Three years of bad transfer dealings

[oasis-city-greek-fan]

Here's the thing. If you think we should've signed Sanchez/Hazard/Fabregas (delete as appropriate) and believe that we didn't through some sort of incompetence on our part then you should probably stop commenting on such matters because you clearly don't understand them.

The year we won the title for the first time Khaldoon made it clear in his end of season review, that moving forward things would be different with respect to our approach to the transfer market. The accelerated spending was over and moreover, with FFP just over the horizon, the time had come to start cutting back since the core of a winning team was quite clearly there. What we needed to do was bring the wage bill more in line with our turn over, we needed to reshape and rebalance the squad as there were far too many players being paid way more than they were worth, which had a dual effect. Firstly it meant that for the wages we were paying we weren't getting value for money, and more importantly, shifting those heavy earners off the books was problematic because nobody wanted to take on the stupid contracts we'd given them.

What the club have done since that summer is very clear and very simple. They've taken the core of that first title winning side and extracted maximum value out of it (two titles in three years, potentially three in four), whilst simultaneously working on reducing the wage bill, getting us through the first FFP monitoring period, whilst keeping us competitive on the pitch. It isn't as eye catching as when we were signing Kun, Toure, etc. But it's a process we needed to go through because as we've seen, even with this three year drive towards sustainability we still failed FFP and were hit with sanctions. It doesn't bare thinking about how bad those sanctions would've been had we stuck to two fingers up at UEFA in the first place and carried on spending.

So people need to understand that Fernandinho and Sanchez, or Mangala and Sanchez, simply didn't cost the same amount of money. That's the kind of naive and simplistic logic which infuriates. Clubs don't make decisions on players based solely on their transfer fee, it's based on their wages plus transfer fee. Sanchez is purported to earn around 200k a week at Arsenal, which would be double what Mangala earns. Similarly Fabregas at Chelsea. So again you can say "they cost the same as Mangala" but that's just naive bollocks.

Next problem with this whole "we should've signed XYZ". When you're going after top players you have to first make sure you've got room in the squad for them. You can't just buy players on top of players. It's something which again goes back to the "we should've signed Hazard/Van Persie" narrative. The owners, Sheikh Mansour, Khaldoon, made it abundantly clear to Mancini and co that there was NO way that a player like that was coming in unless room was made for them in the first team by selling another top earner. This wasn't some naive decision or some penny pinching exercise for the sake of it without any view on the football side of things. It was equally a footballing decision based on the fact that there were 4 supposedly world class forwards already at the club. Buying another one would've been a joke without moving one on first. This applies equally to the players we supposedly missed out on this summer. Had we gone after Fabregas without selling Toure he wouldn't have come anyway because - well at Chelsea he had a manager saying "you start every week, you're the main playmaker". Same with Sanzhez. He is undisputed number 1 at Arsenal. At City he'd have been in the same situation as Barca, part of a squad, playing some weeks to playing others.

So lets look specifically at the narrative that the players we've bought in the last three years have been shit. Or since the blame is squarely apportioned to Txiki, lets look at the players which Txiki has bought. It's both deluded, and revisionist rag nonsense to suggest that we bought badly in the summer of 2013. Demichelis, Negredo, Navas, and Fernandinho all played INTEGRAL parts in our title and league cup win. You can't have bad transfer policy by anyone's definition if you end the season with a lower wage bill than you ended the previous season, yet finish higher in the league and win more trophies. Not by anyone'e standards is that bad business. Maybe it wasn't long term business, but as I keep saying, we were working towards a very specific financial plan and for a specific time period.

I realise it's a forum but it's quite depressing how out of touch some posters are with the reality of what is going on at our football club and why things are the way they are when it comes to buying/selling players. Never mind Txiki or Ferran, we should be giving Mansour and Khaldoon a little more respect than acting out like little kids whenever we don't win a football match.

The easiest way to reduce the wages is to have some youngsters in your team along with players that they can perfom well playing in 2 positions....For example we have 4 side defenders instead of 3 and no one of our center backs can play at the side.Sagna was a good signing coz we already knew that Zaba couldn t keep playing like last year (World Cup).But on the left side i just realise that Mathieu would be such a great signing...he could replace both Kolarov and Mangala.Imagine how much money we could save

 

[blueincy]

The long and short is that out 'depth' is a myth!

