OneMoSalah

Not surprised. They turfed Tuchel out because he didn’t want to do things their way and was mummers that he was very critical of being so involved in things outwith his job as head coach. Some rumours doing the rounds that Poch wants much more say on the January transfers too - so will see how that goes. Surely to fuck he will get a bit more say. It’s blatantly obvious we need some more experience. Questioning the recruitment and more importantly Stewart & Winstanley’s role in it, is absolutely needed though. Been banging on about this in other threads for a while now. We’ve spent what maybe 750m in 2 windows under them and its hard to see where we got any value for money or improvements on what we had before.

Everyone keeps saying this but one season of playing every week in a piss poor Southampton side hardly fills me with confidence. Also the same sort of things was said about Andrey Santos as if he was some sort of world beater based off of maybe 3 decent pre-season games. Now he can’t even get a game for Nottingham Forrest. Will reserve any actual judgement to the two of them play some competitive games for us. We tend to get over excited about players. Lavia for me is one of those who maybe will become a good player but whether he was a necessity this summer is another question. Interesting point re Mount, I think he would of played the same role as Gallagher has so far under Poch. That sort of more advanced role, linking with the forward players and making those sort of willing runs that creates passing options to break the lines for others. And maybe would of suited him yes, as he had a similar role with Tuchel although maybe a bit more offensive. Again as mentioned above, Southampton is Southampton. I don’t think from what I seen of him last season he was an absolute necessity this summer but like with us, Mudryk and Arsenal last January, Liverpools interest and our desire to sign every player who exists… it happened. When he plays we will see.

Maybe there is an option but I think we wanted him on a new long term before loaning/selling.

Ffs are these cunts serious. How many u21/23 MF players are we going to sign? And I don’t care if they are all going to be the next Zidane or Busquets or whoever…. That is now Enzo, Caicedo, Lavia, Santos, Ugochuwku, Casadei, and now this guy. Not to mention we are more than likely to sign Habib Diarra from Strasborg too at some point as we’ve been following him. Talk about fucking unnecessary transfers. Yet we still need a top CF, a top GK, a top CB. If we don’t address a reasonably experienced good level CF in January and keep signing u21 MFers and CBs then we are fucked. Now and in the future. And then Winstanley & Lawrence should get their p45s end of the season. £35m for someone with 6 months left on their deal? I want some of whatever your smoking haha.

Lavia isn’t going to make a huge difference. Not straight away. Don’t even think he plays ahead of Gallagher who has been our most consistent and improved MF player under Poch 100%. Talented yes but Lavia isn’t going to do anything different to what we have seen already from Caicedo & Ugochuwku. Playing Lavia, Caicedo and Enzo in a 3 makes me think of Kante, Jorginho and Kovacic. On paper, maybe it will be good but those 3 players there is definitely not the right creative or attacking balance/input. Nkunku will add something to this side no doubt. United are only where they are because at least they can score goals yes, likes of McTominay, Garnacho, Fernandes, Casemiro chip in. Not to mention Maguire, Lindelof, Dalot have been amongst there scorers too. Also not to mention they have the ability to ride out phases of the game which they struggle in or nick lucky goals. But we don’t have that. And we fold because we don’t have the know how or experience to get through these phases.

They are shite but they can grind out results. We cannot do that.

In all honesty, for me me, we have spent £1bn and actually gotten worse. I know you didn’t say better but the likes of Kovacic, Jorginho, Kante are arguably all better players than Caicedo (Kante & Kovacic definitely were anyway), Lavia, Santos, Ugochukwu and (although vastly improved) Gallagher. Mudryk, Noni, Sanchez & Disasi are probably equal to or worse than what we had before also. Yes Mount and Havertz weren’t popular and Cole Palmers success so far has proved we were right to sell them but the squad is hardly any better. Younger yes. Some deadwood shifted yes. But there is no way this squad is better, not a fucking chance in hell.

The type of mistakes we made v City defensively we also made today. And at Arsenal. And Brentford etc. Far too easy. Also I am slightly concerned with the playing style. We only really create opportunities from counter attacking and mistakes. In possession trying to break teams down we are still quite pitiful to watch still unless Cole or Raheem beay players 1 v 1. What is the playing style? We are almost 6 months in and bar counter attacking, its not exactly clear to me what we are trying to do. Everyone says about Poch and the high pressing and fitness levels from Southampton and Spurs but it doesn’t look like thats really settled in yet either.

