Our summer signings.

The Card Cheat said:
Rogers was excellent against WBA, Preston, Coventry. Scored against Birmingham, created goals against Sunderland and Huddersfield with superb passes. Apart from Huddersfield, they were all top 8 championship teams immediately after we'd played them.
The idea he's only done it against poorer opposition is wrong diddly wrong wrong!
6 goals and 7 assists from only about 17 starts I think. Obviously been a success who will benefit the club.
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Guess you missed the starting to see something bit, as they are all recent games. He’s been in and out of the team and was played as a striker the first few games, but seems he’s now starting to show what he can do. Strange that we’re signing Azaz though if Rogers will be our main number 10, as they play in the same position.
 
I think generally speaking our recruitment has been good. Any judgements we make of new players needs to be done in the context of the individuals circumstances and the teams circumstances.
Most of the young players have had to play significantly more than anyone would have expected, due to an unprecedented injury crisis that's lasted for months. Greenwood for example has probably made as many match winning contributions as Ramsey made over a similar period last season, but recently when his form has dropped we've had to keep playing him, so he looks a poorer player than he is. Same at different points in the season for RVDB and Rogers.
Players we've signed from foreign leagues are also going to take time to settle into an entirely different country, league, team, culture and even language for ELL.
That being said most of the players we've signed have made significant positive contributions already over the course of the season, which is one of the main reasons why we're not in a bad position in the league and cups considering the injuries we've had and the fact we lost our five best players from last season.
 
uncle_rico said:
Guess you missed the starting to see something bit, as they are all recent games. He’s been in and out of the team and was played as a striker the first few games, but seems he’s now starting to show what he can do. Strange that we’re signing Azaz though if Rogers will be our main number 10, as they play in the same position.
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Well Birmingham and Sunderland were months ago, and you said "so far", he has only done it against poorer opposition that's clearly not true.
I also said repeatedly on here I thought he was playing well right at the beginning of the season, in the first few games of the season he created chance after chance, it wasn't his fault nobody was finishing those chances.
 
The Card Cheat said:
I think generally speaking our recruitment has been good. Any judgements we make of new players needs to be done in the context of the individuals circumstances and the teams circumstances.
Most of the young players have had to play significantly more than anyone would have expected, due to an unprecedented injury crisis that's lasted for months. Greenwood for example has probably made as many match winning contributions as Ramsey made over a similar period last season, but recently when his form has dropped we've had to keep playing him, so he looks a poorer player than he is. Same at different points in the season for RVDB and Rogers.
Players we've signed from foreign leagues are also going to take time to settle into an entirely different country, league, team, culture and even language for ELL.
That being said most of the players we've signed have made significant positive contributions already over the course of the season, which is one of the main reasons why we're not in a bad position in the league and cups considering the injuries we've had and the fact we lost our five best players from last season.
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We are in a bad position in the league. We're 12th. 3rd and 4th are already too far away and we're 4 and 6 behind 6th and 5th (with 5 teams between us and them). We've lost 12 games already. Last season the 4 playoff teams had losses of 8, 15 (us), 12 and 13. Likelihood is we need to lose no more than 3 more games to make the playoffs. Only 4 teams have lost more games than us this season. We have a negative goal difference.

The reason we are not doing badly in the cups is because we've played the 4th bottom championship team, a L2 team and 3 L1 teams.

We're not in an impossible situation. We could still make the playoffs (and even win a trophy) but to say we're not in a bad position is just wrong. We have shown no indication that we can put a consistently long run together. Other than our 1 run of 7 games in Sept/Oct we haven't had an unbeaten run of more than 2 games. We need automatic promotion form (1.95ppg) for the rest of the season to hit the same 75 points we hit last season. Last year was a low year for making the playoffs and 75 points is needed for 6th more often than the 69 of last season. We need to be at 1.70 just to hit 70. We've been at 1.38 so far this year.
 
