cityfanlee23

Yep I want to be lenient with him as he has come back from a huge injury and has been playing in an awful tactical system, but the eye test this season hasn’t been as good as 23/24, time will tell if the improvement in the overall team performances will see him bounce back to his best

I know, and I've spent the last few months hammering Marti for holding him back with no support. It's a two-sided coin, he's producing goal contributions but he's also had the play focused completely around him. He's quality and has the potential to become a £40/50/60m winger one day, but right now I just don't think we would get anywhere near what the fans would want us to hold out for. Hopefully the team continue to improve over the coming months because if we can find a rhythm and properly unlock his full potential we might have a late push to properly consolidate ourselves in the top 6, and if Boro collapse, who knows where we could end up.

Completely agreed, a good Manager/DOF can give a club back more than the majority of players ever will. Very few players have given back to this club the amount that Nigel Pearson did for example, and he was a fraction of the cost of most of them. Probably a poor comparison now, but when Slot signed for Liverpool there was a huge amount of press around the fact he Liverpool were paying £10m to secure him as if that was a massive number, fast forward to today, that premier league title has paid for itself multiple times over. Whether that continues to be the case we are yet to see.

Fair comment, I would say though, if a team came in and gave us £25m for Abdul and we were still not in a position to spend a penny of it, our financial situation probably wouldn't justify having to buy out a TD and pay compensation given it probably means we are close to breaching again.

Absolutely nobody is moaning. I'm just being realistic about his current abilities this season. I've said he has a massive ceiling. I've spent this entire season on multiple threads screaming about how Marti is holding him back and how little support he's been getting, but being realistic about his poor decision-making, for example, is not "moaning". Then again, knee-jerk responses always do well on here.

True but very few clubs pay those sorts of fees above player values

Completely agree, I can't see teams paying £30m for him given just how poor he's been until the last couple of games. Don't get me wrong, his raw output actually looks quite good, he's scored some worldies and has 6 assists, but I don't think he's been that great this season, I think he had better all round play under Enzo, he's on course to get more goals/assists but imo hasn't been as good across the 90, that could easily be down to the system we have adopted for a lot of the season though which i've said before has completely nullified him at times. Hard to tell whether he's a better all round player now than he was 23/24, I'd like to argue yes he is but has been held back tactically, but statistically he's almost matching the promotion season. If his output continues but the entire team continues to improve around him, we could easily be looking at a £30m player in summer, but if we got an offer today I don't think it would be that high.

The £20m was tongue in cheek, but I doubt we would get more than £25m for him now, but the £20m tongue in cheek figure was based on me thinking the deal was 12.5m to buy him + a small profit

You're forgetting who we support... £20m would be deal of the century for LCFC

Probably not, but I'm just going on the assumption we did sell him, even if we got £25m my guess is that would free up money to reinvest. Can't pretend I have spent much time looking into the finances though. Also I think fans are slightly overrating Fatawu based on his potential atm, his output this season bar a few worldies has been poor relative to the sheer amount we attack down his side, In his defence, for much of this season he's had little support and been doubled up on most matches, but even with that his decision making is absolutely awful, his touch is often erratic and his general play is at times too selfish. He's got a huge ceiling, but he's nowhere near the £35m the club are rumoured to demand for him, up until 2 games ago a huge portion of fans said he's been bang average for much of this season outside of those worldies. Fans wanted £30m for BEK and Mads, in the end neither have come close to showing they are worth those figures yet.

What did I miss? Surely if we can pay to buy a TD out of contract, we could also reinvest a small amount of money if we make profit on abdul? If the reaction was about the £20m, it was sort of tongue in cheek but I don't think we get anywhere near what fans want for him.

You could be right but the club have announced we are in a position to pay for a technical director if they are currently at a club. So that suggests our finances are no longer in the red? I would imagine if we got £20m for him we would be able to invest atleast £5m into a replacement.

