It is if you don’t have a DoF or if you don’t give a DoF power to run the football side of the club. The talk has been of Levy stepping back and letting Paratici get on with it, if that is true and I don’t know then it fixes most of that issue.
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It is if you don’t have a DoF or if you don’t give a DoF power to run the football side of the club. The talk has been of Levy stepping back and letting Paratici get on with it, if that is true and I don’t know then it fixes most of that issue.
I kind of agree with some of that, but we have played with DoFs and without, now, we arguably had our strongest period under Levy without a DoF, possibly our worst too. Maybe that boils down mainly to the manager he picks.
Was Poch a good decision without a DoF, was Nuno a good decision when we had one?
It suits Levy to have one because he then mitigates responsibility for playing decisions, it may benefit him more long term, than us.
In hindsight think we should have had a DoF with Poch, I know he wasn’t keen on them but I think it would have been better for the club. Also would have been better for Poch, Poch complained about the energy of the club being focused solely on the stadium, a good DoF could have helped him.
Your perspective is really skewed.
Ndombele and Lo Celso fixed needs in our squad at the time with ball-playing central midfielders that our manager wanted. Your assertion that they didn’t « fit at all » with Pochettino is fact-free nonsense. You’re projecting your feelings onto the situation.
Did those players fit with Mourinho? No. But I already said that Mourinho was a bad appointment and held Levy fully responsible. Terrible decision.
If you think Paratici’s recruitment is only OK then you have unrealistic expectations and you’ll always be unhappy. That’s fine but tedious.
Levy wasn’t getting high praise at the time - you’re rewriting history. He got praise and criticism. Nobody who is one of the snooze fest critics in this thread was a levy fan in 2017. They were making the exact same arguments you were - « we could have pushed on and won a trophy if levy just spent X million ». Poch was getting most of the praise for the footballing results and rightly so.
The argument about spending just a little more to win a trophy is a fantasy.
First, we were financing a billion pound stadium that will mean we are the financial equal of non-sportswashing big clubs for the foreseeable future. We were not in a position to spend significant sums on uncertain returns (ie the transfer market).
Second, we got to the semi finals and finals of every cup competition during that period. The delta is down to Poch, the players and luck. That’s the reality.
Third, hindsight gives you certainty in your conclusions but in real time there was no certainty. There never is. You can always spend more and hope that with some luck you will do better. But you can never spend money and expect that trophies will arrive that season unless you are involved in sportswashing. It’s not a real thing for football teams in the real world. There’s just your hope that if we had done that we might have done better. But that doesn’t provide a forwards-facing rationale for action. Particularly when you consider points one and two above.
See this is where I think I can summarise your whole position. You genuinely think Paratici has done really well so far, and it shows your level of expectations vs mine. We're never going to agree on a position because I fundamentally expect better.
And that's fine, different opinions and all that. You call my expectations unrealistic, I say you're far too happy to praise mediocrity. The fact you can't even describe our recruitment pre Paratici as terrible says a lot (even most of the people who support ENIC will happily say our recruitment was awful) about what you expect, and what you're willing to describe as a success.
You think describing signing Gil, Romero, Emerson, Sarr, Gollini, Bentancur & Kulu as OK is tedious? Right .. well I think it's tedious expecting anybody to describe a 50% hit rate (at best) as anything other than middle of the road. Agree to disagree, I suppose.
Now you’re resorting to making up things I’ve said?
Every single player from that final Poch transfer window was a bust. But I don’t hold Levy responsible for that any more than Hitchen or Poch or the scouting team. That’s the difference. You think it’s fair to pin blame on one person. It’s not.
And lest we forget, at the time we were signing some of the most exciting young talent in Europe and fans were happy. Lo Celso is now playing really well for a CL semi-finalist so he’s the biggest mystery. And levy was not out there scouting or dictating transfer policy. So you want to damn the person responsible for negotiating deals for successfully negotiating deals for players that everyone was happy with at the time. Captain hindsight much?
It says much about your view that you weigh the signing of Romero (surely the BEST centreback signing we could have made) as equal to Gollini (backup keeper on a loan with no obligation). It’s not a reasonable point of view. And that’s what is tedious - pretending your distorted analysis is fair or reasonable when it’s neither.
A 50% hit-rate is pretty great honestly, assuming the busts are quickly cycled back out and don't sit in the squad stinking it up for their entire contract.
