The_Rorab

To be fair Cooper is dead right that we'd likely known we'd have no new signings for the first week's fixtures and that it's not the club's fault that we've made no signings for it - as he said it's a slow market all-around! I mean, it's hard for a newly promoted club to make signings the week before the season starts - look at Ipswich... wait, they've signed Kalvin Phillips on loan and Sammie Szmodics this week? Well, they're clearly the outlier to be fair, Kalvin Phillips has been awful for the last few seasons, and Szmodics is a completely unknown quantity at this level, Southampton having only gone up through the playoffs and therefore having had less time than us to prepare surely will show how hard it is... They've signed Cameron Archer and are about to loan in Lesley Ugochukwu? Well. Uh. Neither are exactly proven Prem quality players! It doesn't show anything, the market is just incredibly slow and difficult for every team to navigate, not just us! I mean, it's just incredibly difficult to get a striker in - but I mean luckily we've got Vardy, Daka, Cannon... oh. Vardy and Daka are out injured for the foreseeable future? Well, surely we've tried our best, and surely no other promoted teams have signed strikers in the same period that we knew we'd be desperate for literally any kind of reinforcement??? Right??? Well. At least there's always the academy players that we can trust in to have greater roles to play with how colossally difficult it is for ALL teams to make transfers in this slow window! If there's one thing you can say about Cooper it's that he'll definitely be good for the youth players and give them a fair shake - thank god we blooded them in pre-season so we could compensate for the gaping holes in the first team squad and not have to play players like Soumare in the league this season... So there's no way we could even think to lay any blame on the club at all, it's all just so helplessly out of our hands! What else COULD we even conceivably have done??? Right?

I'm disappointed, but I think a lot of my frustration is simply that this disrupts us at a time that I'd prefer we could focus solely on signings given how shambolic we can sometimes be in the transfer window. Plus, I was hoping Maresca would be able to put some pressure on Rudkin's role at the club in some capacity, and I presume that will end with his departure. At the end of the day I would have been very happy to see him stay, but I'm not heartbroken by him leaving either - a bit sad, especially given the camaraderie he seemed to instil in the squad but I'm more just concerned about the next appointment. This is a huge appointment given our situation and it needs to be the right man for what is clearly going to be a very tough season. I'd have preferred him to stay, but here's hoping we don't balls up the next appointment.

I feel like Moyes is an appointment that would have to see a dramatic shift from the board and Top in terms of preferred playstyle - the noises we heard with Maresca's appointment were that he plays the possession style of football that Top wants us to be playing - and that's DRASTICALLY different to the kind of football we'll play under Moyes I'd have to assume - so I have some doubts we'd go for Moyes. I think Potter is more of a match for how Top wants us to play - though having reportedly rejected Ajax I don't really think he'd be eager to come here. Of the three most voted on candidates here I think Corberan is the likeliest unless Top suddenly decides he doesn't care about playstyle.

I can't remember which player it was, but a few seasons back wasn't there someone we had loaned out mentioning that absolutely no-one at the club had kept any sort of contact or dialogue with them whilst out on loan? It does feel like there are areas we lack sometimes when it comes to structural organisation and care.

There's a lot to say and none of it good but I just wanted to pick up on something a few people here have said about the Summer transfer window that has baffled me. I've seen at least 2 or 3 posts essentially saying well it's okay we won't have much money we can always sell KDH for 30mill or what have you. In what world is that a positive??? Sure, we'd have 30mill, but we'd be severely weakening ourselves Sheffield United style. Sure maybe we'd be able to use those funds to frankenstein ourselves more options elsewhere, but it boggles my mind that anyone can think that move would be positive for us.

I cannot fathom that we didn't seem to have any sort of backup option to signing Sensi if we knew it was contingent on selling someone. It's not as if we'd have been unsure how interested other clubs might have been in our players. Casadei left, so surely we could have at least loaned someone else in to replace him. They've had weeks to plan this. It's just negligence. Pure and simple.

The oh it's not his fault we just don't know what's happening behind the scenes you couldn't possibly ever hold someone accountable when you don't know exactly everything he's done, he should be given credit for previous things at the club just screams to me as a similar logic as some of the head in the sand Rodgers defenses that went on last year. Maybe that's harsh, but for me there's echoes of it in the idea that not knowing every single element of something or previous success makes someone above reproach. Obviously different circumstances and remits, but I'm of the opinion that despite having a great manager, we are still in all likelihood an absolute clownfest behind the scenes. Nothing has changed my mind on this, so thank god we're competent on the pitch right now and that largely distracts me from thinking about it. Hopefully we don't get any key injuries or anything going forward.

I do agree with you that securing loans must be difficult with a lot of different variables and there is definitely an oversimplification of the process in the eyes of someone frustrated by it. The issue for me isn't that we aren't seemingly able to loan academy players out, it's that basically every other club IS - we are largely the odd ones out in this, whether that's through failure or a difference in strategy or anything else. I looked at the number of loans we had out in the Prem I think last year and if I remember correctly we were one of like 2 teams with fewer than 10 loans out or something like that. (Apologies for the lack for specificity but I can't be arsed to trawl through my posts to fact check, but will if needed.) Surely it can't be the often touted no one is interested in them, unless we singularly in all of the Championship and Prem teams just have bad players that no-one wants, when everyone else does not. Why would every other club get rafts of loans and absolutely no-one be interested in our players? That argument largely makes zero sense unless you think our youth are uniquely shite. Whether by mistake or design, we don't seem to loan out players at anywhere near the rate of most other clubs. Again this isn't the be all and end all, we still have a great propensity for bringing through academy players into the first team, but it is something that sticks out compared to other teams. So you're right, it isn't a cushy job and likely has a lot of moving parts, but why we aren't showing the same level of output in generating loans as other clubs are is something I wonder about.