Small club

[ally_uk]

Why are smaller clubs outstanding us? Showing more ambition with transfers?

 

Why are we selling our talent to Liverpool? Is Les Reed on the payroll? / hidden agenda?

 

Imagine the talent in that Liverpool squad if we still had it......... The game has gone mad...

[S-Clarke]

What smaller clubs? Assume you are referring to Burnley.

 

They'll end up falling back to their natrual postion before long, this is just their overachieving season - which is what we had when we finished 6th.

 

A club of our size is not in a position to turn down £75m for a single player, not in any situation. This is the way of the land and is even more so the case now with the extra money on hand.

 

It's not so much a fault of the club, it's a fault of the TV Deals/big clubs racing away into the sunset. We're just here to make up the numbers.

 

The sooner there is a European break away league the better for the likes of ourselves.

[Lighthouse]

Why are smaller clubs outstanding us? Showing more ambition with transfers?

 

Why are we selling our talent to Liverpool? Is Les Reed on the payroll? / hidden agenda?

 

Imagine the talent in that Liverpool squad if we still had it......... The game has gone mad...

 

This has been done to death. If we hadn't sold them Lallana, we wouldn't have been able to buy Mané. Likewise Lovren and VvD. Clyne would have left on a free anyway.

 

We are selling them because they don't want to be here and we're getting obscene amounts of money in return.

[ALWAYS_SFC]

We've spent fortunes. We have what, 8th or 9th highest wage bill? Extremely valuable squad and we've finished 8th, 7th, 6th, 8th.

 

Who has done better? Just Leicester winning the league. Burnley are having a good season due to great management and organisation. You appoint a manager to get the best out of our squad, produce an organised consistent team and guess what? We'd be 7th.

 

What has to happen for people to realise it isn't all about new signings? How much wasted money, how many overpriced deals, how many clubs failing to integrate loads of new players? How many smaller clubs confusing them by being in the top half?

 

There is no 'if we still had X, Y, X' players. If we don't lose Alderweireld. we don't sign VVD. If we don't lose Lallana, we don't sign Tadic. Don't lose Shaw, don't sign Bertrand. We've had a hugely successful model of selling players who want to leave for big fees to big clubs and reinvesting well. Mane and VVD are examples of that success, not signs of its failure.

 

It all falls down if you appoint useless managers.

 

Good sensible post

[ALWAYS_SFC]

How dare you.

 

Sorry

[shurlock]

We've spent fortunes. We have what, 8th or 9th highest wage bill? Extremely valuable squad and we've finished 8th, 7th, 6th, 8th.

 

Who has done better? Just Leicester winning the league. Burnley are having a good season due to great management and organisation. You appoint a manager to get the best out of our squad, produce an organised consistent team and guess what? We'd be 7th.

 

What has to happen for people to realise it isn't all about new signings? How much wasted money, how many overpriced deals, how many clubs failing to integrate loads of new players? How many smaller clubs confusing them by being in the top half?

 

There is no 'if we still had X, Y, X' players. If we don't lose Alderweireld. we don't sign VVD. If we don't lose Lallana, we don't sign Tadic. Don't lose Shaw, don't sign Bertrand. We've had a hugely successful model of selling players who want to leave for big fees to big clubs and reinvesting well. Mane and VVD are examples of that success, not signs of its failure.

 

It all falls down if you appoint useless managers.

 

Adrian you're all the over place.

 

How many current squad members featured in those league finishes? The squad is unrecognisable from the 2014/15 and 2015/16 squads. Last year's 8th place finish flattered to deceive - points-wise we were closer to the relegation places than 7th. This is a point you yourself made, albeit for the purpose of calling for the then manager's head. Odd now that you should be claiming last season's finish was in fact excellent, proof positive of the quality in the squad that the current manager is failing to exploit. Some would call it disingenuous: others would call it dim. I'll hedge my bets and say it's a bit of both.

 

When has cost ever equalled quality? Perhaps we overpaid for bang average players recently. The reality is that the wage bills of the midtable teams are highly compressed. There really isn't much to separate our wage bill and that of teams lower down. The fact our wage bill is slightly higher may arguably have more to do with churn in the squad than differences in quality: as we're selling and replacing players more regularly than other teams, we're having to negotiate with players against a background of rapid wage inflation. Other sides with more stable squads are more likely to have players on contracts which have been benchmarked against older, lower market rates.

 

In sum, the current manager is poor and the current squad has some glaring weaknesses will need to be addressed in the transfer market. Both statements are true. The world's a complicated place pal. There isn't a single, silver-bullet explanation for everything.

Edited 6 January, 2018 by shurlock