42 minutes ago, Slojo said:

Look at the players he's signing at Inter, I think it's obvious Conte is sh*te in the transfer market.

He's transformed completely in a season and a half. Lukaku, Barella, Hakimi all among the best players in the league and Eriksen also finding his groove lately.

As a matter of fact he's done great in the market and great in general there. Will probably clinch the title this year.

Just now, Sindre said:

He's transformed completely in a season and a half. Lukaku, Barella, Hakimi all among the best players in the league and Eriksen also finding his groove lately.

As a matter of fact he's done great in the market and great in general there. Will probably clinch the title this year.

He's making me eat my words this year I won't deny it, but he was still after absolute guff from the Premier League. Sanchez for example, pfft, he was finished. 

35 minutes ago, Term_X said:

I would love to know them, as whenever the topic comes up it’s just comments like this and no outline of why. The aforementioned list is concrete but I’d actually love to see a positive top 5 outside the Hazard deal and non-football related stuff like Nike.

Not counting the 130m pound Hazard sale:

We bought D.Costa at the age of 26 and had him during his best years, Conte wasn't going to play him ever again.
D.Costa said to Conte that can sell him but the only club he will go to is Atletico Madrid ---> Despite things looking so bad Marina sold him, aged beyond his prime back to Atletico Madrid for a fee of 56m which made us profit from D.Costa while having him at his best for 26m pounds.

Marina sold Oscar for an Asian record fee of around 52-54m pounds.

Marina sold the 29-30 year old Matic to Man United for 40m pounds.

Marina sold Morata to Atletico Madrid for a total of 58m pounds meaning that we almost broke even despite he flopped hard for us.

Marina secured the deal for Fabregas and Kante for just over 30m pounds each. Fabregas in his first season with us had about 20 assists and we won the league and Kante was the PFA player of the league when we won the league with him.

 

I've never been that fussed when any of our managers have been sacked under Abramovich (except Ranieri* & Carlo).

All of them were justified to a degree and as we had won silverware so often it was arguable that the constant change kept us winning.

That 2nd season under Conte where we bought a number of sub standard players seems with hindsight like such a bad move with FPP about to kick in and still we cannot clear these players from our books. With increasing regulation about the numbers of players you can have on loan etc it is really likely to hamper us moving forward too.

NB

* With hindsight agree on Ranieri.

 

1 hour ago, Slojo said:

I don't know tbf, but I doubt Marina actually picks the targets, she's just a negotiator I think. She's got the experience from running many of Roman's other firms. I doubt she would be put in a position to scout targets on their ability or potential. 

Overall, if I was to judge her on that, I think she's done a good job. She's got some great sales. When it comes to the Conte signings, well again, I believe Conte wanted those targets and we went after them. Look at the players he's signing at Inter, I think it's obvious Conte is sh*te in the transfer market. I don't think you can pin that on Marina, unless you specifically mean the price we paid for them. English players are usually always inflated due to the registering, so 40 million was probably the cheapest option for DD. Bakayoko at the time was considered a top prospect, (not by me) but many others. In hindsight it's easy to pick it apart. 

Conte is sh*te at transfers though, what's different this time around is that Giuseppe Marotta joined Inter. The man is a master at getting good players for cheap

1 hour ago, Gol15 said:

Not counting the 130m pound Hazard sale:

We bought D.Costa at the age of 26 and had him during his best years, Conte wasn't going to play him ever again.
D.Costa said to Conte that can sell him but the only club he will go to is Atletico Madrid ---> Despite things looking so bad Marina sold him, aged beyond his prime back to Atletico Madrid for a fee of 56m which made us profit from D.Costa while having him at his best for 26m pounds.

Marina sold Oscar for an Asian record fee of around 52-54m pounds.

Marina sold the 29-30 year old Matic to Man United for 40m pounds.

Marina sold Morata to Atletico Madrid for a total of 58m pounds meaning that we almost broke even despite he flopped hard for us.

Marina secured the deal for Fabregas and Kante for just over 30m pounds each. Fabregas in his first season with us had about 20 assists and we won the league and Kante was the PFA player of the league when we won the league with him.

 

Forgot about the Costa one, that was a master stroke tbh, given the circumstances, so I’ll give her that too. And again we speak about ‘player sales’ but it’s the abysmal handling of recruitment which bothers me and the level of power she clearly has over that, we’ve got it top to bottom on Marina’s appraisal. Marina brought back Jose, which lead to the dismantling of generational talent.. yes we had a bit of fun with Fabregas & Costa but I’ll never forgive the poisoned chalice that title was and the direction the club was going in comparison to City and eventually Liverpool. 

