It’s not your money, so not sure why you care about fans demanding a bigger outlay
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It’s not your money, so not sure why you care about fans demanding a bigger outlay
My guy Charles de Ketelaere making a name for himself now.
I hope we go for him. Bin off Vlahovic. He's not worth 60 Mill and doesn't even want to move away from fiorentina.
I hope we go for him. Bin off Vlahovic. He's not worth 60 Mill and doesn't even want to move away from fiorentina.
My point is simply that ENIC's detractors always want their cake and to eat it too. If we sell players at their peak value, it shows a lack of ambition. If we don't sell players at their peak value, we've wasted the chance to get a return.
People should be consistent. ENIC's barren transfer windows were horrible. But they also dug their heels in and refused to sell Toby, Eriksen, Dele, and Dier at their peak value in the interest of trying to win trophies, which was good and praiseworthy. It didn't work out, but it was the right thing to do.
I think there's an effort to conflate "loudest, angriest game thread melts" with "any Levy critic" in a way that's just inaccurate. And I say that as someone that only really jumped on the ENIC Out train in the past 6 months or so. The critique is much more than just post-defeat sour grapes and thoughtful people should understand that.
Again, zooming back out to the net level of expenditure on the squad gives you a view for the forest through the trees. As will the benefit of time as the nitty gritty of what Poch wanted at X or Y moment becomes less critical to the overall picture.
There was a net outflow of squad capital as we scratched and clawed at the magical ceiling the project was seeking to burst. The club completely blew it, and now through their own frugality and the course of business elsewhere in the league it's flatly impossible for us to get back there without a dramatically altered business plan.
It just all comes down to the undeniable reality that ENIC's past isn't good enough to justify the project having no future, which is at this point plain as day to see. Most clubs are stuck as cannon fodder for the glittering petro doping clubs. We aren't, and should not contribute more in revenue to the club than City or Chelsea's fanbases do and then gladly accept helplessness before them on the pitch, nor should we stand idly by as lesser clubs ease past us.
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Something tells me that Fabio has been asked to not be as candid with who we are after as he was in the summer.
Unless the deal was already done I would probably say something similar if I was in Fabio's shoes.
not a bad shout.
the extent to which the new manager "negotiations" played out in public led to huge embarrassment for the club. a lower profile doing our deals would be welcome.
Less of the "Paratici negotiates with 10 players at at a time as only ever intends to purchase 1"
What's the Colombian Luis Suárez doing right now? The one at Granada? He's only 23 and is supposed to be real promising striker talent. Possibly a back up option to pursue in January? Or has he fallen off a cliff?
Both those blurbs scream of Fabio saying no comment but using more words to me. Hell, in the Vlahovic one he even threw in the "for now". And the one about Brozovic and Skriniar is basically "we do not comment on players at other clubs".not a bad shout.
the extent to which the new manager "negotiations" played out in public led to huge embarrassment for the club. a lower profile doing our deals would be welcome.
Less of the "Paratici negotiates with 10 players at at a time as only ever intends to purchase 1"
Someone mentioned that most of the players we buy are in the 10-20 million range and are crap. Those 4 , ok may not be good enough , from 2015 to 2019 were good enough to get us regular top 4 plus CL final. Those combined cost spritz £35m. Good business at the time I’d say. Infant you can add tripps and davies as well who cost £10m combined. A good coach will always make players of this value better than the sum of their parts. Having said that these 4 in their prime would have been worth £50 each. We still sold trippps for £20M as well. It’s generally only managers who can’t be bothered to coach that you need to buy expensive ready made players. Whether Nuno can do something like what poch did remains to be seen however evidence points to him not. Jose couldn’t and he coached very little apart from low block and rely on a couple of quality players to do the biz.
Your complaint should be our costs being higher than United and Liverpool, as the costs of City and Chelsea are artificially low given that those clubs are not required to maintain objective financial solvency.
Anyway.
How come there isn't a world where everyone recognizes that all the things that happen after a decision aren't necessarily a direct result of that decision? That's the world I want to live in...or, absent that perfect world, at least the world where everyone recognizes that a player may have some use but not be useful to your team. What happens after doesn't change the merits of the decision to sell their sorry asses.
