Our summer signings.

[Nano]

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.

That all sounds reasonable except you've missed the major reason we were in that position and that was due to years of poor recruitment driven by short term, expensive loans instead of long term planning. We didn't find ourselves in that position. We put ourselves in that position. You can't look at the last window in isolation at good or bad. You have to judge whether the squad is good now due to recruitment going back 5+ years and whether we are in a good place financially to be promoted this season, next season or within 5 seasons.

Personally, I don't think we are in a good position with the quality in our squad or financially. Too many low quality gambles that I don't think will pay off and not a lot of cash waiting in the wings to improve things significantly. The good gambles we have made might make enough profit to cover the losses in the others but not enough to allow us to gamble with higher stakes.

Hopefully I'm wrong and more of them come good than I expect but, Akpom aside, there haven't been too many players that get written off that have drastically improved and exceeded expectations.

 

[Ash88]

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.

I agree with most of what you said, but what makes Mowatt the 1/2 and Ramsey the full?

Ramsey played 600 minutes in total for us, and missed the last 6 games of the season.
Mowatt played 1300 minutes... including 500+ minutes after Ramsey signed.

 

[Laughing]

That all sounds reasonable except you've missed the major reason we were in that position and that was due to years of poor recruitment driven by short term, expensive loans instead of long term planning. We didn't find ourselves in that position. We put ourselves in that position. You can't look at the last window in isolation at good or bad. You have to judge whether the squad is good now due to recruitment going back 5+ years and whether we are in a good place financially to be promoted this season, next season or within 5 seasons.

Personally, I don't think we are in a good position with the quality in our squad or financially. Too many low quality gambles that I don't think will pay off and not a lot of cash waiting in the wings to improve things significantly. The good gambles we have made might make enough profit to cover the losses in the others but not enough to allow us to gamble with higher stakes.

Hopefully I'm wrong and more of them come good than I expect but, Akpom aside, there haven't been too many players that get written off that have drastically improved and exceeded expectations.

Is that last bit really true though.

Djed Spence and Tav spring to mind. I know tav came through the academy so perhaps discount him. Would Issiah Jones be worth more than we paid for him? I suspect quite a bit more, riley mcgree, what was he 2.5 million? He has to be worth more now. The frees of lenihan and barlaser are as cheap as it gets.

I agree that our recruitment, historically, has been poor in recent years, but the recruitment team are quite new to the club. If we go back a few years we have some shockers though, you are right about that.

 

[gravy173]

Barlaser wasn’t a free but was less than a million I think. I don’t think he’s worth much more than what we paid though.

If we are aiming to get promoted we need the players to do it, taking punts on signing half a team is more likely to end up with us being mid table through taking 2 months to gel. The real problem we have is that we are burning through the time we have carrick for, i very much doubt he will still be here in 18 months time given the average lifetime of a prem manager meaning we have got to get next summer spot on shopping in the bargain bin as this year is a right off (or likely will be by the end of the month)

 

[Laughing]

Barlaser wasn’t a free but was less than a million I think. I don’t think he’s worth much more than what we paid though.

If we are aiming to get promoted we need the players to do it, taking punts on signing half a team is more likely to end up with us being mid table through taking 2 months to gel. The real problem we have is that we are burning through the time we have carrick for, i very much doubt he will still be here in 18 months time given the average lifetime of a prem manager meaning we have got to get next summer spot on shopping in the bargain bin as this year is a right off (or likely will be by the end of the month)

You are absoloutely right Barlaser was 1million euro's. Tommy Smith was a freebie though!

We had to take a few punts this season, we had so many influential loans last season that had to be replaced.

 

[The Disciple]

The three signings this summer that i think will be big successes for us are Dieng, Van Den Berg, and Rogers. I can see us making tidy profits on these players - VDB in particular. Of the others they are probably more like useful squad players but not ideally first choice types. The new lad Azaz, if he does sign, also looks decent and is the right age to develop into another profit - i guess that’s where we are as club right now, relying on signings that can make the club a profit later on. Unless of course we go up

 

[Nano]

Is that last bit really true though.

Djed Spence and Tav spring to mind. I know tav came through the academy so perhaps discount him. Would Issiah Jones be worth more than we paid for him? I suspect quite a bit more, riley mcgree, what was he 2.5 million? He has to be worth more now. The frees of lenihan and barlaser are as cheap as it gets.

I agree that our recruitment, historically, has been poor in recent years, but the recruitment team are quite new to the club. If we go back a few years we have some shockers though, you are right about that.

I don't think any of them were written off. They were all either highly rated as soon as they broke into the team or got better as they went on whereas players like Engel, Barlaser, Greenwood, Gilbert and Silvera etc have been deemed to be not good enough by me and plenty of others (rightly or wrongly) and I wouldn't expect any of them to become big money sales or long term established first teamers. I like to think I'm a fairly good judge of a player although I have been wrong in the past (Akpom the obvious one).

Hopefully I'm wrong and more of them come good than I expect. Track record of the recruitment team is not great though which is my main worry.

 

[Laughing]

I don't think any of them were written off. They were all either highly rated as soon as they broke into the team or got better as they went on whereas players like Engel, Barlaser, Greenwood, Gilbert and Silvera etc have been deemed to be not good enough by me and plenty of others (rightly or wrongly) and I wouldn't expect any of them to become big money sales or long term established first teamers. I like to think I'm a fairly good judge of a player although I have been wrong in the past (Akpom the obvious one).

Hopefully I'm wrong and more of them come good than I expect. Track record of the recruitment team is not great though which is my main worry.

To be fair plenty wrote tav off, but I take your point.

For the record I think you are wrong about the summer recruits. I wouldn't be surprised if one or two fell by the wayside. Equally I wouldn't be surprised to see Rogers and Silvera turn into good players.

Latte Lath.... I dunno, he confuses me a bit. He does have the same goal return as Akpom for the same number of games last season. He would have got 15+ without the injury. Kinda depends when he is back from Injury I suppose. Bare in mind Akpom was considered a failure for 2 years and we paid 4.3 million euros for him.

Engel and Bangura, I dunno. They both have a lot to learn, but I don't see any reason Engel won't progress. He has improved his early season form.

I am ignoring the obvious good ones Dieng and VDB who will clearly have good careers.

 

[DonTheKing]

Rogers is raw.
Engel is shight
Bangura is not sure
Lath is decent
Vdb is quality
Greenwood is OK
Silvera is shight
Dieng is good