Barrettinator

I agree with you and I can't edit the post now but that shouldn't take away from the larger point I was making.

It baffles me how we can't seem to do our business quick and early like Real, Barca (this summer notwithstanding) and Bayern. You know....they clubs we're supposedly aspiring to be like. The one time we wrapped it all up early, we breezed through the season (2014-15). But they won't learn. Because if it all goes wrong they're not the ones who'll get fired.

Here's another one. "Weeks"....means we had identified him as a target for weeks but kept underbidding until this late and let another club come in for him yet again (Danilo anyone?). Just when you think they can't be any more frustrating.

Fair enough. They all deserve blame. I just particularly hate how our negotiations have gone in recent years. You're correct. It's my opinion, not fact. Though I don't see anything that could logically debunk my opinion.

So you just want Emenalo to get some blame too, is that it?

Maybe I didn't phrase my thoughts well. I blame Marina and Marina alone for the utter sh*tfest negotiations we've been having. Emenalo deserves blame for identifying sh*t 2nd/3rd choice targets after we miss out on 1st choice targets thanks to Marina. Of course we've missed out on some of those 2nd/3rd choice targets too and appart from Ox....that's down to Marina as well. Matt Law and Simon Johnson are well known mouthpieces for the club so when they say "Chelsea are targeting player A", I assume Chelsea are in fact targeting player A. From any other outlet, I can assume it's mere paper talk. Not from those two. And we've missed out on a boat load of those targets. Other low hanging fruits we should have gone for and seemingly weren't interested in could be down to bad scouting too (which is Emenalo's fault). Not going to blame Conte even one bit. What annoys me is that if the team underperforms, Conte gets the sack and the suits get to keep their job. I thought 15/16 would have thought you by now not to defend this board. Apparently not.

One could read this comment and think this was an Everton fan talking. Everyone knew we needed to spend far more than £100m to improve both the squad and the first team. You say we spent £100m, how much do you think we've made in sales? Almost £120m. And that's not factoring in the £153m from winning the league PLUS the £100m from Nike and Yokohama. We didn't even need to get a single penny from Roman to do the right business this summer and we still bottled it.

We praised her when she did well with those deals and we're slating her now that she's f**king up. What's so wrong about that?

Doubt they'd sell to us now so late in the window.

Others saying he's in a hotel in London even though Arsenal aren't trying to sign him. Could he be coming here?

The fact that we're still hell bent on Sandro when the player himself has said he's happy to stay at Juve. The state of this club's board... Oh and there's this But by all means, chase Sandro until you hit a brick wall at 11:50pm.

If only a certain London club had been desperate for a LB/LWB all summer...

Fair points but Terry and Brana were still members of the squad that could be called upon at any point if we'd been short due to injuries or suspension. We're really light and it's disappointing that our board haven't taken this more seriously. If they did, we'd have our feet up in the air eating popcorn on deadline day rather than panic buying.

Not a rumour unfortunately. Confirmed by BBC and Sky.

Danilo wanted to join us until late July when Pep and City came into the picture and offered more money. What stopped us from wrapping up that deal in early June? A flimsy £2m difference with Madrid. Despite the huge chest of cash we had at our disposal, Marina was faffing about over £2m. It's become an ego thing for her now and it as officially bitten us in the arse way more times than it has benefited us. Same with Lukaku. We could have wrapped it up as soon as the window opened if we weren't being lazy. Going after Ox in the first place shows our desperation. At the beginning of the window, there were at least 5 RWB options MUCH better than Ox. Even up until the past week there were a lot of other options. It's f**king pathetic.

Only Chelsea would try to sign a player for £35m now who won't be available to play until late December but would cost £10m in January and £0m in June. You'd think a board who always try to get the cheapest deals would realise this.

Here we go...

I don't know.....you could start by pointing out why/how I'm wrong.

Oh I didn't even mention Danilo whom we could have wrapped up easily and quickly.

Whether some of you would like to agree or not, that is the fact. Go ahead and call me and everyone who shares this opinion "spoilt" or whatever word you may feel like using, it won't change the fact. I'm not going to blame Emenalo here. It's not his job to negotiate deals. It's his job to spot talent and point them out to Marina to negotiate the deals and he generally does a fantastic job at that (Azpi, Lukaku 2012, Courtois, Moses, De Bruyne, Salah, etc). The problem here is Marina Granovskaia. For all the great sales she has gotten for us and the great buys every now and then, she has taken one too many L's for us at this point. Since 2010, we haven't succeeded in having a great summer after a title winning season. There's no reason we should be going for Djilobodji and Hector after just winning a title in 2015. And those two were panic buys, mind. We win another title and have a big summer planned. Between January and now, we've lost about 10 first team players (Ivanovic, Terry, Mikel, Oscar, Chalobah, Loftus-Cheek, Costa, Matic, Ake, Begovic) and only replaced them with 4 (Bakayoko, Rudiger, Morata, Caballero). 5 if you add Christensen. Holes in the squad needed to be filled and we've known this since January but we've waited till the last 24 hours of the window to try to get deals over the line. This isn't even mentioning the fact that we should have tried to strengthen our starting XI to keep up with the rest of the league but we didn't. We're looking for a RB yet we let Conti go to AC Milan, Cancelo go to Inter Milan, Toljan go to Dortmund and Aurier to Spurs. ALL of these deals were there for the taking and guess what? They were ALL cheap! Now we're going after a Bosingwa incarnate in Rafinha. We spent months and months chasing Sandro with no assurance that he actually wanted to come and we seemingly do not have a plan B for him. Even if we did have a plan B, the price of that player will be 50% higher at this point in the window. This is the same way we spent most of the window chasing our tail with Koulibaly last summer. And Pogba the summer before. And Rooney the summer before. None of these deals ever materialized yet we spent over 2 months doing f**k all in each case. And although I prefer the option we ended up with, it says a lot about them that we bottled seemingly the easiest deal to get over the line with Lukaku by being complacent. Or should I say...incompetent. Last summer Luiz and Alonso were panic buys as well. If it weren't for Conte working hard to get them punching above their weight, we'd have had a terrible season. I give Marina and co ZERO credit for Alonso and Luiz doing well for us last year. If it happens once, you can just put it down to bad luck. But if it happens more than once, it's time to accept that they're incompetent and they need to go. Peter Kenyon never had problems closing deals like this. For the life of me, even Ron Gourlay got things done when we needed to. I think it's time to hire someone who'll do a better job. It's probably not going to happen considering how close Marina is to Roman but I sure f**king hope it does. How much more of this can we take? We've fallen behind Europe's elite in the past 4 years and we keep bottling every opportunity to get back up there. I can't be the only one of this mindset.

Won't happen. Not this silly board.

I swear if we end up with Rafinha at RB Marina needs to be fired IMMEDIATELY!

Anyone who defends their moves this summer needs to have his/her head checked. Absolute peak of incompetence. Unbelievable! Oh and Jeremy Toljan just joined Dortmund for 5m euros. CAN YOU f**kING BELIEVE IT????

We let this lad go to Spurs for 23m and now we're chasing Rafinha. Rafinha ffs! What a f**king shambolic board we have. WOW!

Highly doubt we were gazumped. I don't think we made any actual bid. Story of our missed summer signings.