If Azpi played how he did today there would of been people saying sell him. Captain my arse.

We cannot afford to spend too much time outside of European competition. Simple as that. Sporting wise or financially. Players will up sticks and move if we aren’t in European competition regularly thats the harsh reality of it. And our £1bn spend utilising amortisation will inevitably not be as well off if we don’t have this money coming in also. Before with Roman, the lack of Europe was not an issue as the players, managers & fans always knew we would be back in and about sooner than later. Because that regime demanded it. With this mob, who knows? I have no idea what we are gearing up for, every time I hear or read project/the 2030 thing I almost cringe because its as if we are already making excuses and know we are a million miles off it. You cannot spend £1bn in 3 windows and then turn around and say we need 3 or 4 years to compete for the top 4, never mind win any trophies. It is simply unfeasible. I mean if we need to spend £1bn to simply become a top 6 team then we have done something wrong. Be it approach, the players we’ve signed etc…. Just wrong. Been saying it for ages. The recruitment has been poor. Since day 1 of Boehly’s ownership. How much more money are these clowns Winstanley & Stewart going to waste? On players that won’t improve us right now as well as in the future? Arguably we need a total reset again in those positions. They’d be the first 2 I’d hold accountable. Things people have been saying for years such as we need a top GK, we need a top CB, we need a top CF, all 3 ready made to go, they neglectfully didn’t get any of them for whatever reason. Instead we got about 4 MF players all of the same profile. All of a similar age group. In the space of 2 windows. Lavia, Santos, Ugo? Why? Thats nearly £100m. And 2/3 of them will not have a long term career here more than likely because Enzo & Moises will be kept as they cost more than £100m and are ‘highly rated’ within the club.

Not really. You spend £1bn in 3 transfer windows on players and people tend to expect you to be in and around the top 4. Particularly given the hard on people had when we signed the likes of Enzo and Moises for nearly £230m combined. Dint even want to talk about Enzo’s level the last few matches. Him & Moises (although benched today) £100m+ MFers my arse. Long way to go for both albeit yes there is clearly talent there but enough for those prices? Hard to say. If we had spent this under Roman for example in the same time period, on different players, do you think we would be in this position? We must be the worst team to spend that much money in quick succession in football history. Embarrassing performance against an injury hit Newcastle. Reece as captain also - said it in the summer prior to the appointment - not the right call. Why Thiago Silva wasn’t made captain is beyond me. Forget the mistakes TS made/has made today. Not it matters too much but just sums up where we are at the moment. Not enough leaders, not high enough standards, no real experience to deal with things when things go wrong. Which directly results from lets buy every u23 player in the world and get rid of nearly every experienced player we have….. Thank you Boehly, Stewart and Winstanley. Project 2030 is looking good….

£115m for him. If we had enough bodies I’d of dropped Enzo too, has been off the pace for a few games as well.

Yep. Big clubs always get their way even after the ESL. Still a shambles we were involved in that and that the fines dished out where collectively about £25m between the 6 clubs. I hope that the PL change their approach and whilst this may sound crazy, if they find us or City to have breached their rules, actually do something drastic about it because they’ve done Everton pretty harshly IMO. But if this is the way they want to go, it needs to be consistent and the punishment has to befitting of the crime, simple as that. If not, clubs like Everton will feel hugely aggrieved and the big boys will keep doing as they please.

Will never play there. Who does he think he is? I mean he can’t even get into our team as a LB what chance has he got at City. Particularly where Gvardiol is like the perfect blend of left sided CB & left sided full back for them based on what Pep did last season with his tactics and set up? 🤣

Still not sold on him. Yes he has had a few big injuries but even when he’s played, not sure he’s what we need in the long run. With Silva undoubtedly leaving come the summer and the club wanting to recruit another CB by all accounts the next half a season are make or break for him here I think.

Maybe unconvincing is a better word. I don’t think we played that well in all honesty. Scoreline flattered us. We laboured to like the 75-80th min to score against 9 men. We did force some mistakes but to say we played very well is clutching at straws. Text commentary could say whatever it was I watched the game, it took us to the second half being up against 9 men to really lay a glove on Spurs. Because they played their back 4 on the halfway line. Yes thats football but 11 v 11 would of ended up like the City game, 100%, high scoring game for both sides because we are still naïve defensively and Spurs also will concede chances in this way they play.

Can we not just have neither Mudryk or Felix in the squad? Both not worth the cash we have paid/will have to pay. Or particularly good.

