Dusic

Juric plays a different style so would of course have signed some players of a different profile. But as pointed out further up, pretty much every fan wanted us to sign THB and Downes. Wood was a low risk £3m signing so will likely be very useful next season and clearly wasn't signed to be a key player. Fraser was a poor signing but also cheap, its not like we signed him instead of getting someone for £20m. BBD and Archer on the other hand were obviously signings seen as starting XI options. Just because we signed them it doesnt mean they were #1 on RM's list (they weren't). It means they were the deals the club was able to get done. Swap Delap for Archer and we definitely have more physicality and more points. My question would be why did Delap prefer to go to Ipswich over Saints? Why did they find £25m for a goalkeeper when we could have signed one on loan and spent that cash on a proper attacker? Why didn't they stump up 500k to bring Welington here in the summer? Why didnt they replace Wilcox properly when he left? These are SR questions not RM ones.

Usually you are fairly balanced and reasonable but this is an odd one. RM was the manager but he wasn't the person negotiating signing players and wasn't the Head of Recruitment. I doubt any of our genuine first team signings were first choices, we already know most of them weren't because we were clearly in for players like Delap, Carvalho, Clarke (just off the top of my head). Its fairly likely many were quite far down the list. The blame for recruitment clearly lies at the door of Sport Republic. They failed RM in the summer, as much as he messed things up himself. Re Juric...seems odd in our situation to get a manager who is very fixed in terms of formation when we knew we didnt have some profiles for his setup.

Why would anyone want to get rid of Smallbone FFS? He was very good last season, a key player in a promotion season. Has been injured most of this so hardly to blame for anything. Players like him who actually care a bit about the are exactly the ones who we do need for next season.

Why on earth he would think we would sell him to Ipswich a few months after he turned them down to come here is bizarre. Really poor from him.

Feel like he has a long way to go to build any kind of rapport with fans to the point where many will feel he is the right man for next year. He just comes across as being a bit cold and uninspiring.

Yeah very good news he will be based at Staplewood! Lets hope he stays for more than a season.

The Göz are nailing it on and off the pitch - and have done since Ankersen took over as Chairman.

If he can't actually be physically present at Staplewood to lead the football side of the club is he actually the right person?

Would probably go with Summer 2024 tbh, largely based on the fact that if Kamaldeen keeps showing a bit we might actually get some cash for him in the summer. Onuachu we massively overpaid for but we got our cash back for Alacaraz, Bree still features and Orsic was at least a cheap flop. Summer 2024, aside from Fernandes was woeful and just seemed so badly organised. Signed a RB to start (Sugawara) and LB cover (Taylor) when we needed the opposite. Went after Delap who was the profile we needed then signed a totally different type of forward in Archer. BBD, Fraser, Cornet all a waste of space. Wood, Edwards not able to help the team now. Lallana I don't mind, the issue is he ended up (under RM at least) being more important on the pitch due to the lack of quality in the squad. Even Ramsdale. Good signing but a.) Why did it take all of pre season and the first few games to see AMC wasnt up to it? and b.) If we had a spare £25 why didnt we use it on an attacking player instead and find a loan keeper better than McCarthy? All round shambles and still IMO the biggest cause of relegation? Have we had a worse window than this?

Biggest thing by far is to get the DoF position sorted and have some essence of a plan going into the summer. Really no excuse given they have been able to plan virtually a year ahead for next season!

Aside from half the summer signings having left or been frozen out, another indicator of how shambolic we are is the likely scenario we only use one of the PL loan spots - these are key for newly promoted sides and we have known Cornet was leaving since December.

With SAA, the galling bit is the permanency of it. Why not loan him out to the league we will be in next year, see how he does and wait til the summer with more known? Its just a bit illogical, like most of our summer signings were.

Re Sam Amo, big questions to be asked on how his 'development' has been handled. Why wasn't he let out on loan at the start of the season, or 2nd half of last season? Why did he go from training all the time with the first team to back to U21s recently? Must have been so demoralising to have dross like BBD, Fraser, Cornet take your squad space and then be kept to play U21 football he has already proven to have outgrown. The actual decision to sell now rather than assessing in the summer after a loan would be nice to have explained by one of the off field leaders at the club but sure instead we will have the usual "we wish Sam well" copy and paste statement. (Re the bizarre post a couple up...he didn't ever give off any vibes of arrogance. Not sure where that and ABK similarities comes from...)

Interesting exchange here: Surely no chance we would let him go to Ipswich as will be competing with them again next season but certainly something not quite right with him. Recall his partner being pregnant, perhaps just generally unsettled?

I meant result comparisons are pointless because Juric is played 7 lost 6 so his results are also poor but there is clearly sign of improvement as explained. Comparisons to past seasons are tough because the overall strength and spending of the smaller teams grows every year but clearly novody expected we would have this few points. It was clear before a ball was kicked that it would be hard to stay up and once the likes of BBD, Cornet and to a lesser extent Archer showed absolutely nothing it was clear we totally messed up the summer window and certainly in attacking areas justdidn't have enough quality to really compete at this level. I'm absolutely certain if we had Delap or £40m Cunha, Evanilson, Joao Pedro etc then we would have more points and likely be around where Ipswich and Leicester are. Take a look at the striker section on the OS profiles - its Adam Armstrong, Cameron Archer and Paul Onuachu. That doesn't win you many PL points unfortunately.