Finnegan

Eh? That's what a trantrum looks like to you? I'm not particularly upset, it's just easier to chuck a cheap ad hominem in there in an attempt to undermine than put your hand up and admit it was a silly thing to say. I'd probably call owning a Premier League football club an expensive vanity project by default, to be quite honest. That said, Seagrave isn't just a statue or a piece of artwork, it's a functional, operational facility with a shit load of potential, not just for the training of the first team but for the long term development of potential future first team players. It absolutely has been horrendously under-utilised and will likely continue to be so (I've literally just said that in a post an hour ago) but actually having it is objectively a positive. If the club was actual in dire financial trouble, threatened with administration, desperately clinging on, could barely afford to pay it's staff and players but was still building shit like Seagrave then - absolutely - sure, yeah, criticise. But that's not the problem we have, is it? Yeah and, look, building structures that increase the club's commercial revenue in a sense that can be used to offset our PSR / FFP should be a priority and should have been handled with more urgency but stadium development and Seagrave weren't mutually exclusive, it wasn't one or the other. Money isn't the hold up for the stadium expansion, is it, it's been a combination of politics and the nosedive in on-field performance over the last three years. It was always going to take longer to do major work to the ground in the city than it was to build on a golf course in the middle of nowhere (which was still held up considerably.) Look, I get it, it's shit-on-Top week and the vast majority of the criticism being hurled at the ownership is perfectly justifiable. But the owners building a highly lauded and top class facility that has literally 0 impact on our PSR/FFP sheet "pissing you off the most" is a pretty ****ing weird position right now.

For the life of me I cannot get my head around why some people constantly keep moaning about Seagrave. It was and is an objectively good move. It has no impact on FFP / PSR, we can build all of the training facilities we want, we can build ten Seagraves, it's not had an impact on the current financial problems but it IS an extremely valuable asset that the club now own. You can criticise the current ownership for many, many, many, many, many things but on what planet was building world class training facilities (and they are world class training facilities) a bad thing? And absolutely, 100% miss me with that "iT mAdE tHe PlAyErS soFt" horseshit as if they can't possibly put up a fight unless they're training out of Rothley Imps U9s PortaKabin.

Ehhhh...

There was a time people on here turned their nose up at him.

Give it six months pal.

I can't really get my head around the mentality really. If I had the money to buy a football club, I'm pretty sure the first thing I'd be doing is doing my research and shopping around. Talk to other owners and former owners, look at the clubs that do well around Europe, look at how they work and what they're doing well. You're a billionaire, you can probably reach out and have a conversation with most people on the planet if you want to. I'm sure Michael Zorc or Hans-Joachim Watzke would take a free dinner if you wanted to bend their ear for a couple of hours on how they turned Dortmund from the brink of administration in to a modern power house. It's hard to poach and buy the best footballers in the world, they cost tens of millions, but it's probably a lot easier to go and poach quality staff and pay them handsomely to come rebuild your club. We had the right idea with Enzo, hire a top coach who's currently stuck in his progression because he can't be promoted internally while the manager is there. Well what young, brilliant analysts are working with Txiki Begeristain have no upward mobility in their role because he's there and are ready to step out on their own as a head of recruitment or a sporting director? We paid hundreds of millions to build world class facilities that can legitimately compete with Man City, Real Madrid et all. It would cost a fraction of that to then go and staff it with equally capable bodies but we just seem to never have done so. I just don't get it. It shouldn't be as complex as it is but we don't even appear to try.

Oh **** me, are we back with this nonsense? Yes we do. For a start, Bilal and Facundo are excellent, as is Winks, Soumaré actually has fantastic technical ability when he's on it, Mavididi is a very skillful player, even Ayew and BDCR are technically capable enough to play the football Enzo coached. And we saw a good manager could even get mileage out of Hamza and Wilf playing progressive football. The idea that you need a team full of Ronaldinhos is a load of rubbish. What you need above all else if you want to play progressive, possession based football is good coaching. It's a highly structured, system based way of playing and good coaching and good patterns of play are absolutely key. Watch Man City at their best, that isn't spontaneity, it's extremely good organisation. Cooper was absolutely abysmal and it's not really Ruud's strength either. You can say something similar about defending, too. It's about organisation and coaching just as its about the individual qualities of the players. You gave our current squad a full pre season working with Diego Simeone and you'd see significant improvement. Not suggesting they'd be the best defence in the league but capable of a few more clean sheets for sure. We don't have a perfect squad. At all. I'm not suggesting we do. But this idea that it's all hopeless and our players aren't good enough and we're doomed with them is just nonsense. But they absolutely do need solid direction, instruction and leadership and they still haven't had it since Enzo left. We replaced Enzo with a manager who wasn't good enough and then we replaced him with a manager who isn't good enough but is famous.

Bolds I think will also be trying to get their agents to get them out, if I'm honest. Italics I don't think are good enough to be key figures in a team looking to win the Championship. Would include Souttar in that if we're persisting with possession football (which, annoyingly, we probably should in the second tier.)

A move to Chelsea?

Bet he's got an absolutely fool proof release clause. No chance he plays a minute of championship football.

Poor kid deserved to sign for a proper club. Absolute class and a warrior with it. Wasted on us.

Counter point: they also hired both of those.

When you're well run and you recruit intelligently on and off the pitch. We've fallen behind Bournemouth, Fulham, Brighton and Brentford in that sense.

Yeah but he played our, probably, best eleven against Palace and they spuffed it up so we've probably got the obvious knee jerk rotation and Ayew, Reid and McAteer today so we'll create nowt and still leak goals.

I think one thing we've learned over the last eighteen months is that most of the rules were written by a committee of people who were vastly unqualified and seemed to naively hope they'd never actually need to be enforced. They're clearly not fit for even the fairly cynical purpose they were intended.

If they're offering money now and Sunderland are only wanting to loan him and buy him if they go up, it's a no brainer.

I don't mean to get him out if they relegated or anything. But when he arrived there his agent was already talking about doing a few years then trying Madrid etc. I can't see him doing ten years at one club and not wanting to travel and make his mark on Europe's other major leagues.

There'll almost certainly be some sort of release clause in that.

Beat me to it

That definitely doesn't help but it's also tactical. RVN's interpretation of 3-box-3 isn't quite as expansive as Enzo's.

Also, let's be honest, he'll be vital next year if we're in the Championship again.

They really effectively shut down the wide areas, even in the first half. He was always in traffic. Also, under Ruud we don't play with the same absolute width as we did with Enzo. Enzo wanted Mav and Abdul stretching the pitch as much as possible with KDH and Wilf under cutting in the inside channel, it gave defenders a lot to track. With RVN we're a lot more static in the wide areas and we don't utilise the same degree of overload & underlap. One of Mavididi's best moments last night was cutting in to the middle of the park to go on a run because it's the only place there was space. He has had a disappointing season and he hasn't really been quite good enough for this level but I don't think he was due quite the thrashing he's getting on here. Vards missed a few sitters, including from Mavididi chances, and the defence just absolutely leaked goals again. Not like Mavididi was the biggest issue.

**** me Nketiah is going to score isn't he. Peak Ever Obliging.