S-Clarke

There is certainly an element of truth in that, but in general terms there are still £15m-20m players out there. It's all down to scouting. Dean Huijsen was £15m - class player. Alex Scott £20m, Milos Kerkez £17m, Justin Kluivert £10m. Semenyo £10m. So it's possible, but it's all down to scouting. Those solid buys who grew into the team at that range then allowed them to go big on someone like Evanlison. Bournemouth can also sit comfortably knowing that there will be a guaranteed profit on all of those £15-20m players they signed.

I'm not sure it is, I think it's quite relevant to go all the way back, as the mistakes made then opened the door to where we are today. We lost key players in those years, and spent big to replace them but we got them all wrong, not just 1 or 2, but every single one of them. Hoedt, Vestergaard, Boufal, Carillo to name a few. When you get that many wrong, it's very hard for clubs of our size to recover and we inevitably regressed. Due to those mistakes of the past, we couldn't spend in order to keep up with the rest. I'm not denying that SR have turned an already bad situation into an unmitigated disaster, but in many ways they accelerated what was inevitable anyway. The key point is that clubs such as ourselves cannot make as many bad 'big' signings as we have done, and expect to be able to sustain competitiveness. Our model is to sell and replace, but when you buy shit you can't sell it and thus you can't replace, and slowly the squad just regresses. This summer needs to be an opportunity to reset the lot and move on from those mistakes of the past, we need to build a new future without hangers on covered in the mistakes from the past.

It goes back further than Ralph to be honest, he had some horrendous teams and worked with two hands behind his back most of the time. We fielded some shocking players under Ralph. It goes all the way back to Koeman leaving for me. He didn't get the assurances he wanted that the team would be built upon and he left. We lost him and then stripped the team of Mane, Pelle, Wanyama, Fonte over the course of that season. The replacements, which cost a lot, took us backwards and thus the cycle started. We could have fixed it when we got rid of Puel and sorted ourselves out, but they doubled down on it even further and spent more money on awful players and awful managers. At this point we're fucked, we're in a spiral of spending big, not being able to re-sell and thus our entire model falls through the floor. What happened after Koemans season had direct implications on our relegation, even though it was years down the line.

I wouldn't be against that at all, this summer needs a root and branch reset. This is not just fixing the problems from this season, it goes back years and the players who have been here throughout that need to go. We've really got to be ruthless and reset it all, otherwise we're just going to enter the same circle of potentially getting promotion and starting with Armstrong, Bednarek and Stephens again - those guys are not good enough. They might be good enough for the Championship, but I think the club need to look beyond that if they really want to build something worthwhile and stable. Ronnie Edwards is a good example of a player who has the potential to become a decent PL player, ditto Charles, so those are the sorts we need to be pitting our time against. Forget Bednarek, Armstrong and Stephens - they've had their time here. Interesting you mention Wellington by the way, he was ok when he was part of the team, he got nutmegged in one game and got hauled at half time - never to be seen again. Not quite sure what that's about, another question mark over the managers decision making where players like Sulemana continue to stink the place out, but Fernandes and Wellington are treated as the fall guys.

That's a very good post, and paints the entire picture really clearly there. In essence like you say, we've just made the wrong choices again and again and again. I have zero confidence that the people in charge will make the right calls this summer, as it stands I'm not sure what the future holds for us. I'd take a stab that a Stoke style existence being more than likely in the current guise. All we needed when Martin was dumped is someone to do the basics. Trying to evolve an entire style mid-way with inferior players is foolish and suggests that those behind the scenes have no grip on the standards or abilities of players required. Hopefully they do now, but we've had to suffer whilst those idiots above slowly realise.

I'd say the obvious alternative was to start with a fucking proper striker to start with, then maybe he wouldn't have to flap around in the 90th min.

Walcott came into one of the strongest squads in the Championship in the first half of that season, we were expected to win and had quite high expectations on us. We weren't a poor team with poor players when he came into the side, which allowed him to impact. We didn't have the season we wanted that year, but it's a stretch to say he started out in a poor team. I'd lay more criticism at Sulemana/Archer/BBD/Armstrong etc - that's also their role, they're more experienced and should be producing way more than they have done. Tyler has already produced more than any of those this year. He's having a dip, but if he leaves (Which he likely will) we will be weaker for it. It would be daft to think otherwise. The problems are much deeper than an 18 year old falling out of form.