Kolarov, Dzecko, Jovetic, Sagna, Willy, Mangala, Fernando, Sinclair all need fucking off sharpish and replaced with younger, hungrier and generally better players

The squad is old and slow - not a good combination

WUM

 

[mosssideblue]

Here's the thing. If you think we should've signed Sanchez/Hazard/Fabregas (delete as appropriate) and believe that we didn't through some sort of incompetence on our part then you should probably stop commenting on such matters because you clearly don't understand them.

The year we won the title for the first time Khaldoon made it clear in his end of season review, that moving forward things would be different with respect to our approach to the transfer market. The accelerated spending was over and moreover, with FFP just over the horizon, the time had come to start cutting back since the core of a winning team was quite clearly there. What we needed to do was bring the wage bill more in line with our turn over, we needed to reshape and rebalance the squad as there were far too many players being paid way more than they were worth, which had a dual effect. Firstly it meant that for the wages we were paying we weren't getting value for money, and more importantly, shifting those heavy earners off the books was problematic because nobody wanted to take on the stupid contracts we'd given them.

What the club have done since that summer is very clear and very simple. They've taken the core of that first title winning side and extracted maximum value out of it (two titles in three years, potentially three in four), whilst simultaneously working on reducing the wage bill, getting us through the first FFP monitoring period, whilst keeping us competitive on the pitch. It isn't as eye catching as when we were signing Kun, Toure, etc. But it's a process we needed to go through because as we've seen, even with this three year drive towards sustainability we still failed FFP and were hit with sanctions. It doesn't bare thinking about how bad those sanctions would've been had we stuck to two fingers up at UEFA in the first place and carried on spending.

So people need to understand that Fernandinho and Sanchez, or Mangala and Sanchez, simply didn't cost the same amount of money. That's the kind of naive and simplistic logic which infuriates. Clubs don't make decisions on players based solely on their transfer fee, it's based on their wages plus transfer fee. Sanchez is purported to earn around 200k a week at Arsenal, which would be double what Mangala earns. Similarly Fabregas at Chelsea. So again you can say "they cost the same as Mangala" but that's just naive bollocks.

Next problem with this whole "we should've signed XYZ". When you're going after top players you have to first make sure you've got room in the squad for them. You can't just buy players on top of players. It's something which again goes back to the "we should've signed Hazard/Van Persie" narrative. The owners, Sheikh Mansour, Khaldoon, made it abundantly clear to Mancini and co that there was NO way that a player like that was coming in unless room was made for them in the first team by selling another top earner. This wasn't some naive decision or some penny pinching exercise for the sake of it without any view on the football side of things. It was equally a footballing decision based on the fact that there were 4 supposedly world class forwards already at the club. Buying another one would've been a joke without moving one on first. This applies equally to the players we supposedly missed out on this summer. Had we gone after Fabregas without selling Toure he wouldn't have come anyway because - well at Chelsea he had a manager saying "you start every week, you're the main playmaker". Same with Sanzhez. He is undisputed number 1 at Arsenal. At City he'd have been in the same situation as Barca, part of a squad, playing some weeks to playing others.

So lets look specifically at the narrative that the players we've bought in the last three years have been shit. Or since the blame is squarely apportioned to Txiki, lets look at the players which Txiki has bought. It's both deluded, and revisionist rag nonsense to suggest that we bought badly in the summer of 2013. Demichelis, Negredo, Navas, and Fernandinho all played INTEGRAL parts in our title and league cup win. You can't have bad transfer policy by anyone's definition if you end the season with a lower wage bill than you ended the previous season, yet finish higher in the league and win more trophies. Not by anyone'e standards is that bad business. Maybe it wasn't long term business, but as I keep saying, we were working towards a very specific financial plan and for a specific time period.

I realise it's a forum but it's quite depressing how out of touch some posters are with the reality of what is going on at our football club and why things are the way they are when it comes to buying/selling players. Never mind Txiki or Ferran, we should be giving Mansour and Khaldoon a little more respect than acting out like little kids whenever we don't win a football match.

