Topcat

Honourable feedback. I recognise the need for a thorough analysis of a game. 8 games maybe early, but it is on top of a poor 24+ months and 3 poor years of transfers. The risk your approach runs is focusing mainly on the tactical and pointing the finger at the Manager who can only pick from the squad provided. Puel and Pellig both fired for their perceived failure and Hughes now being lined up for a firing. Perhaps a future podcast could look at what has happened to the supply of players from the Academy? Also it is about time the Daily Echo did more in depth articles analysing:- 1. Past 3+ years of transfers in 2. Performance of the Academy in recent years. (players for first team and England all years appearances).

The Podcast is surprisingly polite about the failure of most of this summer's recruits. Just being concerned that the poor darlings may lose heart sitting in the stand. Not raising the question as to whether the summer transfers were, in the main, poor choices on top of Carillo and moving onto question what was going wrong with the player recruitment.

The only fault of the owner is to put his trust in Kreuger and Reed and leave them both in place. One of them (at least) should have been fired for last season.

"The root cause of the problem is player recruitment, the club need to deal with it" "So the finger must truly now point at Les Reed who has to manage Wilson and then Wilson himself" I agree with Nick.

So our transfer selection is terrible and so is our youth recruitment. Step forward Les Reed.

Ross and Les dominating the transfer decisions for 3 years. 3 years that are widely agreed to be amongst the worst transfer dealings in our recent history. Changing the Manager does not fix that problem. Albert Einstein: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

We are 19th (out of 20) in Assists, which supports your comment.

£13m for a reserve when we needed that spent on outfield players.

Regarding FFP. "Only a club’s outgoings in transfers, employee benefits (including wages), amortisation of transfers, finance costs and dividends will be counted over income from gate receipts, TV revenue, advertising, merchandising, disposal of tangible fixed assets, finance, sales of players and prize money. Any money spent on infrastructure, training facilities or youth development will not be included." In March 2018 the financial results up to June 2017 reported a £40m profit after all the FFP costs that have to be included and the FFP costs that can be ignored. We had more than £50m headroom available to spend in that period and chose not to. Our run rate on wages is likely to be showing a similar profit for the following 12 months, possibly more with the VVD profits. We have been operating well below FFP rules, the issue therefore is how much is Gao taking out or piling up in the cash reserves.

The last version i saw of the transfer committee was 3 people including Les Reed and the manager. The manager had 1 of the 3 votes and no final say. Over the past 3 terrible years of bad transfer decisions, there have been 3 different Managers and Les Reed.

Quite an achievement to have bad transfer windows for 3 years. Something that cannot be blamed on the team managers as they only had a small role in this. The one consistent factor is Les Reed. Kreuger should sack him.

We've already said "gao bye" Since you gotta go, oh you'd better Gao now, gao now, gao now (gao now, ooh) Before you see me cry? I don't want you to tell me just what you intend to do now 'Cause how many times do I have to tell you Jisheng, Jisheng We're not in love with you now Whoa oh oh oh We've already said "so long" I don't want to see you gao, oh you'd better Gao now, gao now, gao now (gao now, ooh) Don't you even try? Tellin' me that you really don't want it to end this way 'Cause Jisheng', Jisheng', can't you see we don't want you to stay, yeah Since you gotta go, oh you'd better Gao now,… Songwriters: Larry Banks / Milton Bennett

It is a unique achievement to squander £60m on players that do not make today's starting line up. Les Reed must have something on Ralph to avoid getting fired. Meanwhile below us are 4 clubs only one of which, Fulham, spent more than us.

The team is almost the same as a year ago when it slipped into a relegation fight. The only things that have changed are:- 1. Goal keeper dropped. 2. A striker, Ings brought in on loan. 3. £60m spent on players that did not start yesterday. 4. The most creative player, Tadic was sold. 5. The manager was changed. The people who select the players to buy, were left in place although they clearly have a poor record in selecting talent for more than 2 years. Since the Club keeps failing in numerous areas its fall into relegation is highly likely, Gao apparently borrowed the £200m and one wonders what will happen to him if that borrowing is for something that becomes a worthless asset? The providor of the loan may intervene if Gao does not.

After 8 games last season we had 9 points. After 7 games we only have 5. So even if we beat Chelsea today we will still be worse than last season. Also our first 7 games have had a lower than average number of top 6 sides (1).

Nigel Pearson's stats are an unfair reflection of his short period. He took over a team that was rock bottom in morale and then scraped enough points to avoid relegation. Lowe came back and then rewarded Pearson with the sack.

Agreed that it is the decline in the available talent to the first team that is the problem. We had a relegation battle last season because of the talent AND the losing mentality that has crept into the side.

Fair do's. The fact is also that with Hoedt and Bednarek and Stephens and Yoshi we landed in a relegation battle. We then added the tallest defender in the PL but a man who so far is unable to dominate crosses!

Agreed.

Just to be pedantic and accurate. i stated it as from 1st january 2018 VVD left on 1 January 2018 and already here were Bednarek from july 2017 and Wesley Hoedt from August 2017.

Yes Ings is the one bright spark, although not allowed to play in 2 games. The indications are that he was a desperate last day move and he had no inclination of a move and we were unable to complete a purchase. Probably a stroke of luck, which begs the question about Reed and his talent hunting in its need to rely on a last day loan to get a striker after a season of scoring failures. PS It is a loan as he is not allowed to play against Liverpool.

"a bloated squad full of ordinary players" many of which are used to losing.

Yes the alternatives are possibly worse, certainly not much better. Yoshida and Stephens featured in a lot of the games that brought us into the relegation zone and kept us there. The squad needed major upgrades which did not happen.

We have a squad that was badly in need of upgrading and clearing out those who lacked the drive to win. From being in the relegation zone at the start of 2018 comparing most of the players that we had in the squad on 1st January 2018, the following key changes have happened:- 1. Van Dyke replaced by Vestergaard. Clearly a massive drop in quality. 2. Tadic replaced by Elyounoussi. Looks no better and Elyounoussi certainly worse at corner taking! 3. Armstrong added. 4. Blew £20m+ on Carillo, a striker who did not score. So in net terms we, got worse in defense, blew the profit on VVD and have Armstrong..... Meanwhile some starters from 2017 etc have just got older. That is a recipe for another relegation fight. The only bright side is Ings, a player that scraped in on loan on the last transfer day.

Now now. There are also his long distance shots which should have been passes to people closer to the goal.