The thing is, there was a good opportunity for us as fans to feel like the club was really turning a corner this season (if we chose to see our situation optimistically) - Top gave a somewhat of an acknowledgement that the club and fans are distant and need to come closer - DOF being moved to a new role and the club adopting a system used by the likes of Brighton and Brentford - Finances somewhat under control given we are talking about paying for a Technical director - Huge earners leaving soon - 3 of our summer signings have been an improvement and 2 of the 3 fit the blueprint of player that made us successful - Multiple youth players that could end up being prem players and we are in the perfect division to build them (silver lining of relegation) - some of the best facilities in the world All we needed was for Marti to get the most out of the players we had and keep us in touch with the playoffs then pray for a good result in the final, up until now despite us being 4points from 3rd we’ve been awful, poor tactical decisions, a system that doesn’t work and seemingly refusing to change it. If we play like we did today in most games for the rest of the season and we manage to move some players on in January and bring in some more young, hungry talent, this could really be the point where the club rebuilds.

Fantastic display today and huge credit has to go to MC who has finally over the last few games changed his awful tactical system and favoured more of a block midfield. Still not back over the fence yet, but if we can string another 3-4 performances like this together I'll be back on board again. So much hangs in the balance and relies on us going up this season, financially we could be back on a stable footing if we go up/finally get rid of big earners in summer, but just as important in our rebuild is going up would allow us to sign the likes of JJ, because he's going to the prem with or without us and teams like Palace will be waiting to snap him up if we fail to get promoted. Marti needs to continue to set us up in a similar way to today.

Keep proving us wrong Skippy. Long may this form continue, right now he's playing like a player that would make his fee look reasonable, but he needs to keep this form up to justify it yet. Plenty of potential to be extracted yet.

Only caught the 2nd half today and we were under the cosh for most of that, but we looked so much more organised in defence even after conceding, a month ago we would have lost this 4-3. Can't complain at the performance or result, a step in the right direction.

I completely agree with this, but I can't for the life of me see any young players who are available for us to go in for who will actually improve us now. With Antionio, we bring in a player who is a handful, and is miles above this level (atleast pre injury) who would dramatically improve us if he's 80% at the level he was at before the injury, even a declining antonio is better than anything we have right now. I'd prefer us to go the youth route, but I can't see who right now. I'd only offer him a maximum of 50k IF we can get rid of winks + carranza, and even then that's the absolute maximum and would prefer to go on a small basic of 25k + bonuses for appearances. Yeah 50k is probably excessive, but it gives us an instant solution to a huge problem we have, most of the fanbase had no issue with paying Vardy another 70k a week in the champ aged 38/39, obviously he was a better player than MA and we have an affinity with him, but I would say given Antionios skillset 40-50k isn't a ridiculous sum in todays market, it's the going rate for above average Champ players.

IF we can get him on a 6 month deal before re-evaluating, and if it's not on stupid money like 80k a week, and IF we can get Winks off the books and send Carranza back, i'd take him on a short term emergency deal. Guy is an absolute handful and at this level he could get 10 goals from the remaining games which is a massive upgrade on what we have now. I'd compromise and offer 50k a week if the above conditions can be met.

Bump

I said after Sheff United, I'd rather we got tonked 17-0 and were embarrassed so badly that we had to pull the trigger, all the Derby result did was give him more breathing room to throw away points in future. I'm still reluctantly in that boat. If losing tonight would guarantee we bring a new manager in, and drawing/winning would give him another month, i'd rather take the loss personally. It just isn't working, and it won't work, we are going to continue putting up inconsistent performances, getting inconsistent results and floating around mid table/bottom half.

If anyone has a working link drop me a dm, thanks

Sticking with the theme of the thread, i'm going to promote a name that isn't realistic at all, but IF the points deduction is say 6 points, and we got it down to 3 on appeal, and IF teams around us continue to throw games away and we are in touch of top 6, and IF the club bring in a very competent Technical Director, and IF the finances are somewhat back on track for our current level (we are looking to potentially buy a TD so there must be some money there) Could we coax Christian Streich to come out of his career break? It's not happening, It would need to be a Bielsa to Leeds moment, but given the quality we have in individuals, the facilities.... No he's not coming, goodnight

Generally speaking that's the case, there are a few outliers but yeah, this sport is incredibly hard to get to, it costs around £5-10m to get to F1 depending on raw ability, and usually it's only on the lower cost side if you have generational talent where sponsors will bare a bigger chunk of the cost.

Overall it's been a great season as the end of regulation seasons usually are. In the end Lando did what he needed in the car he had relative to everyone else, Oscar will be a WDC in future just needed a bit more consistency late on. Hopefully the new regulations create close racing and we don't end up with another runaway team as we seem to always get these days.

Yes, and that's exactly why we should be much higher than we are. To be mid table this season is a massive underperformance.