This post is spot on. I posted ealier also, signing every big dick in the world does not guarantee any better results than what we are seeing now. Your last line sums it all up for me. People look for any excuse whatsoever when we lose rather than this happens in competitive sport.

 

[Eccles Blue]

Here's the thing. If you think we should've signed Sanchez/Hazard/Fabregas (delete as appropriate) and believe that we didn't through some sort of incompetence on our part then you should probably stop commenting on such matters because you clearly don't understand them.

The year we won the title for the first time Khaldoon made it clear in his end of season review, that moving forward things would be different with respect to our approach to the transfer market. The accelerated spending was over and moreover, with FFP just over the horizon, the time had come to start cutting back since the core of a winning team was quite clearly there. What we needed to do was bring the wage bill more in line with our turn over, we needed to reshape and rebalance the squad as there were far too many players being paid way more than they were worth, which had a dual effect. Firstly it meant that for the wages we were paying we weren't getting value for money, and more importantly, shifting those heavy earners off the books was problematic because nobody wanted to take on the stupid contracts we'd given them.

What the club have done since that summer is very clear and very simple. They've taken the core of that first title winning side and extracted maximum value out of it (two titles in three years, potentially three in four), whilst simultaneously working on reducing the wage bill, getting us through the first FFP monitoring period, whilst keeping us competitive on the pitch. It isn't as eye catching as when we were signing Kun, Toure, etc. But it's a process we needed to go through because as we've seen, even with this three year drive towards sustainability we still failed FFP and were hit with sanctions. It doesn't bare thinking about how bad those sanctions would've been had we stuck to two fingers up at UEFA in the first place and carried on spending.

So people need to understand that Fernandinho and Sanchez, or Mangala and Sanchez, simply didn't cost the same amount of money. That's the kind of naive and simplistic logic which infuriates. Clubs don't make decisions on players based solely on their transfer fee, it's based on their wages plus transfer fee. Sanchez is purported to earn around 200k a week at Arsenal, which would be double what Mangala earns. Similarly Fabregas at Chelsea. So again you can say "they cost the same as Mangala" but that's just naive bollocks.

Next problem with this whole "we should've signed XYZ". When you're going after top players you have to first make sure you've got room in the squad for them. You can't just buy players on top of players. It's something which again goes back to the "we should've signed Hazard/Van Persie" narrative. The owners, Sheikh Mansour, Khaldoon, made it abundantly clear to Mancini and co that there was NO way that a player like that was coming in unless room was made for them in the first team by selling another top earner. This wasn't some naive decision or some penny pinching exercise for the sake of it without any view on the football side of things. It was equally a footballing decision based on the fact that there were 4 supposedly world class forwards already at the club. Buying another one would've been a joke without moving one on first. This applies equally to the players we supposedly missed out on this summer. Had we gone after Fabregas without selling Toure he wouldn't have come anyway because - well at Chelsea he had a manager saying "you start every week, you're the main playmaker". Same with Sanzhez. He is undisputed number 1 at Arsenal. At City he'd have been in the same situation as Barca, part of a squad, playing some weeks to playing others.

So lets look specifically at the narrative that the players we've bought in the last three years have been shit. Or since the blame is squarely apportioned to Txiki, lets look at the players which Txiki has bought. It's both deluded, and revisionist rag nonsense to suggest that we bought badly in the summer of 2013. Demichelis, Negredo, Navas, and Fernandinho all played INTEGRAL parts in our title and league cup win. You can't have bad transfer policy by anyone's definition if you end the season with a lower wage bill than you ended the previous season, yet finish higher in the league and win more trophies. Not by anyone'e standards is that bad business. Maybe it wasn't long term business, but as I keep saying, we were working towards a very specific financial plan and for a specific time period.

I realise it's a forum but it's quite depressing how out of touch some posters are with the reality of what is going on at our football club and why things are the way they are when it comes to buying/selling players. Never mind Txiki or Ferran, we should be giving Mansour and Khaldoon a little more respect than acting out like little kids whenever we don't win a football match.

