1 hour ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Maignan

James Guehi Colwill Cucurella

Caicedo Santos

Olise Palmer Semenyo

Osimhen

Massive missed opportunity and all of them were attainable before somebody else got them.

Those players plus Neto, Garnacho, Chalobah, Fofana, Gusto, Lavia, Hato, Estevao, Pedro and you have a really strong side that can compete for anything. All they needed to do was avoid a few big money flops and they could have built a side to compete right now and for the next decade.

6 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

Massive missed opportunity and all of them were attainable before somebody else got them.

Those players plus Neto, Garnacho, Chalobah, Fofana, Gusto, Lavia, Hato, Estevao, Pedro and you have a really strong side that can compete for anything. All they needed to do was avoid a few big money flops and they could have built a side to compete right now and for the next decade.

That wasn't the goal though. We wanted to take as many punts in the dark on cheaper wages to try and make profits on them.

6 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

That wasn't the goal though. We wanted to take as many punts in the dark on cheaper wages to try and make profits on them.

Yep, and the thing is, this strategy never works out in the long run. It's a similar strategy that mid table clubs use. Like Brighton, they buy cheap, sell high, but it doesn't really get them anywhere. They just hover around mid table a bit before running out of talent and getting relegated. Wolves were the same, now it's their turn to get relegated this season and it happened to Southampton a few seasons back too

Top clubs like ours will basically just yo yo in and out of the Champions League, if we are lucky.

10 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

Yep, and the thing is, this strategy never works out in the long run. It's a similar strategy that mid table clubs use. Like Brighton, they buy cheap, sell high, but it doesn't really get them anywhere. They just hover around mid table a bit before running out of talent and getting relegated. Wolves were the same, now it's their turn to get relegated this season and it happened to Southampton a few seasons back too

Top clubs like ours will basically just yo yo in and out of the Champions League, if we are lucky.

We did hear multiple times how much they admire Brightons model.

All the hiring we have done from them only backs it up. If they could sign up Tony Bloom it would be Easter, valentines day, birthdays and Christmas all rolled in to one for these clowns.

5 hours ago, axman2526 said:

That wasn't the goal though. We wanted to take as many punts in the dark on cheaper wages to try and make profits on them.

This is the idea, it is not necessarily.

I posted a while ago how spending on 2 30 m player is a much better idea than 1 60 m player.

5 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

Yep, and the thing is, this strategy never works out in the long run. It's a similar strategy that mid table clubs use. Like Brighton, they buy cheap, sell high, but it doesn't really get them anywhere. They just hover around mid table a bit before running out of talent and getting relegated. Wolves were the same, now it's their turn to get relegated this season and it happened to Southampton a few seasons back too

Top clubs like ours will basically just yo yo in and out of the Champions League, if we are lucky.

Brighton has proven that it does work though. They have been a stable mid table team for the last 4/5 years while paying low end salary + making profit.

Semenyo will be 26 in january and is having a good season and will demand sizable salary. Everyone know that this won't happen.

Now if he is 24 and probably has a down year, we are probably will be more interested.

Edited December 24, 2025Dec 24 by Bob stark

2 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Brighton has proven that it does work though. They have been a stable mid table team for the last 4/5 years while paying low end salary + making profit.

But their outlay on players has been a fraction of what we are paying. We are paying 30m for weak, technically stunted defenders from the French league that we then struggle to shift. Similarly we are paying 20m a time for these South Americans where Brighton pay a fraction

4 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Brighton has proven that it does work though. They have been a stable mid table team for the last 4/5 years while paying low end salary + making profit.

But to what end? To maintain this and never push on? Sell your best players and keep bringing in replacements to hold on to mid table? It takes one sale of one of their best players and one bad signing for this to go wrong. Historically, this strategy eventually goes south. Brighton are the exception right now, not the rule, and they have us to thank for a lot of it, but eventually it will catch up with them unless they start pushing forward like Villa have done.

