honeybradger

Our youth defenders dont look particularly good though. With Alves, Nelson and Thomas our academy side might have a chance against our first team.

If rumours are to be believed we were looking at buying another goalkeeper in January as well.

We could break the majority of our negative top flight records this season. It cant be that bad as we were in league one once though!

We did shell out on his replacement though, we spent 10mil on Okoli. We already had Faes, Coady and Ben Nelson as options, it's not like we are shy of Vestergaard level centre backs.

No goals or wins at home in 6 games. Means we're due one then

who would you play instead? Winks and Skipp have been poor as well this season.

The club needs to do an enquiry this summer, not like the one we did in 2023 which was run by Rudkin, an actual external enquiry to determine who was involed in signing Kristiansen, Skipp, Coady etc. and sack the lot of them. We had an underperforming academy left back who was struggling due to being thrown in the deep end too early and we somehow spent £15 million and bought someone worse.

He offers less than than current Vardy, Daka or even Edouard. There's wanting something new and then there's pissing your pants every time Daka started over him last season despite Cannon not showing enough to warrant starting. (not directed at you personally, just the general reaction every time Daka started last year)

He was an england youth team regular and had already debuted for chelsea before he joined us. Sadly you have to be born world class to get first team minutes at 18 years old for us.

Only happy clappers supported the Betrand signing. Soumare to be fair looked far better on paper before he came than he actually is as a player, not many people saw him turning out like he did. I would say there was a section of fans who were calling for Dewsbury Hall to be a part of the team that summer who ended up getting a chance due to Soumare's struggles. So the transfer was avoidable if Rodgers looked at the players we had on loan and trusted in Dewsbury Hall.

Not in the squad tbf.

It's still a departure from working as manager. Other ex managers working in the role are Fabio Capello and Rafa Benitez, who wont be in a job any time soon.

Cooper seems to have left management temporarily or even perhaps permanently after us. It will be interesting to see where the careers of the two managers selected to keep us up end up.

You remember that period differently from myself. The way i remember it we were in lower midtable/borderline relegation form for over half of his first season and the third season was the beginning of a collapse that led to our relegation. There was very little that was sustainable about that side, we would look invincible for 10 games and hopeless for the next 15, it was about highly talented individuals turning up on the day to win us games rather than a team fighting for points like the title winning side. The only reason we were able to attract talent like Maddison, Tielemans, Ricardo etc is because of the title win but that side was not well assembled and was never equal or better than the sum of its parts for a whole season.

The club being run terribly is not a good reason for further bad decisions to continue. Giving 25k to a 15 yr old who hasnt played a game for us would make our already terrible wage structure even worse.

I think the ultimate screw up is the board room led transition from our dynamic, hardworking, quick transition football style to ponderous possession football. As stated in the thread we used to focus on scouting players who were quick on transition, had high stamina, high ball recovery who could keep a high level up to the end of the 90 minutes, which is when we were most dominant in our title winning side. Now we have a front 3 with a combined age of 100, including Ayew who gets gassed after 40 minutes and sideways pass specialists in midfield in Winks and Soumare who barely cover any ground. I keep hearing how possession football is the modern way and 'boot it and run' is outdated, on the contrary the way the club targeted a specific style that could perform at a high level on a low budget was the most forward thinking the club has ever and will ever be. We will likely never win the league again but that shouldnt stop us from looking back at what worked and try to emulate that.

Similar to how Klopp can still take credit for the sucess of the current liverpool team due to the foundations he laid, Rodgers also still has the failures of the current team on his hands. Many of them were brought in during his time with us and whilst some on here like to eulogise about Rodger's 2 top 5 finishes, the weak mentality of the current squad started taking root during those two late season collapses.

He's not even had particularly good numbers in the championship either apart from one season 7 years ago.

What i meant to say is that we *shouldnt* make any more expensive signings until the current muck is cleared out. If amortised fees and FFP mean that we cant make short term losses on players who we desperately need rid off, maybe when we have a bit of leg room we should invest that captial into selling our high wage flops on short term losses to clear out the deadwood.

I've reacted with a laughing emote but in reality im crying inside because im almost certain that the club would reject reasonable or even generous bids for Justin and Faes if they came in this summer.

Im starting to think we cant make any more expensive signings until we have cleared out the current muck. Use our income to sell our players at manageable losses then we dont have to worry about the high wages or amortised fees.

Send a counter offer for a permanent transfer at £3mil. Genuinely he has done well to get to where he has done in his career considering his struggles on loan before his breakout but he has only looked good in a dominant championshop winning team. We would be laughing at any 7 figure fee really if we were a decently run club.

Not so slowly

No point looking at the past in my opinion. As long as we're all on the same side of the fence now on what the club's problems are.

Would be happy if we signed more players like Benkovic. He was considered similar to Gvardiol when he was at Zagreb talent wise. Maybe we could have done more due diligence on his fitness and mentality, he was never the same after that big injury at Celtic