Laughing said:
This won't surprise you Indeedio, but I disagree with your assessment completely.
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So you disagree that Dieng has been a good signing at good value?
That VDB looks really encouraging at CB?
Or that Rogers has real ability?
Or that Greenwood has obvious talent?
Or that O’Brien is of the calibre required?

So Laughig are you sure you disagree with me completely?

I absolutely do expect you to take issue and pass comment, it is what you do often.
I’ll live with that.
 
Nano said:
We are in a bad position in the league. We're 12th. 3rd and 4th are already too far away and we're 4 and 6 behind 6th and 5th (with 5 teams between us and them). We've lost 12 games already. Last season the 4 playoff teams had losses of 8, 15 (us), 12 and 13. Likelihood is we need to lose no more than 3 more games to make the playoffs. Only 4 teams have lost more games than us this season. We have a negative goal difference.

The reason we are not doing badly in the cups is because we've played the 4th bottom championship team, a L2 team and 3 L1 teams.

We're not in an impossible situation. We could still make the playoffs (and even win a trophy) but to say we're not in a bad position is just wrong. We have shown no indication that we can put a consistently long run together. Other than our 1 run of 7 games in Sept/Oct we haven't had an unbeaten run of more than 2 games. We need automatic promotion form (1.95ppg) for the rest of the season to hit the same 75 points we hit last season. Last year was a low year for making the playoffs and 75 points is needed for 6th more often than the 69 of last season. We need to be at 1.70 just to hit 70. We've been at 1.38 so far this year.
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You've completely misquoted what I've put. I said we're not in a bad position considering the very obvious difficult circumstances we've experienced. To be still in with a good chance of the play offs and in a Semi Final is a good position, relative to our circumstances.
The idea our Cup run is simply down to luck of the draw, completely ignores how often teams lose to lower division teams, especially away from home. To win 5 away games on the bounce shows great professionalism and attitude.
To be honest I struggle to take anything you post seriously, as you regularly call our own players and team s***, and in almost 4,000 posts have literally never posted a single positive thing.
 
Our summer signings reflect the budget we had and the number of players we needed due to the high turnover from last season.

That meant we couldn't go out and spend 2-3 million on each player.

It is what it is.

I actually think, working to the constraints we had, the recruitment has been been fairly good, and players are improving.

I dare say in the same position over the summer with similar budgets, previous regimes would have royally fooked us up this summer and we would not be 4 points outside of the playoffs now.
 
I had high hopes for this season, as I do every summer. We haven't reached them..however it's very clear why and it's not down to recruitment.

If we'd had even an average run of injuries then we'd be firmly ensconced in the play offs and looking up.

Instead we are 4 points off. That is largely down to 1) recruitment, where we bulked out the squad to have at least some players capable of handling a championship fixture and 2) our fantastic, unflappable manager.

The summer will see likely McGree and/or Hackney leave. We will need to replace the latter, but will have cash left over to add to a squad that has proven its mettle this year.

Promotion won't happen, but we are in a much more stable position than we've been in since we came down.
 
Dieng is an improvement from last year, one of the most important places on the pitch sorted.
VDB looks a quality player in the making hopefully with us.

As others have stated, not sure about the other signings/loans

O’Brien, from his brief gametime, looked assured and was improving in every game, unlucky with his injury.

Left back position not solved for me, Engel and Bangura both have good and poor qualities, both not nailed on starters.
Greenwood can go back to Leeds after his loan deal if he doesn't improve his game, very hit and miss, more miss id say.
Silvera is very underwhelming, not a Championship player for now, hopefully improves, but not sure he will.
Latte Lathe looks the part, has a Leroy Lita look about him, with his explosive bursts, but never looks convincing or confident when shooting, hence why he's playing in the Championship. Hopefully he will improve but not convinced.
Rogers, jury still out, flashes of skill one minute, then very ordinary the next... Blackpool fans said the same thing last season about him.
 
indeedido said:
So you disagree that Dieng has been a good signing at good value?
That VDB looks really encouraging at CB?
Or that Rogers has real ability?
Or that Greenwood has obvious talent?
Or that O’Brien is of the calibre required?

