Discussion: Txiki Begiristain (2014/15)

[Cheesy]

Not a great record on player signings...

Fernandinho
Navas
Jovetic
Negredo
Demichelis
Fernando
Sagna
Caballero
Zuculini
Mangala
Bony

And a fucking awful record on selecting the manager.

A shit load of money thrown away!

Proper fucking holistic Jim!

 

[nellyonthewing]

Phone call: Txiki to Sheik 2012 . " Your Excellency the Players do not like the Manager can I sack him ,I know someone else who will do the job..
Phone call: Txiki to Sheik 2015 " Your Excellency the Players do not like the Manager can I sack him ,I know someone else who will do the job..

 

[Damanino]

12m on Fernando, 32 or 42 Mangala (omg if that is true) and another 25m on Bony and none of them good enough to start a derby because they dont walk into the starting team. Maybe Bony if fit and we start a 442. But we started with one striker so he wouldnt have started imo. Thats 70-80m spent recently on players that just wouldnt walk into this team.

We wshould have spent that on the ones that actually improve the first eleven.

Isnt ffp about this for us? We still will have money to spend but we need to get it right and be effective in the market. We cant get Adebayor flops then sell him for 5m and buy another expensive one instead of him.

For Bony we needed to sell Negredo for good price. If we got only 10 for Negredo we might not have Bony. (Well hardly a disaster, sorry Bony.)

What if txiki goes on the market in a few months and spends 150m on players that arent improving our first 11 again?

We are fucked for years maybe.

 

[Summerbuzz]

Where has the khaldoon end of season speech thread gone? Would of brightened up a very shit day.

That's the other thing I remember reading, in several quality papers, when Mancini was sacked -

it was 'understood' that Khaldoon had taken personal responsibility for all these changes, and was to live or die (in his role at the club) by them.

I'd certainly not be in favour of losing him. I'm not even comfortable with changing DOF and manager and big name players in one summer. But it's very, very hard to see where it's all going.

We are not only worse off on the pitch, we are considerably worse off in squad ages, have offered young players far fewer opportunities, and no-one can remember our last transfer coup. We have tied up the wrong players on long term contracts, and at a moment where we need more naturally high-commitment players, more midfielders, more home-grown players, the super versatile Milner could be about to walk away. We are even looking at people like Zab and Kompany and asking about their effort, their commitment?!

We haven't installed a long-term manager. And we failed FFP!

We are at our lowest ebb here, so I'm willing to let the dust settle, but can anyone tell me I'm wrong, or point out some positives at the end of this season?

 

[SalfordCityBlue]

We are at our lowest ebb here

I'm as pissed off as anyone, but not sure this is quite true?

We still need some perspective - us more than anyone should be able to appreciate where we are now and that the future is bright, despite this current malaise. We used to be in much worse positions KNOWING there was no solution, now there are many solutions in front of us, we are just worrying about picking the right one.

 

[RandomJ]

All his signings have been wank and we're supposed to trust him to rebuild our squad? I think we're facing a few years in the wilderness until we get someone who knows what a good player looks like.

 

[Summerbuzz]

We are at our lowest ebb here

I'm as pissed off as anyone, but not sure this is quite true?

We still need some perspective - us more than anyone should be able to appreciate where we are now and that the future is bright, despite this current malaise. We used to be in much worse positions KNOWING there was no solution, now there are many solutions in front of us, we are just worrying about picking the right one.

Yep, you're right. I should have said 'since the project began'. Even at the end of Hughes' first season, we knew we could massively upgrade on the quality of player we had. Now it's more difficult, even without FFP - we already have a lot of quality players, experienced players, physical players, players who have won multiple trophies, top class technical players. Improving on that will be hard.

 

[Jack Wills]

I think the owner and the board will make some hard decisions this summer, and I'm sure they'll get it right. We've had a shit season, they'll know that of course, and I hope they're as unhappy with it as we are.

What needs to be sorted is, are we going to pursue being a successful club at all cost, or seemingly piss about with second rate signings hoping they'll be good enough?

For what we've spent in the last two seasons we could have had Hazard, Sanchez and Fabregas instead of Mangala, Fernando, Navas and Jovetic amongst others. If the ambition for the club is simply to be 'competitive' and accept that some years we'll win nothing, then we need to lower our expectations for both the transfer window and next season.

If the ambition is really winning the CL then we have to stop settling for second best, third best or shite in the transfer window. Outbid Chelsea, outbid Real if we have to, or accept we're not going to aim for that level again and just compete with Spurs and Liverpool and Southampton each season. Which is it? Right now it seems hard to tell as it seemed obvious right from the summer that Chelsea's signings were way ahead of ours and we didn't match them. Let's hope we don't repeat that mistake again in the summer.

 

[Manchester_lalala]

I'm still going to stick up for txiki and Soriano. Garry cook worked under no FFP restrictions and was buying any player he could. The transfer market wasn't as heavily inflated as it is now too. Soriano and txiki came to a club which was losing millions per season. With ffp coming in, they had to strengthen areas which they thought was weak. 13/14 transfers where okay, the only failure was jovetic who was potentially our best signing that summer. Without those summer signings, we wouldn't of won the double. Many argue why any of those signings key players for us. Fernandinho, who was the most expensive signing that summer, was a key signing and currently our best midfielder. He will be with us next season. Negredo was class, but sold on for a profit. Navas contributed a hell of a lot last season, you can't argue over his price tag either. Jovetic has just had an nightmare, we expected so much from him but just hasnt got going.

This summer, he moved on some deadwood for very good prices, which was vital due to ffp stitching us up. He bought mangala and fernando, two positions which needed strengthening. They haven't worked out well, no doubt about it. If we could go back to summer and buy fabregas and Sanchez while promoting denayer, I think he would. He got last summer wrong, but I do sympathise with him. The season before, we had the best attacking line up in the country, why add to it when other areas need strengthening. Without ffp, we would bought more players last summer, Yayas replacement would of been one. That will be our number one target this next window, he's been the heartbeat of this team but simply hasn't turned up this year. Maybe that was another decision txiki could of dealt with better, letting yaya go and buying fabregas. But to be fair, majority wanted yaya to stay due to the season he just had. Bony will be dzekos replacement, but the jury is still out on him.

Soriano is doing an absolute brilliant job on the commercial side, making us nearly self efficent, with lots more growth potential. That was nearly unimaginable a few years ago.

Txiki has had one bad summer, but I really do think he will turn out good this summer.

 

[City_Sean]

Txiki really needs to earn his corn this summer. If he buys poorly he'll be out of a job and his reputation will be in absolute tatters.