It clearly wasnt great but not sure about it being the worst. Ramsdale, Downes, THB, Fernandes, Sugawara, Archer, Wood, Edwards, BBD, Fraser and Taylor for a net spend of £67m is pretty decent. That lot, as a collective, have definitely gone up in value and even the failures like BBD will probably break even. I think we just didn't do enough. £67m isn't enough to upgrade a championship squad to a PL one unfortunately. What we don't know is whether that was all we had to spend because we couldn't shift Onuachu, Sulemana & ABK or whether the club wanted to play it safe after the last relegation.
I think this is exactly it. They’ve done their calculations and decided attempting PL survival wasn’t worth the risk. We would need to spend double that and still be favourites to go down. I don’t see us becoming an established PL club any time soon.
Looking at the summer purchases: Ramsdale - good keeper but can do everything himself Downes - very disappointing, totally out of depth THB - been disappointing as not progressed as I though Fernandes - a rare success and been good Sugawara - can’t defend, ok going forward but ultimately very disappointing Archer - never thought he would be up to the EPL and was right Wood - been ok Edwards- too young and inexperienced so on loan so can’t comment BBD - totally clueless Fraser - waste of money and he’s disappeared Taylor- looked ok but ultimately he’s disappeared too Great summer!
Literally all of our signings bar ramsdale and Fernandes were championship level or worse. To add to our woes, we weren’t harsh enough to our championship squad. Kept players on that are nowhere near good enough. Horrendous scouting. Truly horrendous.
I think fans are being harsh on Downes. Neither Aribo or Fernandes are actual CMs, so he has been playing essentially as a solo CM. I don't know many players who could hold that position in this team, he needs someone along side him that is a natural CM/DM.
Helps if I comment int the right thread! I don’t think there is any point in buying anyone right now the team play like they have given up. I do wonder why any team would want to buy any of of our team when 99% are showing they are not prem quality.
I wonder if we have any chance of bringing Dewsbury-Hall in? Probably not for this season, but thinking more about next. Problem is Chelsea have only just signed him, but that was always a dumb move for him and Chelsea, he was never going to get any game time there. They'd probably want too big of a fee though, and I imagine if it were a loan, Leicester would be ahead of us in the queue.
Know nothing about him but glad to see it's a loan with an option. We are as good as down so there is no point making next season harder by spending now.
Knew it would be tough to get players in but forgot loan market can be the way... 1 PL spot is open now and we could still loan in a few from abroad... atleast it can make us competitive if we go this route
Well not finalised but West Ham and Genoa have agreed verbally a loan for the rest of the season for him
Think the rules are that you can only have a certain amount of loans registered in the PL squad, think it’s 2 so even with Cornet gone if this guy replaces him then we can’t loan anyone else
Think it’s a common misconception, you can only register 4 loans across the season and only 2 at any time. Not sure if it’s a new rule change