After all, transfer business doesn't occur on an even-distribution scale of 0-100%.
You thought OK was a tedious description, so I assume that means you think he's a resounding success, which would be doing very well. Am I wrong?
Levy appoints all these people, so yes the buck stops with him.
The whole idea that if fans were happy you can't criticise later is so mind bogglingly thick that I can't actually imagine you believe it. By that distinction United fans should be delighted with their menagerie of overpriced flops.
Romero has been a decent signing, lots of mistakes, lots of poor games vs lots of very good games and promise, but you probably rate him as an unequivocal success and think that's a balanced take. He was a CB costing more than 40 million pounds, not some stroke of genius Andy Robertson level pickup.
Paratici has signed some players who look good, some who look terrible, and one or two in between. That all balances out to OK in my book. I don't think that's unfair or distorted, but feel free to see it that way if you like.
It's certainly not bad, and an improvement over what we were doing. But when I look at the total list of our signings thus far and weigh them up individually, I can't say what Paratici has done thus far has been anything more than OK/decent. Others are obviously free to make their own minds up and it'll depend a lot on their own personal assessment of the players.
The reality is of course that it is too early to say for sure.
Yeah, would like to see hit-rate as a function of xfer fee. At the 50M level I believe every club would hope and almost expect close to 100% hit-rate.
That 50% rate is taking into account a lot of speculative xfers. At 50M we're talking about a more polished player. Even though the market has gone crazy there are still very few xfers at Ndombele's or GLC's numbers.
Very true. For example we spent 42m on Romero. As a CB at that price I'd expect him to have a high level of potential, yet people react like he was some really smart signing. Maybe their expectations have been killed because of the Sanchez signing.
Bentancur looks about right for a 20m CM, I don't think there's been a stand-out 'wow, we've done really well to get him for that much' signing thus far under Paratici. And we've definitely had at least one 'how the fuck did we pay that much?' moment with Emerson.
I didn’t. I said your unrealistic expectations and consequent inevitable ongoing unhappiness we’re fine but tedious. Scroll up.
And the rest of your post illustrates the unreasonableness of your point of view. Football fans love to believe in genius and that results are just a matter of doing better. That’s partly true. But it’s also a matter of luck. Luck is the elephant in the room in football conversations that no one wants to acknowledge. The great part that luck plays is put down to skill and talent which fuels anger and shame and disappointment online.
There was no one in the media, fan base or club who thought our last Poch window was a bust at the time. Your view seems to be that we can judge these things in hindsight - which is on one level reasonable because of course we can. But that doesn’t help anyone do better because decisions are always perfect with hindsight. And the reason why you cannot be too tough on a club in the transfer market is because LUCK plays a significant role. And it plays a role for everyone.
It is not possible to get signings consistently right. No club manages that. Not even close. Because perfectly rational, compétant agents would still fail regularly and no human is perfectly rational and compétant.
I don’t get your angle with Romero. It seems like you don’t want to give the club crédit for buying the best U23 cb in the world… because he’s not peak Nesta?
Ive been balanced ; you are not being balanced.
If you're just going to put our terrible recent recruitment down to luck, there's zero point in a discussion, that's a colossal copout. We haven't been 'unlucky', we've been poor in the transfer market. Which is why Paratici is here in the first place, and is starting to uproot our scouting team. We failed. Even Levy knows this and is taking a step back from the football side of the club as a result.
Nobody thought United's last window was a bust either. It was. You judge clubs on the results of their transfer business, not expectations at the time. You seem to want to excuse the club on its failings on the basis of bad luck, or sportswashers, or hindsight, or a million other excuses. The bottom line is they signed players who failed to be successful here.
Liverpool's recent major signings: Diaz, Konate, Jota, Thiago, Tsimikas, Alisson, VVD, Keita. Not possible to get signings consistently right, huh?
He's not the best U23 CB in the world.
Strange how you have the 'balanced' and 'reasonable' take yet so few people seem to agree with you on it, even people who are generally supportive of the ownership. Maybe you need to re-evaluate your own position and think about whether you're being reasonable, or just an apologist for obvious, clear failings that the club itself has recognised.
It only works, if the DoF has the total mandate to work under the financial framework.
If he doesn't control the transfers in and out from football decisions, it's pointless having him in the first place.
Things will never change until Levy sewers ties with the footballing department.
Which will in turn never change, because football considerations isn't what is driving this company.