So Laughig are you sure you disagree with me completely?

I absolutely do expect you to take issue and pass comment, it is what you do often.
I’ll live with that.
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OK, not completely.
On top of Barlaser last Jan I think it was a very disappointing year of recruitment.
Our position is disappointing and I don’t see overall profit coming from the recruitment unless Rogers really kicks on (which he might)
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However, your assesment of the recruitment, is, at best, speculative, at worst just plain wrong. You are basing your judgement on players who have just arrived and been thrown into the team under the worse possible set of circumstances.

You are very negative, it's what you do often.

I'll live with that.
 
The Card Cheat said:
You've completely misquoted what I've put. I said we're not in a bad position considering the very obvious difficult circumstances we've experienced. To be still in with a good chance of the play offs and in a Semi Final is a good position, relative to our circumstances.
The idea our Cup run is simply down to luck of the draw, completely ignores how often teams lose to lower division teams, especially away from home. To win 5 away games on the bounce shows great professionalism and attitude.
To be honest I struggle to take anything you post seriously, as you regularly call our own players and team s***, and in almost 4,000 posts have literally never posted a single positive thing.
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Of course it's luck of the draw. We've not played anyone good yet. We were comfortable favourites in every game other than Huddersfield where it was marginal. We've been able to win those matches with our reserve team. If we get beat by Villa at the weekend it won't be a poor cup performance, it'll be because we've been drawn against a much stronger team than us and if we had been drawn against a minnow and beaten them it wouldn't be an excellent cup performance. We've done well not to slip up in the League Cup, fully agree, but we've beaten teams we were expected to comfortably beat or they wouldn't be called slip ups. We were odds on favourites in every match (except Huddersfield).

I say loads of positive things. I'm just realistic and rose-tinted glasses wearers don't like realism. In those 4,000 posts we've been a mid-table championship team almost the entire time so my "negativity" has proven to be correct, as it will this season, because we are not making any progress despite being asked to pay top end prices progressively higher each season. I was very positive last season and I thought we were a cert to make the playoff final. We had a good squad with a few excellent players and a very good manager. We still have that manager and I think that is a big positive. We have very few excellent players this year and that is due to the poor recruitment, not the manager. I'm also not happy with the way the club is run from the retail/ticketing side of things and think it is too expensive, particularly for non-season ticket holders and I put that down to mismanagement. We're too poor an area to be charging the prices we do to non-season ticket holders.

Being overly positive doesn't change anything. You might prefer if everyone comes on here and creates fantasy teams that we have no chance of signing and ignores reality and pretends we are the best team in the league going through a bad patch and we'll come good at some point but it won't change the fact that it isn't reality. I find it hard to take anyone seriously that refuses to accept reality when it's slapping them in the face.
 
Nano said:
Being overly positive doesn't change anything. You might prefer if everyone comes on here and creates fantasy teams that we have no chance of signing and ignores reality and pretends we are the best team in the league going through a bad patch and we'll come good at some point but it won't change the fact that it isn't reality. I find it hard to take anyone seriously that refuses to accept reality when it's slapping them in the face.
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Balance, that's what I'd prefer. When literally and I mean literally every single thing you post is negative, it's clear you have an agenda.
I've never said anything about us being the best team in the league, or daft fantasies of players we're going to sign. Neither have I completely written off our entire team as s***, or called young players doing their best s****. Because I'm not completely unbalanced, I recognise that just as there is negative things about our club our team and this season there is also many positive things.
 
Laughing said:
OK, not completely.

However, your assesment of the recruitment, is, at best, speculative, at worst just plain wrong. You are basing your judgement on players who have just arrived and been thrown into the team under the worse possible set of circumstances.

