Yes we all would, hence why keeping him and having his goals in addition to other would have been better served them sending him out on loan without replacing him..... It is potentially and looking likely a very very costly mistake. You can't honestly say you'd rather have sharp and Ohio on the bench over him ?
I can honestly say that if he and Tetteh leaving has funded philogene, then we're stronger overall as a result. For the next few years to come whether he stays or gets sold in summer .
Argh right so I didn't say we have missed out, I said it's looking like we will ( last time I checked we weren't in the play offs and it was out our hands )
That is my answer, because it's not a binary scenario at a practical level. And you should know that as well as anyone. I'd rather have let Oscar go and do the business we've done this season. Unequivocally, yes. And the merit of that decision, amongst other things will be judged by the league standing after 46 games. 15th to beat. But if you wish to rant at not being able to have your cake and eat it, then be my guest...
Making the play offs is not the finish line by a long way. If we scrape in it will be with another one in the same boat, and two teams who are many points ahead of us and have been up there all season. Then a two leg semi final and a final to play and win, where we would be very much the outsider.
Which is precisely why it makes absolutely no sense for Acun to spaff his wedge on this season alone, **** or bust as some are making out. If fact he said in Jan tigers+ interview that 8th would still represent progress this year and that's what he cares about, season on season. 'If we don't get there, it just means we're not ready yet' his words, publicly.
Fine but dont pretend like you have any idea He is eventually going to want a return Its an investment We cant actually even spend the money we could due to ffp Hes not our owner for charity
No, but he doesn't have a bad track record of building businesses. And the idea that he even could just 'flog the club' and immediately get a return without leaving it in a better place than he found it also seems absurd. He's probably in it for about 60 mil by now or thereabouts. So he doesn't get his money back and a return without some degree of success. But the way he's trying to build a Turkish fan base doesn't speak to me of someone who's looking to flip us anytime soon.
We're already in a better place He's been fantastic But will he be happy if we stay in the championship in the next 3 years
I think a lot depends on the new prem/EFL funding deal in the very long term, Tbh. I do think he understands - as tan references in the 1904 live that If we do go up we may need to yo-yo to establish, but I honestly believe he knows that success doesn't come overnight. And I think as long as he's appreciated and he feels he has a realistic chance of promotion then he'll stay actively involved. The efforts he's making to develop a Turkish fanbase though - it's not like you can establish something like that and just switch allegiance, the academy proposals, the fact we're signing spurs academy YouTube sensations - there's very much an eye on the future. So I don't understand the 'if we don't get promoted hell **** off' mentality if I'm honest. And I think if that success did come then he'd back himself to find ever more investment to underpin it.
Repeatedly, doggedly insisting that letting Oscar go this season was a mistake because he scored 13 last season and therefore would've done the same or more this season, totally ignores the enormously relevant fact that he's missed most of the season with injury, just as he missed the end of last season for us. LR said in the summer that we would have a much better injury record this season and he's delivered that. Not keeping Oscar around was part of that. He was also known to be a very high earner, so it isn't hard to see that offloading his injury-wasted wage has allowed us to sign several better and more robust players who have helped us have a much better season this time around than we did with him. Like McKechnie said, we can't have our cake and eat it. That is the very obvious reality of FFP. We have problems scoring goals, I'm not convinced that the identity of the strikers is the sole reason for that. I think Delap in the first half of the season was brilliant, and both he and Connolly at that point were on track to outscore Oscar's 13 goals, as were Tufan and Philogene. Delap's injury, just as we feared, has been a huge problem. It's replacing him rather than replacing Oscar that I'd say has been the issue. But then it was never going to be easy to do so; and by the time he got the injury it was a last minute thing and clearly the best we could get with the budget we had was Ohio. As for this season being **** or bust, we wouldn't have spent £1.5m on a goalkeeper for the future if there wasn't an element of forward planning to our spending.
Or Omur, even. Think someone made the point that we sold KLP and replaced him with Sinik. We replaced him with a hell of a lot more than that. And some of those free contracts he funded have generated a substantial amount again.
We do, but although I referred to him as a goalscorer, I don't think it's as simple as play him and he'll score. I maybe should've said instinctive finisher. The same can be said of Sharp, but with both players the problem right now is whether we'll create the chances for them. I don't know who I'd go with up there, but I can see why Connolly isn't getting a lot of starts.
I think it's fair to say we made some regrettable recruitment decisions that summer. It's looking likely that by the time Woods, Sinik and Oscar's contracts end we'll have spent the majority of that time trying to get rid of them. It is what it is, but I do think the Shota experiment, and spending so much money without a smarter manager guiding that spending, was a mistake that is holding us back a bit now.
We've had a bad performance so HT decides to go completely OTT, it's happens after pretty much every bad performance. It's just reactionary nonsense. Last year was 14th, this year should be top 8 in a really tough year. It doesn't get mentioned but Boro spent more than us, Coventry spent £30m on transfers and it's only been our second year of having investment. We just have to keep developing, selling and reinvesting.
Connolly is probably a better instinctive finisher. When his head is in the right place at least. Sink and woods, I agree, but Oscar is independently estimated as a 4m asset. Who we signed for free. We are at least getting loan fees for the likes of Oscar, we got 1.5 for Benji who was a free. Didn't lose much on Ali or Lokilo either. I think when it comes out in the balance you'll be surprised how little we've lost. Sinik and Fleming's contracts are the ones which will be difficult to shift, for the rest - we've got value for some others to offset the setbacks. We've actually made money on some that we've moved on.
I've absolutely no idea what our performance today was like as I never saw it.... Just so I'm clear, what's OTT about me saying that keeping a proven goalscorer in the championship would have been a much better choice then getting rid and not replacing him. Goal scoring has been an obvious problem for us and we are yet to solve it. Imo Oscar would have been a great option to have this season in the squad with the service we could have provided him and id rather definitely have him over sharp or Ohio. Not really seeing what's OTT about that tbf
Because he was poor for really long spells, extremely expensive to keep around as a backup option and he's been injured for most of the season. It's not like he's gone elsewhere and banged goals in for fun. Metz got rid as quickly as they could.
You see someone who's effected 9 games in 35 and someone who's scored 2 goals in 2023 as a proven championship striker. Take the money and run.
