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Transfers Summer 2026 Transfer Thread

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I won't pretend to know if Kante or Mahrez were known future stars at the time, or absolute N'obodies.
If we had a big club mentality though, we'd have made a decent effort of signing them from Leicester off the back of finishing 3rd in a 3 horse race that season.
But....Levy.
(And, tbf, Abramovich agent fee cheating)

The fact is that barely any of the players that didn't make it here actually got given a chance.

People then include the fact that they stalled in their career to 'prove' that they weren't good enough, but the main factor for young players is opportunity. Nkoudou especially was given less than 300 minutes, averaged 8-10 mins per appearance. Went on to do well in Turkey and had a near 1-in-2 scoring record over 3 seasons in the Saudi Pro League. Clearly was a player there but we barely saw him. Same with Njie; he played 8 times.

To put it into context, we just gave Kolo Muani nearly 1700 mins of game time, which is 3.5 times as many as we gave the "N'obodies". Not a single person on this forum can really speak from any form of knowledge or authority as to how good they would have been if they'd have been signed by the likes of Brighton, Brentford or Bournemouth. That's pretty much the difference between the Kante, Mahrez, Mbuemo types. None of them were that special before they were given opportunity.

As a club, that's the exact point we fail at.
 

ew throw up GIF
 
The fact is that barely any of the players that didn't make it here actually got given a chance.

People then include the fact that they stalled in their career to 'prove' that they weren't good enough, but the main factor for young players is opportunity. Nkoudou especially was given less than 300 minutes, averaged 8-10 mins per appearance. Went on to do well in Turkey and had a near 1-in-2 scoring record over 3 seasons in the Saudi Pro League. Clearly was a player there but we barely saw him. Same with Njie; he played 8 times.

To put it into context, we just gave Kolo Muani nearly 1700 mins of game time, which is 3.5 times as many as we gave the "N'obodies". Not a single person on this forum can really speak from any form of knowledge or authority as to how good they would have been if they'd have been signed by the likes of Brighton, Brentford or Bournemouth. That's pretty much the difference between the Kante, Mahrez, Mbuemo types. None of them were that special before they were given opportunity.

As a club, that's the exact point we fail at.
No some players are just better than others.
If the N'nobodies were good then they would have had top level careers after Spurs. They didn't because they were shit.
 
No some players are just better than others.
If the N'nobodies were good then they would have had top level careers after Spurs. They didn't because they were shit.

They did. Njie won the AFCON and played in a Europa League final after he left us. Nkoudou won the treble in turkey.

No one can judge them for being 'shit' they practically didn't play for us at all. That is damaging for careers and there are minimal cases of players who bounce back from being out of favour to going on to playing at the very top. People were saying Salah was shit in the exact same way after he was bombed out of Chelsea, and were still saying it when he was in italy.
 
Just catching up on this thread but agree with what is being said about our scouting and recruitment.

There are so many examples of other clubs signing genuine elite talent from other teams and lower leagues. Look at Palmer, Anderson, MGW, Wharton, Rodgers, Alex Scott, even players like Krupi. There are so many more but they are only what has come to mind immediately.

The reality is almost every team in the top half of the league, has one or two genuinely quality players that walk into our first 11. They were all obtainable for us, and we decided to not sign them, and instead prioritise other players who frankly are nowhere near as good and likely won't ever be as good.

Just go through our team and it is full of mediocre players. We have a severe lack of elite talent. There isn't a single player in our squad who would get into the top 3 or 4 sides in the country. You could argue there isn't any that would get into the top 6 or 7, that's how far we have fallen.

It's shocking really. So much money wasted on players like Richarlison, Solanke, Odobert, Tel, even Simons was an expensive purchase who doesn't really look cut out for the league. Gray was an expensive purchase and time will tell if that was a waste or not.
 
Just catching up on this thread but agree with what is being said about our scouting and recruitment.

There are so many examples of other clubs signing genuine elite talent from other teams and lower leagues. Look at Palmer, Anderson, MGW, Wharton, Rodgers, Alex Scott, even players like Krupi. There are so many more but they are only what has come to mind immediately.

The reality is almost every team in the top half of the league, has one or two genuinely quality players that walk into our first 11. They were all obtainable for us, and we decided to not sign them, and instead prioritise other players who frankly are nowhere near as good and likely won't ever be as good.

Just go through our team and it is full of mediocre players. We have a severe lack of elite talent. There isn't a single player in our squad who would get into the top 3 or 4 sides in the country. You could argue there isn't any that would get into the top 6 or 7, that's how far we have fallen.

It's shocking really. So much money wasted on players like Richarlison, Solanke, Odobert, Tel, even Simons was an expensive purchase who doesn't really look cut out for the league. Gray was an expensive purchase and time will tell if that was a waste or not.
You say expensive purchases ( and to us 40 million to 65 million is a huge amount) but Man City were spending 50 million on players 10 years ago ( Kyle Walker being one of them)
If we want to dine at the top table we need to start dishing out a lot of money on transfers and wages and also expect to spend on an occasion duff player as City,Liverpool, Chelsea have.
Its a long road back up to the top.
 
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