Rumours saying Ashworth is heading to Man United. What’s everyone’s thoughts? Bothered? Happy? Annoyed? I personally feel he’s done a good job, not a great job but far from poor. Seems to focus heavily on British players, doesn’t seem to bothered about flair players. Tonali was probably the weakest signing given the circumstances. The likes of Ashby & Hall have been a bit poor. But Gordon, Botman, Isak etc were brilliant buys.
Nope. The current window is Ashworths first full window. Ashworth was into signing Gordon, but Howe was the main driving factor in pushing for Gordon according to the documentary.
His track record is very good and so far it's too early to judge many of the Summer signings. If I had to I'd say that Gordon and Livramento look like awesome buys, Hall and Tonali are players I think will be long term successes at the club. Barnes I can't really call, think he's not a bad buy though. As for Ashby, he was £2-3m so it's a low risk one; Minteh and Kool no idea yet. I'd like to keep him though but trust our set up that if he goes we can replace with someone good.
I think - correct me if I'm wrong - but Ashworth is first and foremost development players? So the likes of Murphy, the Irish kids from Italy, Minteh, Hall and Livramento were his. His role is to oversee the development structure from U18's to the first XI and ensure there's a clear path, with all the right set up. I genuinely don't think he's the transfer guy. People assume it because of Brighton, but Brighton's purely about Tony Bloom's stat software and scouts. As it stands I don't know who's in charge of transfers. For Botman, Bruno G, Trippier, I think it was mostly the bloke who I derided under Ashley, Steve Nickson. But now I get the feeling it's a committee, actually headed by Howe, which given his track record of constantly buying badly - focused on British try-hards - is a very strange thing to do. The manager should have a say, without doubt, but it should be a collective of analysis, costs, character, availability, desire to come, ability, stats, etc. That's how I think any modern club should act - it's how I think City, Liverpool and Arsenal act, and Chelsea before Boehly rocked up - but I'm not 100% our team is quite there yet. Ultimately if Nickson is identifying the right players but Howe's saying "nah, I'll stick with Almiron" then we're getting it wrong. Rightly or wrongly, I think Howe holds his trusted players too near and dear, he lacks ruthlessness to just move on. No inside info, obvs, but his reliance on Burn, Almiron, Murphy, Longstaff screams "loyalty first".
Screams "lack of options" to me. It's not headed by Howe. We saw a good look at how we do business in the Amazon doc. It's there for everyone to see. There is the head of PIFs European investments, he decides the budget and monitors FFP. Amanda and husband are the face and deal settlers, they negotiate with the clubs, they negotiate with PIF and finalize all transactions. Eales is in charge of finances, he comes across as the best member of the entire board. He seems a football guru. Then, you have Ashworth, he identifies places in the squad which need improvement and it was him who designated midfield as a priority. He provides targets and stats reports for the board, he greenlights targets if Amanda and PIF agree to them. He led the Tonali deal, Howe pushed Amanda to sign Gordon. The final sign off is PIF and they lead it.
If he wants to go then he can. I don’t think he’s all that. And to be honest he’s jumping into a fire pit.
Indeed this is true according to Alan Oliver anyway and it makes you think just how much control the manager has?
