TWar

I don't care about Jankewitz, he's gone now. I just think it is a valuable message for the future that fans who have maybe watched a player once or twice against weak opposition don't know better about selection than the guy who watches him in training day in day out. There will be multiple players this applies to going forward so a good lesson to learn.

I get the impression that you know he has flopped post-saints and are saying nonsense like "top flight team" as if playing for St. Gallen is more impressive than dropping to the championship for example in order to distract away from the fact that the "Ralph is shit, he won't even play Jankewitz" was a stupid thing to say, and is now being proven by another team not playing Jankewitz in a much less competitive league.

The insight is that a good player could have a poor time in their early 20's, but having a poor time in your early 20s is a bad sign. I think you are struggling to understand nuance here. Looking bad doesn't mean you will be bad forever, but it certainly makes it a lot more likely you won't be good. Heres an analogy, plenty of millionaires and billionaires were poor in their 20s, but that doesn't mean if you are in your 20s you should give all your money away. Kane was good in spite of having a slower start, Vardy too. For every Kane and Vardy there are countless players who dropped down to lower clubs and didn't bounce back. Jankewitz isn't ready to be a starter in the swiss league for a team with much less money and quality than we have, he should have been nowhere near our squad when we have basically anyone available in that position who would be even Championship level including out of position defenders. He was let go to a smaller club and couldn't even make it there.

Yeah good players often play for small clubs when young. I don't deny that. But so do many many many more players who don't come good. The fact he can't get a game for a team who is markedly weaker than saints (young boys) and is going to basically a league 1 team to find his level is atleast somewhat vindication that he wasn't ready to start in the prem right? Like yeah, others have turned it around. But it is not a mark of quality to have to drop that low to get game time.

I'm not being a prick. You have to admit the fact that he couldn't get a game in the Swiss league for young boys isn't exactly a glowing recommendation of his quality, given it is a much lower quality league than Ralph would have had to play him in. And honestly being snapped up by a team like St. Gallen, who would likely be like league 1 quality in England at best, is not really enough to disprove that. Saying they are a top flight team is pretty meaningless, top flight teams in non-big 5 leagues are often very very low quality, especially near the bottom of the league.

The mighty St. Gallen no less! When you get snapped up by the third from bottom team in the Swiss league you know you've really made it! How could Ralph not sign off on starting someone in the best league in the world when they were a future St. Gallen star?! The words "top flight club" are really doing some leg work there. 😂

The guys net worth has nothing to do with our ability to spend. That's the point of FFP. Have a look at the table of owners net worth and you will see quickly that isn't a guarantee of spending power at all.

No way we lose JWP for £50m. Before the take over I would have said no, now I say it would be lunacy. We are building a team around Ralphs model and vision, JWP is our captain and cornerstone. To get rid of him would be like tearing up the foundations of the house before it is built. It would take obscene money to sell him. Also signings like Tino asked specifically about playing with him when signed. Having a genuine top 6 quality player is massive to our appeal. We can't lose him.

Excellent video. I think the outcome bias thing applies really well to Claude Puel. He had a good league position but underlying numbers weren't good. We were overperforming a number of metrics, as well as finishing high but with a low points total. Like in the newcastle case our goal difference told a very bleak story. While we only dropped a place or two from the Koeman years our goal difference went from +21 and +18 under Koeman to -7 under Puel. That is huge. Puel gets fired and you get a bunch of fans saying "but he got 8th, that's good right? Why sack him?" some say this to this day, but like here it is outcome bias. Unsustainable results which would have dropped as soon as our luck turned. You didn't even need to know the stats, there was a reason he was so unpopular at the time despite getting good results, the fans could see we were playing like shit having looked good for years. This is why sacking Puel was a good decision. Our subsequent hires on the other hand...

Yeah top 8 is a perfectly feasible goal long term with good development of well scouted players but to make a meaningful push for it in the next half a season we'd need ready made, proven, europa league level players who can hit the ground running and that would cost an absolute fortune and probably wouldn't be in line with the model they have just described.

We have enough to stay up comfortably imo. The business savvy thing to do is to save our money in jan unless a great deal comes up and then spend in the summer. Less fun though.

A couple dedicated to my Duckhunting friend: "Ward-Prowse is a legend, his pass completions scary, he tops out chance creation stats, and ain't a mincing fairy" "Ralph has a higher win rate, than Howe who is a phony, I've heard that Puel was better, but that's a load of pony" "Tino's running down the right, The tackles are in vain, He's come to saints to play with Ralph This signing was... quite good actually 😉"

xG is the lifeblood of our club now. The club is well and truly run by people like me 😂

https://www.psv.nl/nieuwspagina/artikel/joey-veerman-per-direct-psver.htm One that got away, to PSV again.

Yeah that's what I took from what Semmens said this afternoon

Distributing premier league football seemingly is only a small part of what his company does.

He wasn't. He was second for recoveries but pretty average on everything else. His passing numbers and possession loss numbers were awful and he also had the amusing honour of the player with the worst shooting accuracy in the league and the player with the most shots having not scored a single goal (not that these effect his quality as a DM, they are just quite funny). The season he left, and the one after, JWP was a significantly better holding mid statistically speaking on most metrics.

Well we don't know the contract he signed when he joined. Maybe it included a clause saying sale of his share must be to a buyer approved by Kat? Maybe when bad potential owners were feeling out the club Semmens and co wouldn't work with them, thereby putting the bad owners off as completely rebuilding the backroom staff is a lot of work. Who knows, the point is basically everyone has said he had a say and I don't see a good reason to not believe that.

Semmens has been excellent. A couple of duds here and there but our signings have been very good imo. Tino has been the signing of the summer for me, given age, quality and price. Alongside this, Ings and Vest are both good candidates for the sale of the summer both being in the last year of their contracts and now looking very mediocre.

1) Maybe, but £100m doesn't sound like a particularly high price. I imagine there were lots of people willing to part with that for a prem club with our playing talent and stadium. Can't be sure though, but basically every major saints journo says that Semmens had a huge part in ensuring the right buyer and not just the one with the most cash so I'm inclined to believe them 2) Apparently so. Big xG guy alongside others and has been optimizing around it since, huge part of Brentfords identity as a club. 3) Its a long term thing I think. With our current squad we have plenty to stay up with Ralph at the helm so if we invest enough to be competitive then we can continue to grow and look into the long term. Evolution not revolution. I like this personally as a fan of Ralph, Semmens, and the concept of not just buying success but actually building and developing things.

I think in the modern era the vast vast majority of clubs use data driven approaches, including but not limited to expected goals. It is cool that we have one of the pioneers of it present, and someone who used it to excellent effect already at Brentford. It's time to learn your statistical modelling, keep up or get out the way 😂

I feel the same for three reasons: 1) I like that it seems from various sources that we turned down multiple offers until we found the right one for the club 2) I like that it has football experts involved like the fella from Brentford 3) I like the multiclub redbull model. For me a model like that will tend to has its crown jewel in the biggest league and there isn't a bigger league than the prem, so I suspect we will be able to pick up bargains from sister clubs which feels very positive.

Why?

Data based scouting. Get in haha

This song is awful