An umbrella...ahem, I mean a brolly has it's uses but you wouldn't want to carry it around everyday in southern California. Who cares if someone in Manchester can get a lot of use out of it? We shouldn't NOT make moves because some people are allergic to reason.
Oh, but I am...I'm for selling any and all players if there is a deal to be made and a suitable replacement to be found i.e. if it's in our best interests. I think we both accept that there is a theoretical deal to be made to justify the selling of ANY player, right?
The problem you are having is not acknowledging the issue with the replacement. Everyone knows that our replacements would be punts and not properly scouted players of sufficient quality. If we sold Harry a couple seasons ago and replaced him with Haaland while filling other holes with quality most would not have had a problem. Selling Harry and replacing him with N'Jie while paying for some infrastructure and still leaving us with 1 striker would be problematic and justifiably ridiculed.
It wasn't and I was for selling any and all of them. As
Deuterz
pointed out a bit ago it should be someone's responsiibility to evaluate the players that we do have and be judging if we can improve and whether or not we can make a quick hit in the xfer market and easily replace them. And absent the ability to get rid of them they should have had true competition because 40-50M for Dier always looked good deal, Dele was always a shit player, Eriksen was half-a-midfielder, and Toby was a good player that was apportioned more than his fair share of credit for our team defensive work (i.e. being protected by Wanyama and Dembele didn't hurt). Simple test, name 1 exceptional intrinsic quality that any of those 4 players have that they could be expected to display consistently and against any and all competition. When you can't do that then you will know that they were all easily replaceable and it should have been done at peak value. So it wasn't a good decision. The players have no exceptional intrinsic qualities and were beneficiaries of a system...quintessential system players and you know you always try to replace them with real players that can BOTH benefit from the system AND make a difference with their actual quality. That's how you get over the line in all those instances where we came up short.
You are using the most extreme and least rational of the voices and positions from those critical of Levy to bash the merits of the anti-Levy sentiment. That's lame. Every position is gonna have a peanut gallery that will only be happy when they are getting what they want. But as a club we shouldn't tilt at their windmills.
Eh, Dele and Dier looked immense that season. Dier was being touted as a potential Spurs and England captain and midfield General. Dele was being touted as the next great English superstar. To a degree, both were even eclipsing Kane.Oh, but I am...I'm for selling any and all players if there is a deal to be made and a suitable replacement to be found i.e. if it's in our best interests. I think we both accept that there is a theoretical deal to be made to justify the selling of ANY player, right?
The problem you are having is not acknowledging the issue with the replacement. Everyone knows that our replacements would be punts and not properly scouted players of sufficient quality. If we sold Harry a couple seasons ago and replaced him with Haaland while filling other holes with quality most would not have had a problem. Selling Harry and replacing him with N'Jie while paying for some infrastructure and still leaving us with 1 striker would be problematic and justifiably ridiculed.
It wasn't and I was for selling any and all of them. As
Simple test, name 1 exceptional intrinsic quality that any of those 4 players have that they could be expected to display consistently and against any and all competition. When you can't do that then you will know that they were all easily replaceable and it should have been done at peak value. So it wasn't a good decision. The players have no exceptional intrinsic qualities and were beneficiaries of a system...quintessential system players and you know you always try to replace them with real players that can BOTH benefit from the system AND make a difference with their actual quality. That's how you get over the line in all those instances where we came up short.
You are using the most extreme and least rational of the voices and positions from those critical of Levy to bash the merits of the anti-Levy sentiment. That's lame. Every position is gonna have a peanut gallery that will only be happy when they are getting what they want. But as a club we shouldn't tilt at their windmills.
The case for selling them is very much hindsight 20/20 - people on this forum were fucking fuming at the idea of Dier being poached by United. Not hard to look back at the threads and see that.
Not interested in revisionist history. Both looked to have immensely great futures ahead of them, had just been massive parts of the club's best season in 50 years, and had been immense for England in the Euros. They then plateaued before regressing - but its silly to pretend the situation was anything less than it was.
Which season? Doesn't matter actually because it further emphasizes my (and the space invader's) point about evaluating players irrespective of their performances/stat lines to see the direction of the benefit vector. They had their deficiencies and they were there to be seen for those looking and able to see them.
