Stadt

Vietes Aluko Souttar/Okoli Vestegaard L Thomas Choudhury Page Monga Reid S Thomas Evans Effeminate Reid will actually have to assert himself to help the younger players out.

Obviously he was a ****ing bellend chipping it but he went on to score 65 championship goals in 153 starts. Walsh's eye for a player was excellent

Given what Kermogant went on to do in the Championship, fantastic bit of scouting and probably paved the way for the Knockaert and Mahrez signings.

Pisa is tiny, cheap flights, you can see it in a day and weirdly one of my favourite experiences was just walking out of the airport into the city. Pretty easy to get on a train for any onward travel too. Milan is perhaps the most boring city in the world relative to its profile, don't spend any length of time there, please, perhaps aside from seeing San Siro. We went to La Spezia for a game, nice place but skippable. Florence is great, the most alike visiting other notable European cities which is a complement. Incredibly historic, swerving the overtouristic bits is easy, completely walkable and well situated too. Going to Bologna, then visiting Modena and Cremona for a day alter this month.

We've maintained a positive (as in purchases/sales +/-) transfer record throughout this whole saga. We've spent remarkably little on transfers to be in such a financial mess and where we were in the table. We've just never managed the wage bill

I think between BEK + Fatawu + various other outs we get to £50-60m. We probably have a £35m wage bill when the high earners leave but we'll need to replace 10-12 players at let's 10k p/w - which is about £5m. So it'll put as 40m, other operating costs are 40m too (not really checked). Given we have the 23/24 loss on our PSR record still I don't think we can do much, last summer was a needless net spend splurge too. I guess it depends on what we have to pay Macquarie too. I think we'll have about £10m to replace 10-12 players! We need to integrate as many young players as we can now to bulk out the depth. All of the loanees that have played any league football just might have be depth, i.e Cover, Opoku, Cartwright, TWB, JJ

Cartwright is getting limited minutes at Falkirk, I don't he get any fewer if we recalled him. At worst it's some depth with a motivated local lad who is physically ready. Evans should have had at least 10 sub appearances, especially in games where we've already lost because there is nothing to lose at all.

Probably deserves a thread in its own right but summer 2026 is going to be a blood bath. We have 8 players leaving this summer as their contracts expire, including the 2 'strikers' we have at the club. Then we're likely to lose Fatawu AND Monga (and take years to receive compensation?). BEK obviously goes. So before we even get to the threadbare midfield we probably need 2 strikers and 2 wingers. We'll need a proper AM. A proper DM and a box-to box CM (James isn't staying) A left back that isn't shit I expect at least two of Faes, Okoli and Souttar will be off, possibly Nelson. So potentially 3 x CB. Coulibably will go, a senior RB is necessary We're probably looking at at least 12 players with very few leaving. The most amount of players we've ever signed in a summer window is 9 under this regime and that was when we got related last time. Now we'll have no money and the possibility of starting with another deduction. We can have 5 loans in the squad but given we've not even gotten close to maxing out the allocation this season we're in a hole.

I said next summer rather than this summer!

I know but the technical director’s remit will be a DoF’s role. Sometimes the nomenclature is weird but Rudkin is hiring somebody to do his job for him

Which is great but that doesn't qualify him for what we need. we need someone with demonstrable DoF experience, not promoting someday to do another job they have no experience of.

Yep yep. All our signings should have an off ramp, worst case scenario with Okoli is is we probably sell him for about £7m, not great but not abysmal. Take Skipp, Ayew, Reid if they don't work out we're just chewing the fat for years, nobody else is ever taking them off our hands

Oh agreed absolutely, Top is absolutely culpable - none of them quite appreciated Pearson did half of Rudkin's job anyway, then Shakespeare and Walsh stuck around for a whole anyway. Our run under Macia was pretty strong too. Where Rudkin can get the blame is he has near absolute authority, he has more autonomy than any DoF in world football, the CEO with an actual real background was edged out in favour of Old Jon. He could have appointed more or less anybody he liked to help run things but anybody remotely challenging has left soon after. Instead of offloading academy responsibilities, strategy, Leuven (not that he does anything there), negotiation, managerial recruitment and so on - he's just taken progressively more on to the point he has a hand in KP's horse racing stable?! Even if he was competent, he'd be spread incredibly thin. He's not capable and has his fingers in a dangerous amount of pies, it could hardly be worse. The skeleton apparatus processes AND the toxic combo of no structure with overbearing control means anybody promising left like McGuinness, Macia, Sormaz et al left sharpish. Like you say though, it;s on Top for allowing this. You can be a hands off owner if you employ the right people (he's witnessed what works with various aspects of the good people we've had a the club over the past 10 years) but he can't because his tapeworm won't have it.

