Farmer Saint

Absolutely - not sure anyone has said differently. How did we get on after we got to the top of the League though?

Sorry, didn't realise on a forum I needed to put IMO on a post about a hypothetical situation, but I will just for your benefit.

And yet the same Manager struggled with those same players the following season.

We're not scoring enough with Aribo, Dibling and Sule behind a new striker, and we're conceding too many with Bednarek in a back 4. In my opinion.

TBF a lot of said this when Martin was sacked - the players bloody love him, however limited he is.

And you can't back yourself...

We're not staying up with that though, and that's more than we had to spend (especially taking into account the much higher wages we'd have paid for PL players rather than Championship ones).

Assuming @The Kraken can't back himself, again...pussy.

But the point is the £100m or so would have been spent, so you can't have the Fernandes couple. But yes, forgot about Edozie, and Baz has been injured for half the season. Either way, £100m doesn't touch the sides when we have a squad as poor as ours was when we got promoted. We needed to spend circa £200m, and get all the transfers spot on (so none of that on THB or Downes) to give ourselves a chance.

Ok, let's remove everyone we bought this summer and buy 4 x £25m players. Here is your squad to add to, which positions would you buy and what formation/team would you play? Macca, Lumley KWP, Bedders, Manning, Bree, Stephens Aribo, Sulemana, Smallbone, Charles, Edozie, Dibling (even though we didn't know he was going to play his way into the side) Onuachu, Stewart, Armstrong

We HAD to buy THB - it was contractual. If we hadn't have bought Downes people would have hit the roof as he was our best player last season. But yes, let's take Archer out, keep Ramsdale as Macca isn't even a Champ level keeper, and give ourselves £40m to spend on what, 2 players? We would have been left with: Ramsdale, Macca, Lumley KWP, Bedders, THB, Manning, Bree, Stephens Aribo, Downes, Sulemana, Smallbone, Charles, Edozie, Dibling (even though we didn't know he was going to play his way into the side) Onuachu, Stewart, Armstrong That's 19 players, 1 short of a PL squad. Add your two £20m players and, yeah, you're right, that screams Premier League to me.

But £57m of that was to go into the season with a worse squad than last year (THB, Downes and Archer to replace THB, Downes, Adams and Armstrong). So in reality we probably spent about £50m on players to fill out a squad that was very light on depth (hence why that £50m went on so many bang average players).

Absolutely not, but that's one more Premier League player in reality, if we get it right.

Of course it's not all the players, but I think a lot of it is, and certainly going into the season with one, maybe two PL level players is negligent, but then we didn't really have the money to do anything better.

I was being facetious. We are such a limited team, and we are so inconsistent that the managers don't know what our best team and formation is, so they try anything. I would like expect, as this is the FA Cup and a free hit, that he decided to try it out as an attacking formation. It didn't work.

People on here loved the no striker against United though? Why is it bad all of a sudden?

When 5 managers in a row fail with similar players, the problem surely becomes the players? We need a complete, 100% reset. Hopefully in the Summer we can do that, as we will be in an excellent PSR position (unlike last season and this).

January '23 because it hamstrung us for this Summer's transfer window and pushed us towards cheap, low wage Championship players (Ramsdale aside who clearly had a recoverable end of season transfer fee - think of it as a loan).

As we saw as I was constantly followed and hounded on this site by various different people (hence why I took nearly a month and a half off) - when my source told me to tone it down a bit with the clues being too easy, I looked at it from a holistic point of view and just thought, "Nah, it's not worth it".

But we haven't sold him, he's playing in the Championship. There is no option to buy.

Worth doing - Juric clearly doesn't rate him, we'll save on wages and he'll be able to get his confidence back.

Beware of prophets...

You're welcome.

Or they can always join our Patreon.

It's the system, not the Manager.