No idea who had the final say but if it is true as claimed that Conte will walk if he isn't 'backed' then we need to understand what 'backing' he is likely to need. If spending £350m on dross is required then he isn't the right guy.
Agreed. We could employ Pep or Klopp and it wouldn’t matter if the resources and ability to back them isn’t there behind the scenes.
Given the numerous claims that Levy doesn't 'back' our managers it seems odd that none of them have ever resigned over that.
I don’t think it’s a simple as saying that they aren’t ‘backed’. But I think a lack of coherent, long-term thinking by the powers at the club above the manager, regardless of the failings of the last 2 permanent incumbents, has directly led to the conditions that have caused them to leave.
Exactly. We don't seem to be proactive anymore, preferring to react and react late. There doesn't seem to be an overall plan, there's no clear route for academy players to progress or gain experience elsewhere and there's no structure. If we need a new left-back, for example, then there should be someone with a shortlist of appropriate, realistic options to choose from. If we've got a talented player progressing through the youth system, then there should be a plan for integrating them into the squad. It's a mess.
Sessegnon may be making a case for Reggie's place. We don't know yet if Real are taking him back anyway.
Case in point is Skriniar, a player Mourinho clearly wanted. We offered below the asking price and ended up buying Rodon instead for £11m. Now, I really like Joe Rodon, and I think he’s got the potential to be a class CB, but he’s not who the manager wanted and he wasn’t the starting XI quality CB we needed. Bear in mind that we also reportedly spent the best part of £30m on Bergwijn that January, another player who was a club buy, not a Mourinho buy. The maths there should be self explanatory. Don’t get me wrong we should be supplementing the squad with promising young talent that can develop and either be key first teamers in the future, or be sold for a profit. But not at the expense of the immediate, pressing needs of the first XI. When Levy and Hitchin are spending nearly £30m on a player the manager doesn’t want, just because they’ve scouted him for a while and he’s suddenly available, that’s a big issue for me. Foyth is a great example of how this should work. We paid I think £8m for him and now will either be getting a Europa League winning RB/utility player back from loan, or making a profit of at least £5m. Poch was clearly on board with the signing at the time too. That’s good, sensible business. But it’s remarkable in so far as it stands out as a bit of an outlier amongst our activity over the last few years as actually likely to be a success in that model.
Tbf mate I could throw the same last sentence at you. We have a disagreement, nothing more, nothing less. Imho 11 and a half years out of 20 is a better way of looking at it. But it don't change the fact that we have only had 3 good managerial choices from eleven. And 5 of the 11 were not gambles...they were simply bad decisions. Ramos and santini proved to be gambles and I ain't criticised them. I am not a fan who moans about a lack of spending or lack of trophies and up until very recently was not for removing Levy. As I have made clear, it was appointing JM, furlough, the ESL and not having an immediate replacement for JM in place that have changed my mind.
Mourinho may have wanted Skriniar but value for money has to be part of the decision surely. It would be insane to pay the asking price all the time and unrealistic to think we could outbid the Manchester clubs or Chelsea.
Fully get all this but for all the recent mess ups I still can't see how any other Chairman has done better, unless I include the ones who would force me away from the club on ethical grounds. Everton fans have never had anyone near as good as Jol, Redknapp and Poch appointed over the same time period, at least judging by results.
I agree it has to be part of the decision - but (ignoring Bergwijn for a minute) for the c.30m difference between the transfer values of Rodon and Skriniar, how much would we have made up by improving our league position, performing better in cups and Europe, and potentially qualifying for a more lucrative European competition in the process? Not to mention the real impact on chances of silverware. It’s all hypothetical ultimately but it has to be considered. I don’t think we were competing with those clubs for the player though. United already had Maguire and spent all summer chasing Sancho for big bucks, City went straight for Dias and Chelsea went for Thiago Silva on a free.
As I've said before, if we signed Skriniar and played the way we did from December-April, I can guarantee he'd be getting roundly slated with plenty of people demand he be sold this summer
Surely the argument is that we wouldn’t have made so many mistakes at the back with a more consistent defender and leader to shore things up. Obviously that can’t be guaranteed from any signing though, let alone one who has no prior experience of PL football. It’s all hypotheticals, ultimately.
It is all hypothetical and ultimately every decision boils down to an educated guess. We could've signed Dias and he could've picked up a career ending injury in his first game...who knows? I would however question the 'educated' part of our guessing though. Re the defence going into this season we had three hypothetical scenarios to pursue: 1) Retain the same players, despite all evidence over 12-18 months suggesting they weren't good enough and our previous manager confirming this, but hoping the new manager - renowned for defensive tactics - would get more out of them. 2) Sign a promising youngster with no PL experience to add to another promising young CB and hope they would step up massively and quickly. 3) Sign a proven, established CB from one of Europe's biggest leagues with no PL experience and hope his arrival would inspire the incumbents to either up their game or leave. Two of those are straw in the wind stuff.
Skriniar isn't the fastest CB out there, indeed he's at least half a yard slower than Sanchez, Tanganga and Rodon and closer to Toby for pace, and given a lot of our errors were caused by defenders being caught out for pace he wouldn't have remedied that What he would have added regardless of what was going on around him was a better aerial presence when defending set pieces, which is certainly something we needed, but he wouldn't have remedied the obvious flaws at RB or how our midfield vanished off the face of the earth when we sat back which led to those set pieces On top of that, he wouldn't have prevented our transition from defence to attack being predictable, which is ultimately where our form started to unravel
Many fair points, though the lack of pace is commonly remedied by positioning and decision making by the very top tier CBs. I agree he wouldn’t have fixed many of the systemic issues we had though.