Poch used him off the left in pre-season. I agree, he suits more central positions better though. His record in Germany proves that. On the game itself, Newcastle have a lot of injuries but they’ll be right up for this. We aren’t out of the woods yet because we still looked pretty poor v Spurs until they went down to 9 men and so naive defensively v City so not sure what to expect. There will be goals at least.

Yep. Severely overrated. Nobody knows his best position. No real consistency the past 3 or 4 years. No real end product. Atletico are stuck with him as nobody is buying him for 70/80m. They paid 120m him too, insane. He will likely be loaned again as Barca won’t have the capital to pay that fee and Simeone doesn’t want him there at all.

I suppose that will make up for the last 18 months of mediocrity, celebrating our wage bill being down significantly. Some of the comments in reply to that tweet are embarrassing, yes we’ve reduced our wage bill but we look like a team that has heavily reduced in quality on the park for the best part of 2 seasons now. A 4-1 win v Spurs & 4-4 draw with City wont change that.

I don’t think it is fear mongering at all. The new ownership threw them the bone so to speak, trying to be transparent (which is the right thing to do) and perhaps thinking it will be more in the clubs favour to get out in front of it if anything were to be made of it. I am convinced there will be some sort of repercussions because if this has happened, it is against the rules. Whether its a fine or point deduction or whatever. City - who nobody’ll know if they will be proven guilty anytime soon - also will be firmly in the firing line after the Everton situation. Their investigation will take forever though because its for a 10 year period, CAS were involved etc etc. Regardless, the precedent has now been set by the PL so its obvious that financial doping/irregularities is going to become a stick that they will beat teams with. Not to mention, never mind those allegations there is still going to be question marks regarding spending £1bn in 3 windows under Boehly too. Amortisation or not - the numbers certainly will be checked again in more scrutiny if anything comes of this so we will see if these new owners are as squeaky clean as they claim to be. But these issues are the current owners problems now, not Romans. There is nothing ridiculous at all to assume we may end up with a large fine or worse by the PL for breaking the rules if proven of doing so. And yes its not official or there hasn’t been any allegations by whomever but that was also the case with Everton and City to a certain point. There is no smoke without fire. Its not like someone made it up and UEFA had fined us for something along the lines of what we are being accused of IIRC.

Maybe. But if it happened under Roman and we get punished, the new owners will have to take it on the chin regardless. Bit late to be pointings fingers anyway. Particularly at the man who turned the club into a European powerhouse and one of the most successful outfits in Europe whilst Boehly and Clearlake have turned us into a circus.

Scored already. Fuck knows where hes playing, they say LB but its not really there. Nagelsmann going for it with the whatever the fuck formation that is 😂.

Saying it “predates this ownership” as if it will do anything or make them look more favourably is incredibly naive. When you buy a house and it has a dodgy roof that you don’t know about too well, you have still bought the house. It is then your problem, not the previous owners. Everton getting -10 points is a dangerous dangerous precedent. Us and City should be very very wary now about what could happen.

Hes going to be top notch irrespective of where he goes, how much he goes for, when he goes. I am surprised United didn’t get him in the summer instead of Hojlund. Probably if it were summer 2024 and they wanted a CF, they would of. We have a long standing interest since before the pre-season game v Bohemians IIRC (2018 or 2019?) where he made his first appearance age 14. We tried to get him over before Brighton got him. Personally think he is probably better than Jackson in terms of being a more natural CF but no point stockpiling another young player who needs regular minutes. I mean it would be typical if we neglected signing a more established, experienced CF again for another prospect as this seems to be our mantra at the moment. As mentioned in the board thread and previously before, the sporting director boys, their head’s should roll come the summer irrespective of where we finish as they have made poor decision after decision since being involved in recruitment since January be it prices we’ve paid, who we’ve signed or the obvious not signing players of a certain experience/proven quality. The likes of Madueke, Mudryk, Ugo, Lavia, Santos…. money that should of been better spent elsewhere or more on quality. Then theres the Emma Hayes situation on the womens side. They’ve not put up any trees and irrespective of where we finish they need to be the first ones cleared out for me as we cannot afford another window or two of wasting huge sums on poor signings and stockpiling positions we don’t need too many bodies in. I mean look at Villa, how is it that they somehow can have one of the most competent directors of football out there such as Monchi whilst we have 2 clowns intent on turning us into Ajax or Monaco? I hope we throw bags and bags of money at Michael Edwards in the summer.