Summer window

I don’t think for a second Jack won’t be here next season.

And re the Dickheads on twitter and certain forums, well, look at the season ticket sales to date.

I’d say that’s your guide to how connected the club and fans are. Numbers are insane people are excited about the club again.

Most of the bellends on Twitter post during the match. Anyone that goes the match knows how **** signal is in the SOL

 

Some people change like the weather yesterday they were over the moon with what his agent put out today that’s forgotten and it’s all doom and gloom, this model of ours will work it’ll not always be popular because we will lose a few along the way but we have to put our trust in the recruitment team

 

Yeh - its all about the headlines.

Both stories - yesterday and today say:

• Jack Clarke wants to stay
• We want to keep him
• We are willing to sell at the right price (as every player has a price)

But one was positioned as good news. The other, from Fishpaste, was positioned as being "Questions asked about his future".

I don't think Fishpaste has necesarilly done it on purpose, or if he has then he's within his rights to anyway. But its all in the way its positioned by the initial source / tweeter.

 

I'll add - that the entire story only exists because of Fishpaste's tweets. I'm not for one second saying he's wrong or lying

But his initial story said he was being offered a new deal. everyone was surprised by this as he had 3 years left.

Nobody else reported it

Now Fishpaste is saying he is no longer being offered a new deal. And is questionning whether that means he's off.


So basically its a story from a source that is essentially writing off their own original story. nothing more.

 

Everyone has a price, even our best players, but I’m confident that the current ownership will no longer allow clubs to take the piss and pick up any of our squad for a few quid and a greggs pastie.

It would need to be a very high bid which would also take into account the sell on clause, plus Clarke would have to agree to leave and the lad seems settled at a club for the first time in his career.

 

£20m for Clarke would be brilliant business and something we would be stupid to reject. Even for us to be able to pump £10-12m into transfers in the championship would be huge.

No matter how decent he is at that level we could improve all over the pitch with that money, obviously not wage relating but some transfers last season that proved to be quality business..

Burnley picked up;

Josh Cullen £3m
Manuel Benson £4m
Arijanet Muric £3m
Luke McNally - loaned to Coventry £2m

Ozan Tufan from Hull £3m

Ahmedodzic Sheff Utd £4m

 

Teamtalk are now rehashing Fishpastes story which people are taking as a second source ffs.

The race for clicks really is something

 

Hoffman seemed pretty settled and was doing well at first, but after he got COVID it seemed to affect him mentally and he never seemed confident afterwards, with a few poor performances coming in then.

 

I agree mate, we will sign some real talent I have no doubt. I think we will see a couple of prem loans that make everyone sit up and take notice.

Mejbri for me just isnt quite good enough for a side chasing promotion. This is what we should be looking at. The bar is really high for us now. He wouldnt be better than Pritchard as a 10 for me. Technically or in terms of his creativity in open play. I cant see him playing deeper as I dont think he has the discipline, by which I mean when to sit or cover. Only seen the lad 4 or 5 times, so probably harsh judgement on my part, but I would aim higher personally. Getting a number 10 us going to be huge for us this summer, whether Pritch stays or goes. Probably the most important position we need to look at, along with a genuine number 9 to compete with Ross.

 

I don’t think £20million for Clarke is ‘great business’

I think it’s about par, but wouldn’t be offensive to accept.

 

Aye for me the no10 position is vital for us - I think its the area we can improve on the most with our current squad. I know Amad was class this season but his best performances were from a wider position so a top player in the no10 role could kick us on.

Exciting summer for sure, I'll be scouting the U21 championship this summer so will update on any prospects I see

Doing some ground work on Belgium U21s and 2 lads that I'll be keeping an eye on:
Maxim De Cuyper - LB - scored 9 goals this season for Westerlo while on loan there from Club Brugge
Largie Ramazani - AM - this boy looks class, he's at Almeria currently but doesnt start regularly so could be a player for us to keep an eye on. Came through Man Utd's youth set up

 

Have you watched any of the u20s?

I have been following Casedei from Chelsea since he was at Inter. At least a little bit. I watched him a bit at Reading and he will have learned a lot. I think he is a lovely footballer. Technique, vision, movement. He is starring in the tournament this summer. I doubt Poch will see him as a key man, wouldnt mind him here at all and would really fancy him in the 10 role. His pressing is a big asset and would suit us. This tournament will have others on red alert I suspect though.

 

I havent so far as got loads of other assignments at the minute to do so not had the chance.

I like Casedei as well, I recommended him to my team as we need a CM as losing our best one this summer, so hoping we might get him on a loan deal.

 

A question that came into my head is:

With tons of talented players to go for, how do you reckon our club goes about narrowing them down? Just looking at the number 10 position, there will be a large number of promising candidates (in my mind, anyway).

 

Apart from the obvious match related stats/data it looks to me like they do a load or research into the personality and character of the players before signing them. I'd say Cirkin is a prime example, seems a great lad for someone so young and always comes across very proffesional. Wouldn't surprise me if they have stats on how many times they have been late for training etc as well as the match related data.

 

A lot of it will be data related, they'll use that to near down the targets then they will have a few scouts watch those players - normally comply a minimum of 10 reports. Depending on the scoring system they use to rate the players they'll end up having a list of who has scored the highest. They will then do their research on the players personality to see if that fits to what we look for off the pitch - this is something Speakman n TM talk about a lot, having the right mindset to play for Sunderland. Normally once all the player reports are done and they know their top 2/3 prospects they'll have people looking to see how possible & realistic it is before they start looking at the personality of the player.

There is so much work that goes into signing a player, I know at my club we will be watching players so many times online to watch their highlights to see if they are worth watching live - then we will watch live quite a few times before deciding if they are the right player for us.

I was so encouraged when Speakman said a lot of the summer transfer work was done in January - thats how all good clubs work. They'll always be 1 or 2 transfer windows ahead when signing players

 

Thanks both. It’s all lightyears ahead of our not too recent past.

The emphasis on character is good to see and the likes of Ekwah and Cirkin are testament to it. Going back a few years, the difference between Arca’s and Medina’s success was stark. I’m sure Medina was a great lad but he wasn’t made of the same stuff as Julio.

 

Similar to the search for our next manager?

 

I've no idea how they find out about the character side of the players but it plays a massive part now.

If, for example, there were 2 x 16yr old wonderkids tearing up the u21s with very similar match stats it would appear (purely on football stats) to be a close call. But if you then found out that one is last into training, first out and takes the piss out of the u12s haircuts whereas the other one is first in, last out of training, picks the cones up and goes to the clubs charity events it makes the decision a bit easier.

 

The personality bit is so hard, the easier way is using contacts to find out what they are like. For example when we were after Ekwah I suspect they would have spoken to Alese to ask what he was like in training etc

Scouts & DoF's will look on social media as well to see what their activity is like