This post is spot on. I posted ealier also, signing every big dick in the world does not guarantee any better results than what we are seeing now. Your last line sums it all up for me. People look for any excuse whatsoever when we lose rather than this happens in competitive sport.

Which just goes towards proving my point in my earlier message, basically; stop mucking about with proposed new signings and work better with the ones we have got. We have bought (allegedly) world class players now build them into the world class TEAM we can be instead of messing about!!

 

[bluechampion7891]

Here's the thing. If you think we should've signed Sanchez/Hazard/Fabregas (delete as appropriate) and believe that we didn't through some sort of incompetence on our part then you should probably stop commenting on such matters because you clearly don't understand them.

The year we won the title for the first time Khaldoon made it clear in his end of season review, that moving forward things would be different with respect to our approach to the transfer market. The accelerated spending was over and moreover, with FFP just over the horizon, the time had come to start cutting back since the core of a winning team was quite clearly there. What we needed to do was bring the wage bill more in line with our turn over, we needed to reshape and rebalance the squad as there were far too many players being paid way more than they were worth, which had a dual effect. Firstly it meant that for the wages we were paying we weren't getting value for money, and more importantly, shifting those heavy earners off the books was problematic because nobody wanted to take on the stupid contracts we'd given them.

What the club have done since that summer is very clear and very simple. They've taken the core of that first title winning side and extracted maximum value out of it (two titles in three years, potentially three in four), whilst simultaneously working on reducing the wage bill, getting us through the first FFP monitoring period, whilst keeping us competitive on the pitch. It isn't as eye catching as when we were signing Kun, Toure, etc. But it's a process we needed to go through because as we've seen, even with this three year drive towards sustainability we still failed FFP and were hit with sanctions. It doesn't bare thinking about how bad those sanctions would've been had we stuck to two fingers up at UEFA in the first place and carried on spending.

So people need to understand that Fernandinho and Sanchez, or Mangala and Sanchez, simply didn't cost the same amount of money. That's the kind of naive and simplistic logic which infuriates. Clubs don't make decisions on players based solely on their transfer fee, it's based on their wages plus transfer fee. Sanchez is purported to earn around 200k a week at Arsenal, which would be double what Mangala earns. Similarly Fabregas at Chelsea. So again you can say "they cost the same as Mangala" but that's just naive bollocks.

Next problem with this whole "we should've signed XYZ". When you're going after top players you have to first make sure you've got room in the squad for them. You can't just buy players on top of players. It's something which again goes back to the "we should've signed Hazard/Van Persie" narrative. The owners, Sheikh Mansour, Khaldoon, made it abundantly clear to Mancini and co that there was NO way that a player like that was coming in unless room was made for them in the first team by selling another top earner. This wasn't some naive decision or some penny pinching exercise for the sake of it without any view on the football side of things. It was equally a footballing decision based on the fact that there were 4 supposedly world class forwards already at the club. Buying another one would've been a joke without moving one on first. This applies equally to the players we supposedly missed out on this summer. Had we gone after Fabregas without selling Toure he wouldn't have come anyway because - well at Chelsea he had a manager saying "you start every week, you're the main playmaker". Same with Sanzhez. He is undisputed number 1 at Arsenal. At City he'd have been in the same situation as Barca, part of a squad, playing some weeks to playing others.

So lets look specifically at the narrative that the players we've bought in the last three years have been shit. Or since the blame is squarely apportioned to Txiki, lets look at the players which Txiki has bought. It's both deluded, and revisionist rag nonsense to suggest that we bought badly in the summer of 2013. Demichelis, Negredo, Navas, and Fernandinho all played INTEGRAL parts in our title and league cup win. You can't have bad transfer policy by anyone's definition if you end the season with a lower wage bill than you ended the previous season, yet finish higher in the league and win more trophies. Not by anyone'e standards is that bad business. Maybe it wasn't long term business, but as I keep saying, we were working towards a very specific financial plan and for a specific time period.

I realise it's a forum but it's quite depressing how out of touch some posters are with the reality of what is going on at our football club and why things are the way they are when it comes to buying/selling players. Never mind Txiki or Ferran, we should be giving Mansour and Khaldoon a little more respect than acting out like little kids whenever we don't win a football match.

