12 hours ago, ForeverCarefree said:

Last couple of years the misses are massively outweighing the hits.

Bakayoko, Morata, Drinkwater, Zappacosta.

£150m worth of signings and not one is a first team regular. 

£40m spent on Alonso and Emerson and both are struggling to hold down a place in the team.

We have over £90m worth of strikers on loan and don’t have a decent striker in the team.

£130m spent on Jorginho and Kepa and neither have had great seasons this year. 

There doesn’t seem to be any sort of coherent strategy to our signings, it’s very reactionary. For the amount of money we’re investing in players our squad isn’t in a good place.

Morata and Bakayoko were meant to be starters and it just didn't work out. I can live with that.

Alonso was good a few seasons back, Emerson is doing well now.

Kepa is a good signing, at the time when the prices are a bit overblown so not much the club can do there, Jorginho is bought to help Sarri implement his football so the club didn't ask twice how much so that factor is there as well...

I think we did have a Director of football when we signed some of these players, doesn't matter anyway that's my point, we signed Pulisic that is projected to be a world class player so that's good news.

 

I don't like when people act as if we always used to sign amazing players and nobody ever flopped (Veron,Zhirkov,Mutu,Shevchenko...) or as if nobody ever robbed the club massive money for no real reason (Crespo,Falcao...), sure the club will need to rebuild but we are in a good position to do so without spending £600m like City did in order to stay at the top.

4 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Morata and Bakayoko were meant to be starters and it just didn't work out. I can live with that.

Alonso was good a few seasons back, Emerson is doing well now.

Kepa is a good signing, at the time when the prices are a bit overblown so not much the club can do there, Jorginho is bought to help Sarri implement his football so the club didn't ask twice how much so that factor is there as well...

I think we did have a Director of football when we signed some of these players, doesn't matter anyway that's my point, we signed Pulisic that is projected to be a world class player so that's good news.

I don't like when people act as if we always used to sign amazing players and nobody ever flopped (Veron,Zhirkov,Mutu,Shevchenko...) or as if nobody ever robbed the club massive money for no real reason (Crespo,Falcao...), sure the club will need to rebuild but we are in a good position to do so without spending £600m like City did in order to stay at the top.

Good points about the recent acquisitions, feel Emerson is better than Alonso though still needs to learn a few things defensively.

Re the last point I agree we made a number of signings that didn't work, Scott Parker another one yet I guess the issue now is we are trying to remain within the Fair Play system so when a player does not deliver it becomes much more of an issue as your replacement is either almost over the hill or just out of the academy rather than another trusted professional. 

 

I also want to point out that losing De Bruyne because Jose didn't want to give him the freedom that he wanted was more damaging than some of the bad transfers that we made because the club couldn't recognize a young talented player that is willing to take the ball, take responsiblity and make things happen even without proper experience, only because Jose has always been so rigid.

But on the other side, we sold Matic to United for £40m! I don't even want to point out what their fans were saying at the time but OK Bakayoko didn't work out as the subsitute player so someone didn't scout well enough, either way it was still on paper a very good move since Matic is doing worse and worse ever since he left us.

I think it's more important to find the right person for that role of the Director of fooball and if that takes 6 months more I'm fine with that, someone just needs to say to Sarri in both English and Italian not to try and sign Higuain and Kovacic permanently.

Edited April 22, 20197 yr by Gol15

 

Quote

I don't like when people act as if we always used to sign amazing players and nobody ever flopped (Veron,Zhirkov,Mutu,Shevchenko...) or as if nobody ever robbed the club massive money for no real reason (Crespo,Falcao...), sure the club will need to rebuild but we are in a good position to do so without spending £600m like City did in order to stay at the top.

- Mutu was in to drugs

- crespo was good he just couldn’t settle in London. Impossible to foresee that.

- Zhirkov wasn’t a flop in my opinion. He had very good Ashley Cole in front of him and we were strong on the wings as well. Although, I do feel he was under utilised while here.

Veron, Sheva & Falcao I’ll agree, but the ones listed were spread across quite a long term. I do think we seem to sign an inordinate amount of duds more frequently now but you’re right in that we’ve always been bad for it (remember we signed Steve Sidwell, f**king hell, that was grim)

Edited April 22, 20197 yr by EdinburghBlue

1 minute ago, Gol15 said:

I also want to point out that losing De Bruyne because Jose didn't want to give him the freedom that he wanted was more damaging than some of the bad transfers that we made because the club couldn't recognize a young talented player that is willing to take the ball, take responsiblity and make things happen even without proper experience, only because Jose has always been so rigid.

But on the other side, we sold Matic to United for £40m! I don't even want to point out what their fans were saying at the time but OK Bakayoko didn't work out as the subsitute player so someone didn't scout well enough, either way it was still on paper a very good move since Matic is doing worse and worse even since he left us.