You are very negative, it's what you do often.

I'll live with that.
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I’m far from very negative.
Like your wonderful algorithms, your opinion seems all over the place.
 
The Card Cheat said:
Balance, that's what I'd prefer. When literally and I mean literally every single thing you post is negative, it's clear you have an agenda.
I've never said anything about us being the best team in the league, or daft fantasies of players we're going to sign. Neither have I completely written off our entire team as s***, or called young players doing their best s****. Because I'm not completely unbalanced, I recognise that just as there is negative things about our club our team and this season there is also many positive things.
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What agenda would that be? I want to see Boro being successful. We aren't so I'm going to be more negative than I am positive. When we are successful I will be positive. I don't think there is much to be positive about at the moment. Don't think it's controversial in any way to say we have taken a massive step backwards from last season in terms of squad quality. And I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

This season has been atrocious at times including our worst start to a campaign for decades. I am balanced, you are just concentrating on the negative things I say. I'm not going to pretend we have a squad capable of promotion when we don't. I will be critical about where we are because there is plenty to be critical about and not a whole lot to be positive about.

I think we are wasting our opportunity with a good manager by giving him players that aren't good enough for him to achieve what he is capable of.
 
Dieng and van den Berg have been very good signings. Rogers took a little while to find his feet and showed what he can do in flashes early on but I think he’s really started to show his quality more and more lately. Rav I think is quality.

Silvera has something but he’s taking a bit more time putting it together, he’s very up and down, but he’s also unfortunately in a position now where he can have a game where he doesn’t put a foot wrong and people will still slate him as though he is regardless. See: Recent Huddersfield game.

I like Engel, bounced back well after a poor start, and now statistically speaking one of the better full backs going forward in the league. Bangura I need to see more of but he seems fine so far.

Latte Lath is an odd one. Silly pace which is a good asset, but he can look a bit clumsy. He does a good job holding up the ball and winning it back and seems deceptively strong, and you can’t fault his work rate. But he also seems like one of those players who does better with quick finishes rather than when he has time to think about it, which you’d hope could be coached.

Greenwood’s frustrating cause I think the talent and quality is there, it’s just inconsistent and he ends up going on runs of games where he’s basically a complete passenger.

Gilbert’s a weird one cause he has all the signs of being one of those numerous players we’ve brought in over the years who just never ever features and makes you wonder what the point was. What did they see in this Brentford B Team player previously that they aren’t seeing now? Or vice versa.
 
Let's put it into perspective. At the beginning of June we were looking at losing 5 1/2 first team players:
Steffen, Giles, Mowatt (the 1/2), Ramsey, Akpom, Archer.
We were also losing some back-ups.
We had been short at centre back all season and didn't know if Clarke would ever be fit again.
We had also been short at centre-forward
Finally, we didn't know whether Howson would last another season and whether McNair would leave. Clearly we hoped that we could recoup some money from Payero.

Assuming someone came in for Akpom, we had to replace all of these with likely around £12m. In the circumstances, I think we did ok.
We seem to have been over-optimistic that we could keep Giles and that appears to have compromised our search for a LB. Looks like the original plan was Giles+Coulson with Bola making a little bit of money for us.

We appear to have missed out on one or more first choice centre-forwards. I kind of feel that we paid too much for Latte Lath given his track record but it looks like we were struggling at that point.

Dieng was a great value replacement for Steffen.
O'Brien was an upgrade on Mowatt and possibly a replacement for Howson. The midfield unit was a slight upgrade.
RVDB was a decent plan to provide some depth in the centre-backs

We had McGree to play left sided attack so it seemed reasonable to get some like Rogers as a back-up.

Greenwood was possibly one of our top choices to replace Akpom but it seems like we had difficulty doing the deal. Right now, he's not looking great.

The rest were a mix of free/low cost back-ups and possible 'projects.'

It wasn't a perfect window by any means but there were limits to our money and ability to get deals over the line.
 
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