This post is spot on. I posted ealier also, signing every big dick in the world does not guarantee any better results than what we are seeing now. Your last line sums it all up for me. People look for any excuse whatsoever when we lose rather than this happens in competitive sport.

yep. log at the rags. di maria, falcao

look at real before ancelotti

 

[Blue Hefner]

The long and short is that out 'depth' is a myth!

Kolarov, Dzecko, Jovetic, Sagna, Willy, Mangala, Fernando, Sinclair all need fucking off sharpish and replaced with younger, hungrier and generally better players

The squad is old and slow - not a good combination

WUM

Not a 'wum' in the slightest!

What exactly do you disagree with?
I may have been harsh on Dzecko but Bony has been bought now so he's sellable

 

[MichaelBBack]

Here's the thing. If you think we should've signed Sanchez/Hazard/Fabregas (delete as appropriate) and believe that we didn't through some sort of incompetence on our part then you should probably stop commenting on such matters because you clearly don't understand them.

The year we won the title for the first time Khaldoon made it clear in his end of season review, that moving forward things would be different with respect to our approach to the transfer market. The accelerated spending was over and moreover, with FFP just over the horizon, the time had come to start cutting back since the core of a winning team was quite clearly there. What we needed to do was bring the wage bill more in line with our turn over, we needed to reshape and rebalance the squad as there were far too many players being paid way more than they were worth, which had a dual effect. Firstly it meant that for the wages we were paying we weren't getting value for money, and more importantly, shifting those heavy earners off the books was problematic because nobody wanted to take on the stupid contracts we'd given them.

What the club have done since that summer is very clear and very simple. They've taken the core of that first title winning side and extracted maximum value out of it (two titles in three years, potentially three in four), whilst simultaneously working on reducing the wage bill, getting us through the first FFP monitoring period, whilst keeping us competitive on the pitch. It isn't as eye catching as when we were signing Kun, Toure, etc. But it's a process we needed to go through because as we've seen, even with this three year drive towards sustainability we still failed FFP and were hit with sanctions. It doesn't bare thinking about how bad those sanctions would've been had we stuck to two fingers up at UEFA in the first place and carried on spending.

So people need to understand that Fernandinho and Sanchez, or Mangala and Sanchez, simply didn't cost the same amount of money. That's the kind of naive and simplistic logic which infuriates. Clubs don't make decisions on players based solely on their transfer fee, it's based on their wages plus transfer fee. Sanchez is purported to earn around 200k a week at Arsenal, which would be double what Mangala earns. Similarly Fabregas at Chelsea. So again you can say "they cost the same as Mangala" but that's just naive bollocks.

Next problem with this whole "we should've signed XYZ". When you're going after top players you have to first make sure you've got room in the squad for them. You can't just buy players on top of players. It's something which again goes back to the "we should've signed Hazard/Van Persie" narrative. The owners, Sheikh Mansour, Khaldoon, made it abundantly clear to Mancini and co that there was NO way that a player like that was coming in unless room was made for them in the first team by selling another top earner. This wasn't some naive decision or some penny pinching exercise for the sake of it without any view on the football side of things. It was equally a footballing decision based on the fact that there were 4 supposedly world class forwards already at the club. Buying another one would've been a joke without moving one on first. This applies equally to the players we supposedly missed out on this summer. Had we gone after Fabregas without selling Toure he wouldn't have come anyway because - well at Chelsea he had a manager saying "you start every week, you're the main playmaker". Same with Sanzhez. He is undisputed number 1 at Arsenal. At City he'd have been in the same situation as Barca, part of a squad, playing some weeks to playing others.

So lets look specifically at the narrative that the players we've bought in the last three years have been shit. Or since the blame is squarely apportioned to Txiki, lets look at the players which Txiki has bought. It's both deluded, and revisionist rag nonsense to suggest that we bought badly in the summer of 2013. Demichelis, Negredo, Navas, and Fernandinho all played INTEGRAL parts in our title and league cup win. You can't have bad transfer policy by anyone's definition if you end the season with a lower wage bill than you ended the previous season, yet finish higher in the league and win more trophies. Not by anyone'e standards is that bad business. Maybe it wasn't long term business, but as I keep saying, we were working towards a very specific financial plan and for a specific time period.