Touted by folks that can't judge a player I would say. Similar folks/arguments to but on the opposite extreme of those you have been decrying on the anti-Levy side.
bus-conductor
was super anti-Dier from the off and was quick to point out his flaws. I recognized the flaws but felt he was being impatient instead of giving the kid a chance to prove himself. He was serviceable IMO. But like with Winks and Sissoko Daniel Levy has no desire to fill out the squad properly and Dier was placed in a situation of dependence beyond his skillset. So don't give Dier too much credit as he was recruited on top of the next season, right? Because Wanyama was better at the gig. And finally, being adjudged an English superstar does not necessarily make a player any good...history longs to see an underrated English player.
That's ok. Kane has done well but he's always been a dependent striker that could be improved upon IMO. He's benefited from the system as much as any other player has.
For some...not all. As such you can't jsut discount someone's argument because some other people are utilizing hindsight. You and I went back and forth about selling Kane this doggone summer when it was pretty crystal clear that it should be done. So I guess what I'm saying is don't utilize your lack of foresight to damn other's perspicacity as hindsight. That's dismissive and self-serving.
And as far as folks fuming re: "we shouldn't be selling our best players blah blah blah etc etc etc" it's status/puffery "we're a big club" nonsense. You should sell every player you can for as much as you can as long as you can properly replace them. As I've pointed out many times there are better players that move every window for less than the market value our players supposedly have and less than most of the players we bring in. We do it wrong and now those people are getting their just desserts as we struggle with the decaying husks of former 'world class' players that should have sold many years ago.
Awesome, thankfully no one is revising on this side.
None of that matters in regards to their actual intrinsic qualities. Speaking of which you have neglected to answer my question about identifying each of those 4 players' qualities. It's actually very valuable and not just to place your nuts into a grinder (which it seems to have done since you've conveniently neglected to address it). If everyone did this for every player they would easily see that most of our players are not that good. There are a lot more Winkses than Sonnys.
What mental yoga pose is this? Is it more reasonable to believe that a player is a system player and as a result of our functioning system going caput they are now showing their real level or to believe a player has hit a certain height because he's awesome and then fallen off to a point of no longer being able to kick a ball properly? You tell me.
No one's pretending my man. These players were the same shit players with no intrinsic quality back then as they are now. But they were in a functioning system back then. If folks would have recognized it then perhaps the groundswell would have made DL make the right call and chose Poch over them.
But this happens when folks do exactly what you are doing now in trying to dismiss what I'm saying as 'revision' and 'pretending' and whatever else. Folks not interested in hearing counterpoints but keep getting it wrong time after time. Again, we argued about dumping Kane's lumbering ass this summer. Had you listened to me then you would be further ahead of the curve. Now you're gonna have to make up some rationalization like he's regressed or something to resolve the mental conflict.
Or you could jsut recognize the system in which they prospered is no longer there and our system players aren't that good on their own. That explanation satisfies all observed phenomenon. And it happens all the time with 'system players'.
The hero of Blackburn Rovers and of Chile strikes again. Less than a year left on his deal with Blackburn.
He really didn't. He was your archetypal overrated English player, and plenty of people were aware of it at the time. His best season was as a DM, and he still looked like a CB playing in midfield, and whenever he did play CB, just looked mediocre.
At DM he did what you could find 10 players to do in every major league. Sit, protect the back 4 and play simple passes. These players aren't useless, but they aren't worth 40-50m (especially back then) and we should've bitten their hands off if we received that offer.
United are the only club that would have made it, because their transfer dealings were erratic and clueless. Idrissa Gueye was twice the player and went for 30 to PSG. Players like Dier benefit from having a simple job and superior midfielders around them to do the more challenging job. Rare, genuinely great defensive midfielders like Fabinho are gold dust, not a clogger like Eric.
All three would be gigantic signings tbh
Was so shit United was offering £50M.
So many internet experts, evaluating players in the past is easy. The fact that he didn't live up to the projections doesn't change the fact that many, many people - people who actually do this sort of thing for a living, not just type about it on the internet - were projecting a very bright future for him. Like those who wanted to buy him, we believed it enough that we didn't want to lose out by selling him early.
It was the right move at the time. We wanted to win trophies, and Dier was considered an important fixture in the squad by the manager.
But I guess you're all better at evaluating players than Pochettino is, too. Its easy when you're speaking about the past, after all.