Should absolutely be all over that. Sadly we've spent the money on Nick De Marco hoping he'll get us off the hook again, after trying to capture lightning in a bottle again.

Italian transfers are a circus as you'll know. They've spent a lot of money on dross over the years, a cheap-ish, young-ish CB that's played in the PL and for a few clubs around Italy - it's not that outlandish.

Add wages and the opportunity costs in (which will be true of other clubs too but not to the same extent) and plausibly the cost of Rudkin in lieu of an average DoF over the past 10 years might actually mount up to nearly a £1 billion - a ****ing aberration. Missing out on at least 1 CL campaign is worth £50m? Overpaying by 10-20% on fees is probably £150m Overpaying on wages by 20-25% perhaps £300m? Players leaving on a free (sometimes it is unavoidable so revised down from 254m) £200m? Not selling players at their peak value (this cannibalises some of the other numbers tbf) £250m? Not integrating academy players, sorting out loans early enough, various academy failures e.g Bassey £50m Opportunity costs (the most nebulous) eg signing Oliver Skipps vs equivalents, say Enzo Le Fees £250m? Managerial compensation £50m? It's well over £1bn. It's all fag packet stuff and more of a thought experiment but it is plausible a bog standard DoF would have prevented most of this. Other DoFs make mistakes, Rudkin hasn't failed 100% of the time but the track record is just so bad. Whelan stepping in for the Maguire sale was so revealing.

Nelson is but besides that I agree. Okoli is one of the few long term options too. Faes and Vestergaard's deals are up next summer (thank f uck). However if we get an offer we can break even on we should absolutely take it.

Fatawu worked out but imagine if he was a dud and had to pay £17m or whatever it was . Great bit of traditional scouting given the lack of data. Every deal we negotiate costs us probably 10-20% more than it should. Then probably more like 25% in wages. No other club in the world would have paid even 80% of the Skipp fee. Then the wages are crippling so we can’t offload them, we pay some of the wages whilst on loan and then leave for a free. I’m not numerate enough to do it but you could essentially work out what Rudkin has cost the club in relation to an average DoF in fees, wages, opportunity cost, free transfers, lack of CL qualification. Not far off half a billion, genuinely. It’s all sort of abstract I suppose but it’s insane about 50% of our fans are just fine with this

It did but they paid for potential, the potential to score double digits. Southampton managed to get as much for “Nunes” as we did for Maddison!

By market value I didn’t mean trasnfermarkt’s - they’re always ostensibly wrong. By MV I mean similar profile posters moving for similar prices. Look what Dibling went for vs Barnes - who’d just scored 13 PL goals as we went down

Sold Barnes for £38m, Newcastle bought Livramento as a second choice fullback for up to £40m. Maddison went for £40m. Castagne about £5m less than we paid for him. KDH for £30m and Golding coming back the other way for £5m. Fofana probably about market value at the time. Chilwell at £45m probably fair, should have extracted bit more maybe? We've rode the coattails of Man United stupidly buying Maguire on the back of the world cup for a very long time.

Admirable trying to replicate Southampton... if it was 2014. 12 years later they're the only club nearly as poorly ran as us.

I don't know the area particularly well but a spur off the existing MML would avoid that. If the northward electrification work ever gets going it'd be sensible to tie it in (two monumental assumptions there). Non-London southbound connectivity from Leicester is absolutely abysmal, going via or Birmingham or London is so bloody daft.

Not playing in this team and under this manager

Spot on. Our fans expect unreasonably expect so much from our players. Fatawu gets so much grief because he does the odd stupid thing. He’s a frustrating player but that’s mercurial wingers for you. Yesterday was a case in point, double up on, starved of the ball and yet he’s capable of being the most decisive player in the division. Morons on here will he giddy at £35m saying he’s a good player and we’ll take it all day long. We’ll spend £7m on Rhian Brewster to replace him and the rest will be frittered on wages