54 minutes ago, Term_X said:

Forgot about the Costa one, that was a master stroke tbh, given the circumstances, so I’ll give her that too. And again we speak about ‘player sales’ but it’s the abysmal handling of recruitment which bothers me and the level of power she clearly has over that, we’ve got it top to bottom on Marina’s appraisal. Marina brought back Jose, which lead to the dismantling of generational talent.. yes we had a bit of fun with Fabregas & Costa but I’ll never forgive the poisoned chalice that title was and the direction the club was going in comparison to City and eventually Liverpool. 

It is what it is... Hopefully this summer will do us good.

13 hours ago, dkw said:

Yeah that's how I see it, she's basically the business manager/purchaser. Others will pick the targets, her role along with a team of analysts is then to buy that player at the best deal possible. Same when selling,  I highly doubt she picks who to sell.

This is the thing though, who? She doesn’t answer to anyone. She is clearly a terrific negotiator and if that’s her sole job perfect. However, I don’t believe it is, it’s reported a lot that she has the final say on all transfer dealings on who we eventually go after hence why we signed Kepa. It’s not that far fetched given she holds the purse strings that she would be the one to OK the signings. That’s the problem I have with her, keep her to negotiations and get her away from the footballing assessment side of things as she’s clearly not capable. Alternatively, whoever is having the final say on the Kepa’s etc shouldn’t have a job. I can’t imagine any other line of work where you could mismanage £70m+ of company funds that badly and still be employed.

There was reports the other day TT will be forced to get the German duo firing, previously there was reports Lamps was forced to give Kepa more chances. Could be bollocks, could be true - I would say there’s no smoke without fire & she’s more involved than she should be. We’re crying out for a DOF in my opinion.

No idea who is picking the players, there was a rumour a few years ago of some kind of transfer committee picking the players to pursue, god only knows whos on it though. I expect Marina is the one making the final decision but that will not be based on the players ability on the pitch, more the commercial value etc. Obviously this is all my own opinion and theres a very good chance I`m completely wrong, Marina is playing Football Manager and picking the players herself.

This thread has been lacking my uninformed opinion, imo, and I agree pretty much with dkw. We're talking about transfers fees usually worth massive amounts of money, so there's bound to be some kind of committee process that involves feedback from scouts, coaching staff and various directors, where they identify immediate needs and long term investments, and players will be shortlisted and prioritised based on transfer fee, urgency, long-term value (including potential resell/loan profits), etc,. Granovskaia may or may not be the head of this committee, but no way is she identifying the transfer targets herself. 

On 24/02/2021 at 02:00, Oli said:

I will say one thing on this, I was devastated unlike many when Conte was fired. And I think its safe to say that was a big big mistake on part. The guy was a serial winner, we really should of backed him in the summer he won us the title. It was his and Guardiola's first season in the prem, Mourinho's first season as manager of utd, and he completely trumped them all, and was close to a double. I agree the following season wasn't great but we still ended it with a cup. I just think a lot of egos at Board level couldn't take someone who was clearly quite fiery and argumentative, but all its done is set us back as a club. Hes already starting to dominate Italian football now, and that's no mean feat with Juve almost guaranteed the title every year. 

Agree. Conte was an outstanding coach despite his flaws.

I always thought we settled for second best once we replaced him with Sarri.

7 minutes ago, Jezz said:

Agree. Conte was an outstanding coach despite his flaws.

I always thought we settled for second best once we replaced him with Sarri.

I agree, superior manager no doubt. That said I think because Conte's work was all based on circuits he always needed to reinvent the wheel a bit to stay competitive.

This requires a lot of tactical work. Part of the reason we didn't do so well in our second season when we were back in Europe and had less time to train. 

But when it works it is beautiful to watch. I still remember his Italian team carving open space so easily at Euro2016 and thinking the guy was a genius.

1 hour ago, Jezz said:

Agree. Conte was an outstanding coach despite his flaws.

I always thought we settled for second best once we replaced him with Sarri.

I'm pretty sure that in Italy Conte has a higher reputation than Sarri. After all when Conte implemented his tactics during his first season with us nobody was ready for it and afterwards multiple PL teams adapted our tactics - Sarri never had such an impact, his tactics are not that revolutionary and only Pep that is an addict when it comes to possession praised Sarri but other managers were not impressed.

