Transfer Rumours Summer transfer rumours 2023

They use our academy to produce and develop young players to feed on to their flagship club. Medium input medium output.

What concerns me was that Rasmus mentioned “building the club network”. He just got us relegated, he shouldn’t be taking about other clubs. It’s not about us, it’s about the group.

 

Not what Rasmus said.

 

No that was Kraft. But they both clearly want us straight back up.

 

I hope so, happy to be proven wrong. Their decision making so far has not made me optimistic about next season.

 

You cannot be serious! What on earth do you base that comment on?

 

We are the flagship club. Unless you think we're developing our talent to feed to a second-division club in Turkey.

 

The board, Especially Dragan will not want to be in the championship.
We are going to push extremely hard to make it back up first time of asking.

Nothing I have read has made feel like that isn't the goal.

 

I don't think you pump £160m alone into player acquisition in year one and then take a very substantial revenue hit via an unplanned relegation (and three managers) to then not bother having returning to the PL as one of your immediate cornerstone ambitions.

If you just wanted to get relegated, you could've done that by flogging the assets, drawing out the money and not reinvesting.

 

So who is the "flagship club" if it's not us?

 

Agreed.

It’s not their ambition that worries me; it’s their competence. Plenty of owners have aimed for the champions league and ended up sinking like a stone

 

We've spent the last few years bemoaning the lack of ambition at the club, remember Ralph Kruger's comments?
Now we have owners who clearly have the best intentions for the club and we should be grateful for that at least. I personally think that they will get things right eventually and at least they are being proactive and trying to address any problems.

 

Everton.

 

Yeah, it's entirely possible they **** it all up. I'm just glad that the margin of error is much larger. If they **** it up, we play in the Championship longer, and Solak loses a bunch of money. Under Gao, it was potentially an extinction-level event.

 

The PL table normally finishes in order of net spend. Spend more money, finish higher. Ok not always, there are exceptions.

I still don’t understand how they got it so spectacularly wrong and buck the trend. It’s easier to think they had no intention to stay up, rather than thinking Bazunu in goal, no striker, no experienced holding midfielder, no striker and Nathan Jones were going to keep us up.

 

In terms of spending, we were the 11th biggest spenders this season. Net spend puts us around 8th. It's hardly like we went absolutely nuts and blew everyone else out the water. Newly-promoted Forest spent more, and even Bournemouth spent 75m, not that much less than us (127m).

Of those that spent more, you could argue that Chelsea, Spurs, West Ham, Leeds, and Wolves all had equally poor seasons (by their recent standards). The problem for us (and Leeds) was that even just a slight lowering of standards meant a far more noticeable result; relegation.

But Chelsea, 540m to earn just 44 points. That's much worse than us. Leeds spent just as much as us, and also went down. West ham had a shocker all season, and yet outspent us, with an already superior squad.

What happened to us just wasn't that outrageous, really. Stop being outraged.

 

Also, Che Adams scored more goals this season (10) than all of these strikers who we were linked with last summer, combined;

Moussa Dembele - 3 goals all season
Liam Delap - 4 goals
Armando Broja - 1 goal
Charles De Ketelaere - 0 goals

 

Tbf Broja did his ACL before the season

 

Yeah I just wanted to fatten up the list haha. I'd love to get Broja back here.