I realise it's a forum but it's quite depressing how out of touch some posters are with the reality of what is going on at our football club and why things are the way they are when it comes to buying/selling players. Never mind Txiki or Ferran, we should be giving Mansour and Khaldoon a little more respect than acting out like little kids whenever we don't win a football match.

I agree with plenty of what you say, but this would make more sense if the majority of the players we've signed weren't:

a) The wrong side of 27
or b) Never used at all

Of course we have to save money, sort out our financial situation to be stable, and spending 300k a week on one flashy player isn't as logical as having 3 decent lads earning 100k, but then.. why are we buying guys like Fernando/Fernandinho (who are both fast approahcing 30) that we'll need to replace in a couple of years due to age, and won't get any sort of financial return on? Why don't we cash in on guys like Yaya (especially after everything that happened) instead of giving them ridiculously lucrative contracts? Why don't we buy any young players, and the ones we do (Nasty, Sinclair, Rodwell) get completely ignored? And why is it that those names are some of the only young players we've actually signed in the last five years? Surely buying younger players (who normally demand lower wages than 27 year olds, by the way) and letting them develop, even if we end up selling them when they're 25 to Barca or Madrid, makes more sense than what we're doing? Why do we not, especially after spending god knows how much on our academy, ever even let a single young lad have a chance in the cup? Why, after all that Marcos Lopes did last season for the EDS and his few first-team appearances, does he get loaned out instead of being given a spot on the bench, when he's clearly ready (he's playing week in, week out for Lille right now, let's not forget) and we rely far too much on Nasri and Silva to be our creative players? Similarly, why, when we've got Nasty and lads like Rekik in the reserves, and Demi doing a top job with Vinnie, is a 32m quid signing of a relatively unproven defender our top summer priority? Why do we not cash in on any of the lads like Kolarov who are just not going to get any better and are in fact, more often than not, liabilities, but instead offer them stupid extensions that ensure they'll end up being sold for about 3m or given away on frees after sitting on the bench earning God knows how much for the last year of their contracts?

The principles of what you're saying make sense, and I don't think many clever people would argue against the club's financial principles and plans to develop a sustainable model for the club.. it's the way they've gone about enforcing these principles that most of us have a problem with.

 

[agyeiboateng]

Would anyone have preferred Lacazette to Bony because of his pace?

 

[blueincy]

The long and short is that out 'depth' is a myth!

Kolarov, Dzecko, Jovetic, Sagna, Willy, Mangala, Fernando, Sinclair all need fucking off sharpish and replaced with younger, hungrier and generally better players

The squad is old and slow - not a good combination

WUM

Not a 'wum' in the slightest!

What exactly do you disagree with?
I may have been harsh on Dzecko but Bony has been bought now so he's sellable

It may of escaped your attention that our manager wants four strikers at the club and the Beast has been sold with a pre sale loan agreement in place.
Dzeko has been out injured most of the season and last season when the Beast wasn't firing and Aguero was out injured he stepped up and helped us win the League like he has done before. So with that in mind you sir are a WUM.

 

[Blue Hefner]

WUM

Not a 'wum' in the slightest!

What exactly do you disagree with?
I may have been harsh on Dzecko but Bony has been bought now so he's sellable

It may of escaped your attention that our manager wants four strikers at the club and the Beast has been sold with a pre sale loan agreement in place.
Dzeko has been out injured most of the season and last season when the Beast wasn't firing and Aguero was out injured he stepped up and helped us win the League like he has done before. So with that in mind you sir are a WUM.

It hasn't escaped my attention at all but what's wrong with selling Dzecko and buying someone younger? Like I said, I may have been harsh on Dzecko but that's the only part of the most you have picked up on

A 'wum' as far as I know, is someone who diliberately posts to wind people up - that's isn't the case here and you seem to be struggling to back up your claim - your only response was to pick up on one aspect which I already conceded may have been harsh