I loved Conte, thought his approach was fantastic. Loved his comment about “tailoring his tactics to suit the squad”. It’s just a shame that he’s a poor politician because he is a fantastic coach. 

Sorry if this is mentioned elsewhere, but apparently Marina wanted Sarri back after Frank was sacked,it had even got as far as Sarri saying yes,but then Roman said no. Don't know if I believe any of it.

1 hour ago, Bluesince66 said:

Sorry if this is mentioned elsewhere, but apparently Marina wanted Sarri back after Frank was sacked,it had even got as far as Sarri saying yes,but then Roman said no. Don't know if I believe any of it.

Would have gone down well, sacking Lamps to bring back Sarri. Mind you, we did sack RdM to bring in the FSW, so...

2 hours ago, Bluesince66 said:

Sorry if this is mentioned elsewhere, but apparently Marina wanted Sarri back after Frank was sacked,it had even got as far as Sarri saying yes,but then Roman said no. Don't know if I believe any of it.

I read that to, Daily Fail, so not much credence there.

4 hours ago, Bluesince66 said:

Sorry if this is mentioned elsewhere, but apparently Marina wanted Sarri back after Frank was sacked,it had even got as far as Sarri saying yes,but then Roman said no. Don't know if I believe any of it.

Maybe with no fans, Marina thought she would slip it under the radar. The reaction would have been nuclear first game back at the Bridge though.

Now of course that could be tabloid nonsense, but it would undermine her credibility significantly if it turned out to be true.

Matt Law said the rumours of Sarri were 100% untrue. 

11 hours ago, JM7 said:

Matt Law said the rumours of Sarri were 100% untrue. 

That's good enough for me,would have been another major mistake, and we do make plenty of those.

On 24/02/2021 at 08:14, EdinburghBlue said:

This is the thing though, who? She doesn’t answer to anyone. She is clearly a terrific negotiator and if that’s her sole job perfect. However, I don’t believe it is, it’s reported a lot that she has the final say on all transfer dealings on who we eventually go after hence why we signed Kepa. It’s not that far fetched given she holds the purse strings that she would be the one to OK the signings. That’s the problem I have with her, keep her to negotiations and get her away from the footballing assessment side of things as she’s clearly not capable. Alternatively, whoever is having the final say on the Kepa’s etc shouldn’t have a job. I can’t imagine any other line of work where you could mismanage £70m+ of company funds that badly and still be employed.

There was reports the other day TT will be forced to get the German duo firing, previously there was reports Lamps was forced to give Kepa more chances. Could be bollocks, could be true - I would say there’s no smoke without fire & she’s more involved than she should be. We’re crying out for a DOF in my opinion.

She answers to Roman.

On 26/02/2021 at 23:25, Bluesince66 said:

Sorry if this is mentioned elsewhere, but apparently Marina wanted Sarri back after Frank was sacked,it had even got as far as Sarri saying yes,but then Roman said no. Don't know if I believe any of it.

If it's from the Daily Mail, don't bother. Their articles regarding football are hearsays with very minimal statements made by any parties involved

This upcoming summer will be very, very interesting. She will again be in charge of it as our club director but there are seemingly a lot of big problems to face.

Contract situations in defense, Jorginho and Kante on outgoing contracts, no attackers performing and no cover at wingback that also need to be addressed.

I think there is a lot to like about the job she's done here at the club. She's done very well at selling first and foremost. But she's been in charge since late 2014 now and at the time she took over we were the best club in the league. Now we certainly are not, as a matter of fact we are hopelessly far behind both City & Liverpool and have been for the last five years.

I have to say I am slightly worried. She's been in charge of six summer windows at the club with the seventh coming up in a few months. And I don't think we've nailed any of those windows like we did in 2014 for example. That makes me nervous with the amount of incomings we need.

The way I see it is we will still have our WBs, James and Chilwell.

Midfield, Mount and Gallager not sure about the rest.

Front Men: Havertz, Broja will stay

Keepers no change

CBs - Chalobah, Sar will stay

The ones I haven't mentioned I consider all possible departees.

Of course they won't all go, chances are we will still have Alonso, RLC and Barkley and likely others re not matching our valuations.

The CBs are likely to test us, can we get Kounde or another top CB, will Silva stay another season?

If all CBs go would be wise to keep Azpi re his experience.

Potentially a very busy summer transfer window.

 

 

Personally think Birch, Kenyon, Gourley and Michael Emenalo all did better in their roles than Marina.