Can't believe I read that myself. We might have a lack of staff, but anyone can put together a few cones and get someone running an hour or 2 for fitness. And even get them in the club gym. That's beyond ridiculous
You get a coach who's had just days to prepare a team to play twice in less than a week. Not enough time to get new ideas, systems, tactics across to them. They haven't had a good pre season to get base fitness. You're desperate for a period to get on the training ground and work hard to resolve those issues. Lo and behold... an international break! And we give them a week off. My gast is truly flabbered!
Spot on. It's demoralising simply because it is patently obvious the owners don't give a toss about the club, its history or its place in the community. The club is a potential source of revenue. Period. It's *****. The owners are charlatans who occasionally talk the talk when it suits but dont walk the walk because it costs a few quid. The sooner everyone wakes up to this mob the better.
Hasn’t it almost been universally accepted we have to sell a one player a year to break even? And that to give our model the biggest chance of success, the more value we get for the ‘rough diamonds’ the more there is to invest in a better quality of ‘rough diamond’? When we’re not taking out £750k to pay of our own debts mind. Hinting that fans returning, losing five subs, and other factors might make the style unsustainable. Is that really the outrageous comment people have taken it as? They never said the season wasn’t a success, or a failure, or that they deemed it a failure. Just that long term they weren’t convinced that style would work. Now you can argue against that for sure, but some people are repeating the comment and adding their own words and interpretation that aren’t actually the words the club said. Or Khaled said. Suppose it’s how we all interpret it, but if you have your fourth most successful season in history, and don’t receive any offers for your players, that does feel slightly out of sync. But I would put that down to Covid and the state of finances in the Summer just gone, over the players not being sought after. But there’s no denying that some players might be valued higher by us than by those scouting them.
Our two best players did leave though, one was on loan and one left on a free. Its painfully obvious now that most of our success last season was down to the style rather than the ability of the players individually.
However, we did receive payments from New York Red Bulls for Gerhard Struber and from West Bromwich Albion for Valerien Ismael in October & June respectively. Also, we received transfer fees for first team regulars Michal Sollbauer & Conor Chaplin. So for anyone to claim we didn't receive offers is being somewhat disingenuous.
I would say what we received for the managers is probably not quite the same argument, although I could understand Val being mentioned in fairness. Sollbauer left for free didn’t he? Chaplin is valid, but not the kind of fees that keep us ticking over.
The former wasn’t ever our player so didn’t really ‘leave’. The latter was always going to go and was our captain. So yes, you’re right on that front, but if you’re player of the year and captain can’t find a club when there’s no signing on fee involved it’s a serious worry.
Personally, I thought that we received a fee for Struber and I wasn't aware that Sollbauer left on a free.