minus the £5m we paid for him, leaving a £15m profit. Acun's favourite sell on fee is 50% (of the profit, to get the deal done) meaning we would only get £7.5m and over the course of a year Villa would get £12.5m, not too sure if we really did get a get deal for the original £5m. All I'm trying to say is this 'massive' warchest everyone is talking about might not be as big as the numbers suggested. There will be the 100% profit on Greaves, so lets take the top end of the valuations of £20m, that's £27.5m (not to be sniffed at) but way off £40m which everyone is basing our future transfers on. Again, all pure speculation as no-one knows the fine details of any deal.