I think it's more important to find the right person for that role of the Director of fooball and if that takes 6 months more I'm fine with that, someone just needs to say to Sarri in both English and Italian not to try and sign Higuain and Kovacic permanently.

With De Bruyne it's all about the timing with Lampard being so prolific, though with hindsight it makes you wonder why we did not loan him out.

Just now, EdinburghBlue said:

 

- Mutu was in to drugs

- crespo was good he just couldn’t settle in London. Impossible to foresee that.

- Zhirkov wasn’t a flop in my opinion. He had very good Ashley goal in front of him and we were strong on the wings as well. Although, I do feel he was under utilised while here.

Veron, Sheva & Falcao I’ll agree, but the ones listed were spread across quite a long term. I do think we seem to sign an inordinate amount of duds more frequently now but you’re right in that we’ve always been bad for it (remember we signed Steve Sidwell, f**king hell, that was grim)

About Crespo, I agree with what you said but I think that it's insane how much money he was getting from our club while doing nothing for us, he was getting £1m per game with us and while he was on loan somewhere else we were still paying for half of his wages so that he plays for another club...wtf was that all about?!

2 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

About Crespo, I agree with what you said but I think that it's insane how much money he was getting from our club while doing nothing for us, he was getting £1m per game with us and while he was on loan somewhere else we were still paying for half of his wages so that he plays for another club...wtf was that all about?!

Fair point, I suppose we were stuck between a rock and a hard place where he wanted to be back in Italy (or his wife moreso if I remember correctly) and we’ve always been pretty good with how we treat player happiness and we probably seen the chance to offload half his wages and thought it was the best course of action, but I agree it was pretty messy 

16 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Morata and Bakayoko were meant to be starters and it just didn't work out. I can live with that.

Those two player cost us £100m and are both currently on loan. So they’re not in the team and they’ve not been sold generating funds to replace them. They’re bad signings and it’s poor squad management.

We’ve effectively replaced Bakayoko with Jorginho for £60m who has struggled this season too. So £100m (before adding the £35m spent on Drinkwater) on midfield players without an improvement to the midfield.

18 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Alonso was good a few seasons back, Emerson is doing well now.

Emerson’s form has been as shaky as Alonso’s of late. It’s £40m on left backs with neither nailing down a starting spot. It’s making non-elite level signings and hoping they come good.

19 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

I don't like when people act as if we always used to sign amazing players and nobody ever flopped (Veron,Zhirkov,Mutu,Shevchenko...) or as if nobody ever robbed the club massive money for no real reason (Crespo,Falcao...), sure the club will need to rebuild but we are in a good position to do so without spending £600m like City did in order to stay at the top.

Veron was a flop, sure but that same summer we signed Makalele. Zhirkov was bought to provide competition for Ashley Cole, one of the greatest left backs ever and surprisingly he couldn’t displace him.

Mutu was sacked for taking cocaine rather than being a bad player. Shevchenko was a bad signing and started the trend of signing strikers past their peak rather than those approaching it.

Crespo had off field issues which meant we allowed him to go on loan but two seasons he played at Chelsea he was brilliant.

Falcao was a season long loan, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I want and think we need a director of football but it has to be the right one. It's almost like everyone feels if you get a director of football in they will no more bad signings. I liked Emenalo but he still ended up signing us Baba Rahman, Michael Hector, Matt Miazga, Pato, Falcao, Cuadrado, Alonso, Bakayako, Zappacosta, Drinkwater etc. Man City makes less bad signings than they use to because they have tixi bergstein and he understands and knows what type of player Pep wants. We need someone who can work well with Sarri, and someone Sarri can trust. In previous years i felt Mourinho didn't trust Grant or Emenalo.

14 hours ago, ForeverCarefree said:

 

There doesn’t seem to be any sort of coherent strategy to our signings, it’s very reactionary. For the amount of money we’re investing in players our squad isn’t in a good place.

Exactly correct.  

The DOF role is a matter for discussion on the Redcafe forum too. Like us a number of managers in a short time and an aging and unbalanced squad. 

Like us too they can't quite agree on who would make be a good DOF.

 

 

A director of football is more than just making sure we avoid signing flops.  It's developing a plan & philosophy of how we want to play.  That includes determining on what level we want to compete, what our style should be, who should be the coach/manager for that style, work with that coach/manager to determine which players we should buy, project which Academy players are going to make it through to the first team, manage the loans of our younger players (where they should go to best develop, monitor their progress, etc).  

The fact that Roman hasn't hired one or replaced Emenalo in over 16 months says to me that it is not a priority of his.  He has proven to be a ruthless business man with Chelsea and his other interests, so the total lack of attention by him in this area u-is very telling.