7 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

But to what end? To maintain this and never push on? Sell your best players and keep bringing in replacements to hold on to mid table? It takes one sale of one of their best players and one bad signing for this to go wrong. Historically, this strategy eventually goes south. Brighton are the exception right now, not the rule, and they have us to thank for a lot of it, but eventually it will catch up with them unless they start pushing forward like Villa have done.

Even Brighton make a big loss if you exclude all the inflated fees they've had from us ...

Maybe I have said it before but……

f**kIN TWATS!!

I mean Semenyo is a good player, but not sure he takes us to the next level. Although, he would be better than what we signed in the summer. I still can't believe we spaffed £50m+ up the wall on Gittens. Maybe he'll improve. I remember writing off Salah when he joined us, so maybe it's a tad too soon to write the 20/21 year olds off, but if we want to compete for the title then we need to start focusing on solidified players now, rather than constantly waiting for the young players to improve when it may never happen.

17 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

This same thing has been happening at United for years. I got used to hearing my brothers complaining about this for years.

Imagine if we had just signed Olise, Osimhen and Semenyo / Rogers. That is our attack sorted for the next decade. But no, our lot has to sign Mudryk, Madueke, Sancho (loan) Gittens Garnacho, Jackson, Delap and not a single one of them have been good enough. What is that, like £300m when we could have spent around half of that on top quality players?

Then Utd decide to buy two premier league proven players in Mbeumo and Cunha and suddenly they’re scoring goals and closed the gap on us in one summer. Imagine if we did similar with the likes of Olise.

Buying Semenyo is the easy way our owners are playing champ manager on hard mode.

I’ve said this a million times but with the money we’ve spent we could have had a team full of experienced talent, Roman MK1 style and then slowly added the young talents like Estevao once we’ve got an established team. Doesn’t take a genius to work out. Youngsters learn from experience not other kids.

12 minutes ago, DarkMata said:

Then Utd decide to buy two premier league proven players in Mbeumo and Cunha and suddenly they’re scoring goals and closed the gap on us in one summer. Imagine if we did similar with the likes of Olise.

Buying Semenyo is the easy way our owners are playing champ manager on hard mode.

I’ve said this a million times but with the money we’ve spent we could have had a team full of experienced talent, Roman MK1 style and then slowly added the young talents like Estevao once we’ve got an established team. Doesn’t take a genius to work out. Youngsters learn from experience not other kids.

It genuinely started the summer before Olise went to Bayern. We could have signed him and Palmer in the same window but the f**kwits went behind Palace's back when there was literally no other competition for Olise at the time. We failed, tried again the next summer only for Olise to get a better move to Bayern.

Since then I was convinced our directors are amateurs.

19 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

It genuinely started the summer before Olise went to Bayern. We could have signed him and Palmer in the same window but the f**kwits went behind Palace's back when there was literally no other competition for Olise at the time. We failed, tried again the next summer only for Olise to get a better move to Bayern.

Since then I was convinced our directors are amateurs.

It was a no-brainer. Would have saved 90M from not buying Garnacho and Gittens

Think I’ve worked this one out. We don’t want Semenyo we want Oscar Bobb. Young, City youth player, and now an opportunity for a cut price deal. Fits the model perfectly. Welcome Oscar Bobb

1 hour ago, DarkMata said:

Think I’ve worked this one out. We don’t want Semenyo we want Oscar Bobb. Young, City youth player, and now an opportunity for a cut price deal. Fits the model perfectly. Welcome Oscar Bobb

Dortmund.

9 hours ago, DarkMata said:

Think I’ve worked this one out. We don’t want Semenyo we want Oscar Bobb. Young, City youth player, and now an opportunity for a cut price deal. Fits the model perfectly. Welcome Oscar Bobb

We can't buy anyone regardless. Remember we have to sell, and from the Euro list befo4e bringing anyone in, and there is nobody applicable here that they could physically sell. Therefore they would have to sell players that hurt us before taking further punts on unproven kids.