It's not, but the club has got it's self in this situation by tying it's self up in so many knots. They are terrible at recruitment of coaches, managers and players. Full stop. If they weren't so bad at that we wouldn't be looking to replace the manager again. For what it's worth I don't think it makes much odds to get rid of him now either, but he does need to go in the summer so we can start next season with an entire broom. Players, coaches, managers, scouts, analysts. Everything needs to start again. No half arsed efforts or sticking plasters, they need to reset every single bit of the football operation in the summer and then maybe we can stick rather than swaying from side to side every few months. I don't have much confidence in that though, as their decision making is amongst the worst in the world. I can't think of any club in any league executing decisions as badly as ourselves over a consistent period of time.

Sports Republic are incapable of learning any lessons, so I don't hold out much hope until they sell up.

I'd say the players deserve absolute barrels after this season, they have all been a disgrace. No matter how limited they may be, some of the games where they have downed tools should equal fines. The manager isn't innocent to this, but this entire season is on these players and they should know it. Bar Fernandes and maybe Dibling I have no feeling for anyone in our squad, they can all go. Sad place to be.

How do they keep picking terrible managers? Every club gets a manager bounce, no matter how bad they are, but we keep appointing people who can't even give us that. I appreciate that he's walked into a shit show and I do feel sorry for him in some ways, but some of this damage is self inflicted and isn't needed. - 3 CB's, we cannot play it - No strikers when we don't score goals - CM's at CB, and LB's in midfield. He doesn't need to make it more complicated than it already is, this situation called for simplicity with the incredibly limited players we have, not more nonsense.

Don't be be silly. He's a young kid who has been sadly been dragged into this utter shambles of a season, in this environment it's very hard to show yourself or play with freedom - that's why I never jump on the bandwagon of ''throw the kids in'' when we're doing bad, it's not particularly fair on them. In him and Fernandes we have been able to enjoy two technical players this year, these guys are the last players that should be picked on. I can name another 20 who come before them.

It wasn't as bad as it has been in other games at home, but it was still pretty bad. What I took away from today though is what happens to a team when all it does is lose, it doesn't matter which league you're in, you'll always find ways to lose games when you're doing it every week. This season going to take a long time to get over, unless we simply blitz the entire 11 and start again (which we may well do tbf). All I want is 3 more points, no more than that, not asking for much really. Today was our best chance of getting that and we did the usual. Sulemana is still utter dog shit, apart from a purple patch of a game and a half, he's never changed. Thick as shit and has zero football brain, that will never change. I hope he goes and I'll drive him to wherever he needs to go to. I've never experienced supporting such a broken club.

Che Adams? Worked very well with Ings for that period, but on his own it did show up his technical issues. (although still streets ahead of what we have today).

Proper dislikeable player, in the Richarlison mode. I think he's an awful player as well to add to that. Hinders Liverpool more than aids them when he plays.

Absolute nonsense by Sky Sports today if anyone saw it. The video is still on YouTube, but it's been removed from all their social media. They're trying to proclaim that ex referee Dermot Gallagher is amazing by estimating 10 yards in the studio, somehow oblivious to the fact that anyone watching can see the black mark he's walking to, which is amazingly 10 yards away. Skip to 3min 15 secs -

He doesn't see anything he does is wrong, but he's happy to have a pop at others for doing the same thing. This is Russell Martin though, so if he does it it's fine. He's totally full of himself and is totally blind to his own reality - it's quite scary really. That little segment summed him all up.

You kind of want to really like Yuki as he's that sort of character, but I just cannot ignore his defending - he just can't defend full stop, there's no argument to be had. All the basics he's bad at, positioning, awareness, defensive intelligence - that can't be coached, that's either there or not. He's an awful defensive full back and that will never change. I can't think of any worse we've had than him, I'll have to go back to maybe the likes of Lloyd James at Championship level to come close. Another fail for the scouting team that's for sure.

