honeybradger

The sad reality is that the players we have are the perfect level for competing in the championship, we'll be fine there. The problem will be when we start "buying players for the championship" we will bring in some championship midtable duffers.

At least championship football allows us to pretend that we've got a half decent squad and allows us to get away with poor transfers like Winks, Coady and Cannon. Watching the club bring in Cordova reid, Ayew, Okoli and Skipp order to try and stay up has just been brutal.

What has it stopped us from doing? It's likely we would have spent the money poorly anyway if we hadnt signed him.

Can't we just give them Coady?

Sporting director and director of football are synonymous. You are clutching at straws to try and defend this guy. A director of football is supposed to be involved in the transfer process, if that's not what he's doing then he's not a director of football. If his job is as you said: to pick the head of recruitment, pick the manager, be loosely involved in strategy and be loosely involved in financials then quite frankly he should be sacked because that's not a full time job. A director of football is supposed to be heavily involved with everything that goes on at the club, with the same daily demands that a manager has. The whole reason that role appeared is because football became too complex for a manager to do both coaching and squad building, so the 'manager' role was split into 'director of football' and 'coach'. The responsibility of the state of the squad lies entirely with the director of football at most clubs, sadly it seems that we are still 15+ years in the past and it's still the manager's job to decide what kind of player the squad needs and to contact players to convince them to sign.

They wouldn't be coming over to thank the fans, they would be coming over to apologise after a very poor performance. Personally if I were Faes, Vestergaard etc I would be embarrassed by the fact that I'm being paid PL wages whilst also letting down the fans with performances like that and would try whatever small act I could to improve that relationship but maybe that's just me.

Choudhury apparently a fan favourite already. He might be playing PL football next season whilst we're in the championship...

Winks is not half the player that Maddison is or was for us. There are also plenty of midfielders that can both hold onto the ball and win the ball back that you can get for less than £8mil. Buying a player for £8mil who is only good in possession and offers very little at this level is definitely an overpay.

Not really, £8mil should be able to get you PL quality. For comparison Leeds signed Ao Tanaka for €4mil who has the same quality as Winks on the ball whilst also not being shit defensively.

£8mil pounds for a player who cant cut it at PL level by the way. He's also considered as one of our good transfers in recent years...

Rudkin's supposed to be the person who brings in the head scout and sits above them in the recruitment process. Whilst Sporting Directors arent the ones that identify players themselves, they are responsible for identifying the profile of player for the scouting team to look for and reviewing the options put forwards, contacting the players and eventually green lighting the transfer. Saying that Rudkin doesnt pick the player is ridiculous, the Sporting Director has to be involved in the transfer strategy of the club and be the first and last voice on all transfers. If he's not we need to bring in someone who can actually undertake the role of Sporting Director properly.

It's not like he's a stellar defender in a low block either.

He's our sporting director . Have some shame, no wonder our signings are all over the place if he's not responsible for us bringing in players. It would be even more worrying if he was not responsible as it means our club is being run like the wild west with no responsibility or hiearchy. In fact on second thought you might be right, Rudkin probably is just sat at his desk twiddling his thumbs whilst the rest of the staff are scrambling around with no direction. That would explain our situation perfectly.

Rudkin actually had £12mil to sign a centreback this summer and signed Okoli . At what point is the penny going to drop for the idiots that keep defending him that this guy has no idea what he's doing. @Babylon@DJ Barry Hammond

What can you do when your defensive options are this bad. Faes, Vestergaard, Okoli all had clangers today. Not saying that Ruud is the answer either but these players are so bad.

Us being out of the relegation zone just goes to show how avoidable relegation would have been had we had relatively competent people running the club.

Ayoze Perez has turned into Vinicius Jr apparently. Beaten more players to score his goal today than he did in his 3 years at Leicester.

You would feel sorry for him if he didnt think he was too good for us whilst also being one of the worst centre backs we have ever had.

*winks has been awful this season

We might somehow stay above the relegation zone ffs. How bad are everyone else?

Dont know how Winks avoids criticism (actually i do it's because he was good for us in a lower league) but he is awful at this level.

Worst run club, not only in the PL, but potentially in the top 4 leagues in English football. The longer we have this incompetent as a DoF the further this club will keep falling.

Despite the so called 'collapse' of Brighton they already have as many points as we did in our relegation season. If anything what you have said puts it into perspective how badly run we had to be to go from back to back 5th place finishes to relegation when Brighton are falling off from lower heights and still are nowhere near relegation. We didnt just make 'some mistakes' we completely capitulated and now after one win following 7 losses the 'careful what you wish for' fans are back in full force saying how we're actually secretly a well run club.

The difference is that Brighton will have likely looked at Scandinavia, Croatia etc and decided that Cashin was their best option due to his qualities and how he fits into the team. The last centreback we signed from the championship on the other hand in Souttar (£15mil!) has played less than 20 games for us in 3 years, including when we were in the championship. One club has a clear strategy behind their squad planning, buying players with the qualities that the team needs, both unknown gems from the Eredivise (Van Hecke for €2mil) and players from the lower leagues in England. The other buys players that are almost instantly frozen out by the managers (Okoli and Skipp) because minimal thought and effort was put into determining if they were the right fit. I will eat my words if 3 years down the line Cashin has barely played for Brighton btw.

Brighton fans have been moaning all season about how Lamptey cant play in a back 4 because of his lacking defensive ability. Ajax play a back 5 so they play the right system for him. Good transfer for them, would have been a bad fit for us. Also Ajax are a more attractive club than us.