You're right on all counts, we'd have been better off with a DOF but Poch didn't want one and actually started complaining that "I'm not a manager, I'm a coach" which was a pretty clear message that he wanted more control over signings and the football side of things.
Pochettino: I'm the head coach, not the manager.
Pochettino dropped a massive bomb on the football world with this super hot take.
cartilagefreecaptain.sbnation.com
Poch defo wanted Tanguy and Lo Celso and it's been a lot of money pissed down the khasi, set us back on the pitch and affected signings since, especially with the pandemic coming soon after.
You’re not really committed to a discussion because you continually misrepresent what I’m saying (or don’t take the time to read the words that are there).
I never « put our … recruitment down to luck ». I just haven’t reduced our track record down to one factor. You seem to want to boil everything down to Levy being bad. Even the mistakes of other people = Levy is bad because he’s chairman.
The point about luck is that every transfer is a risk. You view the world of recruitment as though there were some extremely smart people who has special insight into the ÇA and PA of players. That’s not real. Of course we can do better and I’ve said that but you’re not keen for nuance. We’ve had some bad luck with players like Sessegnon and Lo Celso… to blame Levy on those transfers is such a reach. They were good decisions by people who are not Levy that have not worked out. But we’ll ignore the fact Poch was keen on them.
Liverpool have done great business and they’ve had luck too. Salah? Good element of luck. Robertson? Good element of luck. And of course they’ve had a generational coach to tie the players together. We would not have had the same result spending 55m on Keita - that would have been poor business for us and it was dubious value for Liverpool ! And listen to Liverpool fans on Thiago! And of course a key piece of context is that Liverpool have FAR higher reputation than us and FAR more money than us. Only Levy’s vision for the club will eventually allow us to compete with £££.
Another example of your black and white / reductionist mindset is your statement that « few people seem to agree with me ». On what exactly? On the fact Romero was a great signing? On thé rôle of luck on the transfer window? Or on one of the 20 other things that have been raised?
On then on top of that you evade the points being discussed. Instead of clarifying your view on Romero you made a trite comment about him not being the best U23 cb when we signed him. It’s not even a good faith statement as is because if he’s not the best, it’s a distinction without a difference in the context of the quality of our recruitment.
And of course it’s telling that a discussion about Levy has again come back to one tired issue - transfers. I’m sure tottenhams massively improved revenue relative to the top teams and consequent improved spending will win over the boring drones
But withing the last year before he left he also popped his topped saying something to the effect of "maybe they should just change my title back to coach". Remember that? The club tweeted about the statement and all.
In what context? Unhappy about transfers?
That statement was in direct reply to the converse that you posted as 'proof'...
So perhaps he didn't have as much power as you suggest. DL has clarified the process many times since we've had so many mgr/coaches lately. Coach/mgr is but 1 voice on the xfer committee...and DL has final say as his hands are on the purse strings.
It was a genuine question, I was interested to know what he said and in what context.
I wasn't providing 'proof', I was recalling from memory something he said and the way it was viewed at the time in the press - I'm not on here to be right, but for discussion, it's a lot more interesting - not everything is about being right although it's interesting to see how you responded to my question.
I find it hard to believe that players are signed that any of our managers have explicitly said that they don't want or haven't agreed should be on the list. It makes no sense from a business perspective to foist very expensive talent onto a manager that doesn't want said talent. I appreciate that players lower down the list may not be always excite the manager in a way their first choices would.
I think Tanguy and Lo Celso especially were signings Poch was big on - I may be wrong but that was the impression I formed at the time, happy to be proved wrong on that.
I'm sure we can all agree that scouting and analysis is key to good recruitment. I like the Liverpool model were Klopp identifies positions he needs strengthened and the scouting/analysis team identify the best players from world football to fulfill the role. This was the case with Salah who they identified as a standout - Klopp expressed doubts but was eventually convinced by the data etc.
A manager/coach in the modern game doesn't have the time or tools to pick the players he wants to buy, it's not the 80s when 99% of players were signed from The British Isles. They should of course have a say as part of the committee and be listened to but the Fergie/Wenger days are gone.
Maybe Poch got a bit big for his boots, maybe he didn't. Happy to discuss. I'm fully aware that Levy has the ultimate say financially but I'm talking about the footballing reasons for transfers not financial - I'm not suggesting Poch wanted financial control but a bigger say on the talent recruited.