You're missing the point though, which is sadly something the club have also been doing. Those VVD level defenders are now £30m (i.e. the level when we bought him). O'Riley is an example of that, not a defender, but a player of similar stature at Celtic but went for £30-35m. Fonte, for our respective level at the time, was a crazy outlay financially. If we replicated that to the level we are now, we'd need to be spending £35m on Sven Botman for example. The fact is that our scouting didn't move on, we tried to replace VVD, Mane, Tadic for the same price we paid for them - without considering that football, and thus finances at all clubs, have moved on in such a short space of time. What people are saying is that there's no issue buying young players, but filling the squad up with those £10-15m signings isn't a good tactic. We'd have been better off buying 1 or 2 £30m players, and then using the rest for Fernandes/Edwards and up and coming. We didn't need to splurge what we did on BBD, Archer, Wood, Suguwara etc - there's around £30m right there which could have gone on a 'match starter'. We'd have lost nothing if we hadn't sign those, such has been their involvement.

Ah yes, that's the one. I knew there was a deal like that around Targett.

Wasn't Armstrong signed before Sports Republic, fairly sure he was in 2021. (when we had to watch every penny). I remember we had to sell Target to free up funds for Salisu (i think it was Salisu). The summer 22/23 and the winter of 23 was when SR put their money in, and that's one thing you can't hold against them. They have put money in, more than we've ever been able to put in at PL level - the scouting has just been horrendous, which is why we are where we are. I see a lot of fans saying that we're where we are because of a lack of investment, but it couldn't be further from the truth in my eyes. Maybe we still focus on that 15m ballpark too much and fill the squad up with those types, rather than 1 or 2 £30m's, but we have been spending money - just really badly.

I like what he's done at Wednesday, they weren't a mid-table club when he arrived, they were adrift like ourselves in that league. They had the worst start out of 92 I think. Somehow he managed to scramble them away and they finished relatively comfortably in the end. With the same base of players he's taken them a little further this year as well. I get peoples scepticism in that he's always been seen as a good coach, but I think his stint at Wednesday has shown he's able to get players on side and doing the things he wants in really challenging circumstances. The comments from Wednesday fans are all pretty telling for me as well. When we got Martin, you had quite a few Swansea fans warning us about propaganda football, errors at the back, goal keeper howlers etc - it played out pretty much as expected. With Wednesday, the general feeling is that they think they've had a special manager and are sad to see him go. It's obviously still very early days in his career as a manager and he's going to (potentially) be coming into a tough gig in the summer, more so than last year. He'll have expectation 'to win' on him for probably the first time in his career. Maybe I let SR off a bit by saying the jury's out, but I do think this is their last chance to get it right before they're done here. They have been an absolute disaster, no doubts, but a lot of that has come from them trying to be left field and clever in their recruitment and manager hires - Rohl wouldn't be someone I'd consider as a left field appointment in our circumstances. Not confirmed yet though, so let's see what happens.

Rohl would probably be the first appointment we've made that would have a collective agreement among the fan base. Martin had questions around him, Jones did and Juric was a bit of an unknown. They always seem to go left field with their choices, but if they go for Rohl it's the first 'no brainer' appointment they've gone with. Everything aligns with him, what with our new DoF, the style of football the manager and DoF support, the foundations laid by Ralph, his familiarity with the club etc. Let's see what happens. The Jury is still out as SR are not known to make sensible choices, so we'll see if this pans out as it truly does make sense. I feel sad for Juric as he seems a decent guy, he's been parachuted into an absolute shit show and he's not been able to do what he wants. Hopefully he can get a new job after this, as his stints at Roma and here have put a massive dent in his reputation.

If we win our last 11 games we can get to 42 points, so we can still do it!

He's an odd one isn't he, he talks a good game and seems to have the right sort of character. I think attacking wise he has decent attributes, but I honestly don't remember watching a RB as bad as him in a defensive sense. Even Jack Stephens has been shown to be a better defensive full back than him.