On 24/12/2025 at 16:59, Scott Harris said:

But to what end? To maintain this and never push on? Sell your best players and keep bringing in replacements to hold on to mid table? It takes one sale of one of their best players and one bad signing for this to go wrong. Historically, this strategy eventually goes south. Brighton are the exception right now, not the rule, and they have us to thank for a lot of it, but eventually it will catch up with them unless they start pushing forward like Villa have done.

There is no end. As I said to @WhiteWall we can't be just football fans only with this club because we are no longer traditional football club that sign player to improve the team to try to win thropy. We need to look at player like asset.

Can we win doing this? I think we can, it will take a while because we rely on player development and luck. it is just more difficult.

The one that I find fascinating is seeing how fans in this forum react to the way our board do business.

Most clearly doesn't like the result and doesn't like the manager but not sure they were unhappy with how we deal with transfer.

On 24/12/2025 at 08:59, Scott Harris said:

But to what end? To maintain this and never push on? Sell your best players and keep bringing in replacements to hold on to mid table? It takes one sale of one of their best players and one bad signing for this to go wrong. Historically, this strategy eventually goes south. Brighton are the exception right now, not the rule, and they have us to thank for a lot of it, but eventually it will catch up with them unless they start pushing forward like Villa have done.

This is a good point. How many other major sales and success stories have they had if you take our purchases away. We've given Brighton more money than their shirt sponsors

On 24/12/2025 at 10:50, Sunspear_88 said:

I mean Semenyo is a good player, but not sure he takes us to the next level. Although, he would be better than what we signed in the summer. I still can't believe we spaffed £50m+ up the wall on Gittens. Maybe he'll improve. I remember writing off Salah when he joined us, so maybe it's a tad too soon to write the 20/21 year olds off, but if we want to compete for the title then we need to start focusing on solidified players now, rather than constantly waiting for the young players to improve when it may never happen.

There are no platers that we could sign that can take us to the next level now. If they have that capability they wouldn't choose us any more. We dropped the baton on that level of attraction and it will take years of hard work to recover to that level. Some of the players we already have can take us there but with a crap manager and an ownership implanting a farming model rather than sporting ambition, it'll never happen with this mob.

3 hours ago, Bob stark said:

There is no end. As I said to @WhiteWall we can't be just football fans only with this club because we are no longer traditional football club that sign player to improve the team to try to win thropy. We need to look at player like asset.

Can we win doing this? I think we can, it will take a while because we rely on player development and luck. it is just more difficult.

The one that I find fascinating is seeing how fans in this forum react to the way our board do business.

Most clearly doesn't like the result and doesn't like the manager but not sure they were unhappy with how we deal with transfer.

Wait until we cash in on Palmer or Colwill, cos we've got generational talents in Quenda and Anselmino coming through, when in reality they will be fed, cleaned and cared for whilst they are being fattened up for market as well. Watch the fanbases response to the transfer strategy then.

1 hour ago, WhiteWall said:

Wait until we cash in on Palmer or Colwill, cos we've got generational talents in Quenda and Anselmino coming through, when in reality they will be fed, cleaned and cared for whilst they are being fattened up for market as well. Watch the fanbases response to the transfer strategy then.

I think you just give the reason why they won't sell Palmer/Colwill. They are popular with fans and that is very important for blue co.

On 25/12/2025 at 05:47, DarkMata said:

Think I’ve worked this one out. We don’t want Semenyo we want Oscar Bobb. Young, City youth player, and now an opportunity for a cut price deal. Fits the model perfectly. Welcome Oscar Bobb

And he is regularly injured so checks that box too.

On 25/12/2025 at 19:47, DarkMata said:

Think I’ve worked this one out. We don’t want Semenyo we want Oscar Bobb. Young, City youth player, and now an opportunity for a cut price deal. Fits the model perfectly. Welcome Oscar Bobb

Now we are talking blue co language

Edited December 27, 2025Dec 27 by Bob stark