I was thinking, why is there such a big deal made about missing top four this season? When we think of the players who have been the most influential for the top four this season, they were already at the club or could have been got without CL football. 

City signed Ederson, Bernardo Silva, Mendy and Walker. However, the most influential players this season were already at the club. KDB, David Silva, Sterling, have been far more influential in City winning the title than their new signings. Take away the latter three and City wouldn't be nowhere near as good. 

Liverpool signed Salah. I agree, he's been a massive influence on where they are placed in the league and for their overall success this season. Could he have been got without top four? Sure, I believe so. 

Tottenham. They signed Aurier, Sanchez, Lucas, and Llorente. Again, none of them have impacted that heavily on their season. It's the same player/s who have been the most important, namely Harry Kane, Alli and Eriksen. 

Man Utd. You could argue that their signings this season have been much more influential, however, I don't believe having top four made any difference whatsoever to securing them. We were linked to Lukaku, we sold them Matic, and Sanchez went for the money largely. You could argue that De Gea has been their most influential player this season as he's saved their asses time after time.

I don't believe being outside the top four will impact us anywhere close to what people believe. We have signed arguably one of the best players in the league without CL football, and that was Kante. I believe with a bit of great scouting and integration of youth, being out of top 4 shouldn't impact us much at all. 

Thoughts?

Edited May 11, 20188 yr by enigma

The club being not willing to spend top dollar will affect our chances of signing top players.

I don't think it will stop crouch and the likes signing.

4 minutes ago, Blue Exile said:

The club being not willing to spend top dollar will affect our chances of signing top players.

Are we sure we are not willing to spend top dollar or was this season more a case of a breakdown in communication/ relationship between the Conte and the board? We spent £200m & I believe we would have been better off signing only 3 players to improve our first 11. Problem is Conte kept moaning about a lack of numbers when could have integrated the likes of RLC, Ake, Musonda.

I don't think we would be competing for the very 'top' players anyway, as our transfer activity last summer showed, but not having CL football will obviously affect our ability to sign players who want to be playing CL football next season.

Money talks at the end of the day. If the club are willing to pay the money, then we will sign top players, otherwise we will have to sign players that have the potential to be quality, like spurs and Liverpool have done in recent times. 

Most big money transfers seem to flop anyway. I don't our problem has been how much we have spent, it's more to do with who we have actually spent the money on. 

Out of the £180m we spent last summer, at the moment you would have to say only rudiger has been worth the money.

For a club that has signed 9 first team players in the last months, it seems strange to suggest we need a clear out, but the squad needs freshening up and improving.

It would be great to have some of the loanees come back and make a difference, but I'm not holding my breathe.

We need some smart signings in the summer, I'm not sure who is identifying them though with emanalo gone, and conte looking soon to follow. 

 

 

Unless we are talking about the elite top 10-15 players int he world, don't think No CL will have much affect. It's all down to the money, agents and the manager's charm/trust.

The very top players want CL football so of course it will make a difference. We can not offer more money then the other clubs anymore who are also after the elite players so if one of them has CL football and can also offer more money then it's a no brainer for a footballer.

We have...or Roman has a stadium to pay for which is why IMO we will not be jostling for the elite players on huge wages anymore.

A Tottenham/Liverpool strategy will be in place for the foreseeable unfortunately or fortunately...whichever way you look at it I suppose.

 

27 minutes ago, icecoolguy22 said:

Unless we are talking about the elite top 10-15 players int he world, don't think No CL will have much affect. It's all down to the money, agents and the manager's charm/trust.

The majority of the so called "elite" players don't want to come to the premier league anyway, so this is why I don't think it's much of an issue. Club football at the top level will always be dominated by Real Madrid and Barcelona, then Juventus and Bayern. It's always been that way. I don't see it changing. This is why we need to focus on our development of academy players because times have changed. English football at youth level has been dominant for a long while, mainly because of Chelsea.

Edited May 11, 20188 yr by enigma

I dont believe it will stop us signing any BIG players .....Theyll still come for the dough and know we will probably be in the european cup season after next....I for one am glad, selfishly, that we arent in the big cup comp becoz we havent presently got a hope in hell of getting anywhere  near a semi  with our fire power or any newbies we may sign......Im more confident we can get closer to the prem title next season....everyone will suss man city out and how to play them now..The rest spuds le arse manxutd liverdips and us are pretty much equal in the bigger picture of things...Spuds will have to get used to a new ground...Arse a new manager.....Pool...everyone will mark out salah etc....Since winning the holy grail ( european cup ) i look at it as done and dusted and has no great significance to me personally...Well i suppose it would be great to sing to the spuds...............YOULL NEVER SING THAAAAT......  give me the good old prem anytime.....Im sure no one will agree with this. ....................The prem is the only comp that would personally increase my heartrate from 1 beat to 8 beats per minute

The thing is, we just have to lower our expectations in the transfer market until the stadium is built. 

