The Dajaku thing was just arse covering bullshit from Speakman. Dajaku is no more of a striker than I am
Truthful there just isnt a lot of no9s going about at the moment unless they sign for big money. Look at the goal scoring charts now, i cant remember a time in the championship where most of the top scorers arent strikers. Its similar across europe now, so hard to find quality cfs Moore is the only cf that was signed in January i would have taken n his wages are massive so i dont think the value was there Just my opinion tho
I guess we were starting from pretty much zero, so the 1st wave of youngsters (Cirkin, Clarke, Huggins, Ballard) had to go straight into the 1st team. The 2nd wave (Ba, Ekwah, Hume etc) had to learn on the job with occasional appearances. The 3rd wave (Mayenda, Triantis etc) are able to be loaned out because the 1st XI is strong enough not to need to chuck them in the deep end. Just a theory like. I sound like ****ing Speakman talking about "waves"
Better not to sign one than waste money on someone for the sake of it but I do think budgets for players appear to be in the 1-2 m range for every position and we need to up that for a forward. It can get a great championship defender, a good midfielder with promise, maybe even an average ageing championship Striker like Moore but it won’t get the quality we need and within the age we’re looking for. We’re going to need to either get lucky or invest more like 6 or 7 million if we don’t develop our own.
I'd say this model is iterative. We will have ups and downs as certain players hit the ground running and others need time and/or minutes elsewhere. Starting to think finishing 6th last year was the worst thing that could have happened to us - expectations were ridiculously heightened - one of the podcasts predicted we'd finish 2nd this year!! I think the club had got more right than they have wrong in terms of recruitment in the 2/3 years and it's nice to see some medium to long term planning for a change...
Other than this month we havent loaned a lot out tho, thats maybe been the issue. What we what is these young lads, who arent going to feature much with us, to go out on loan so they can hit the ground running when they rejoin us We havent done that well enough over the yrs - mainly because no1 wanted our players I get the previous 2 windows have been frustrating in terms of impact players for now but hoping over the remaining part of 5he season theyll start to show their worth. I think we've signed 3 cracking players in January and i get often the focus turns to what could we have done better. Im like that in my job, always looking at what we didnt do rather than what we did do For me we have signed 3 quality players, 2 on long term deals n the 3rd we can sign if we like what we see I think the squad had a better balance now than it did before the window so thats a big plus for me. Now its for us to kick on as a team n the young lads who went on loan to show us their worth
But how many of them have actually gone out on loan? Matete n dajaku are the only ones i can think off that weve signed n theyve gone out on loan. Think dajakus loan was with the view of leaving rather than for his development Its the only way they can get experience is by going on loan, honestly think its a great thing to loan talented footballers who wont be getting mins with us but who can gain the experience they need As long as we never go dwn the route chelsea used to do which is loan loads out every yr
I think our approach is fine / smart / good. We’ll win enough wins to do well going forward. I think the simple fact of the matter is they misjudged the readiness of Burstow and Rusyn. Hopefully this second half of the season they pick up and show their capability.
Surely it's part of process. These players aren't expected to be world beaters straight away but give them a year of development and then they slot into team. I'm thinking Seelt, anouche and any of the strikers. Ba next season should be absolutely mint and when we sell our big hitters they will be more ready to deliver. And the cycle begins again. We've got a really good team with loads of exciting talent. We aren't going up this season so I don't see point in signing Moore for 30k a week and he blocks the path of our strikers. I'm in no rush to get promoted tbh and glad to enjoy a different approach than likes of Ipswich
Spot on, the readiness part is the hardest thing to judge when scouting players who dont play in that league already We probably do need to get better in that area but i really believe in the talent weve got at the club n i know a lot of them will come good in time
I know Ba is doing well now, but when Roberts got injured, Rusyn should have been played on the right. He'd played there plenty of times for his previous club. The expectation wouldn't have been there for him to be the main man scoring the goals, but it would have given him valuable minutes in the side, before then moving him to play as a striker around about now.
From BBC Sport website: English Football League (EFL) spending during the window fell to £15m compared to £25m in January 2023 So of this £15m we make up a decent chunk of it (although haven’t got time to check the reported fees just now). Think this puts our spend in perspective and it’s more than decent.
Don't forget we got £100k for pritch, so that's to come off our spend, and that's £13k p week off the wage bill.