2 hours ago, enigma said:

The thing is, we just have to lower our expectations in the transfer market until the stadium is built. 

We will have to scout better, if we are not going to pay top money. There is great unearthed quality around, you just have to dig deeper. Kante being a prime example at £5m (?) when Leicester got him.

5 hours ago, ducavis said:

Are we sure we are not willing to spend top dollar or was this season more a case of a breakdown in communication/ relationship between the Conte and the board? We spent £200m & I believe we would have been better off signing only 3 players to improve our first 11. Problem is Conte kept moaning about a lack of numbers when could have integrated the likes of RLC, Ake, Musonda.

The squad was super thin before and now its much healthier, even things havent come together properly this season. I was hoping we could go into the summer picking up a few quality players and having the new ones from this season getting a chance to bed in properly, but missing out on CL could make picking up really top draw targets more difficult sadly. I'm actually quite excited though to see what a new manager can do with this squad, there's a ton of talent in there which I think we sometimes start to forget when results have been bad.

If Sarri or Jardim come in i will instantly become a massive advocate of the rumoured Martial/Willian swap.

Martial and Hazard under either of those two managers will be quite something, and Pedro would be better than Willian under either manager also (like he was last season when we were more attack based) which means the swap would make even more sense.

Edited May 11, 20188 yr by Argo

No, if we pay the bucks, we'll get the players.

Arsenal and United in recent times showed, CL or not, it doesn't restrict you from buying.

When we won the league with Mourinho, did the CL helps us singing top quality players? Nope, we still ended up with the Djilobodjis and the Hectors of the football world.

We may not be in the CL next season, but we still pay the biggest player wages and bonuses after the two Manchester clubs and that's what on player's minds these days.

So it all depends on what the board will do and that makes me nervous.

Edited May 11, 20188 yr by Ledgerson

Need to find a director of football who knows what they’re looking for. Can’t do any worse than Romans right hand woman Marina.

7 hours ago, Blue Exile said:

The club being not willing to spend top dollar will affect our chances of signing top players.

I think they've been willing to spend money on players. It is just the players that they're spending the money on is the problem. When you pay £42m or whatever for DD when you have players that are arguably the same quality in Chalobah or RLC, its a head-scratcher.

Honestly, IMO, they need to be aggressive when they go after a target. It seems a lot of the time you hear reports that they offered £35m for X player. Then you see a report that says that players club values him at £60m, and then the report that Chelsea have offered £38m. Obviously, you have to read about transfers with a wary eye because there is so much wrong, terrible information out there. But if they wouldn't try to so stingy about it. Sometimes you just gotta go after the player. 

If they seriously want Jorginho, for example, and Napoli set a £55m price tag, be aggressive and go after the man. But in reality, for now, I do think we need to realize we are not going to spend a lot without selling a decent amount as well. With the stadium supposed to be being built soon, our scouting is going to need to be top notch, and they are going to have to start trying to implement youth into the team. They're not going to be able to spend against United or City.

It doesn’t matter. The board will sign overpriced mediocre trash any way. We might get a lucky Kante/Rudiger style signing. 

Don’t think champions league makes a much difference anymore sadly. It’s all about the money now.

Yes last summer's crazy prices skewed the picture a bit but the £60 million for Morata was the highest price we've paid for a player for a long time. The next highest before that was around the £35/36 million mark (Bats, Bakayoko, Drinkwater, Costa etc). This is the price range we have been operating at per player for a few seasons now. I don't think this is going to change too drastically soon, even taking into account the over-heated transfer market at the moment.

If Conte is going, I believe not having a manager in place early will also affect our player recruitment, I hope we don't wait until after the World Cup to announce the appointment.

Targeting young, hungry players eager to prove themselves at a bigger club (Bailey, SMS, Lozano, etc) will minimalize the effects of no CL, as well.

Let's be honest, in recent seasons has our Champions' League helped us secure the likes of Alex Sandro, Koulibally? etc

I suspect that if you're willing to spend the cash, being out of the CL for a season doesn't mean much.

United a case in point.

I suspect that after seeing us miss out two seasons out of the last three Roman may make some investments this summer, particularly if we are changing our style. 

9 hours ago, Osgood is Good said:

If Conte is going, I believe not having a manager in place early will also affect our player recruitment, I hope we don't wait until after the World Cup to announce the appointment.

Spot on. Teams can agree terms now effective from July 1. You already have PL teams been linked with Fekir, Bailey etc. I have a sneaky feeling we won’t have a manager in place till Mid-June, then start scrambling around in the market.