honeybradger

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 I keep hearing how possession football is the modern way and 'boot it and run' is outdated, on the contrary the way the club targeted a specific style that could perform at a high level on a low budget was the most forward thinking the club has ever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

Can we cancel his loan? Would rather have him as our starter centre back than any of our current options.

Heads would roll at most clubs for renewing this guy's contract. The fact that we have 10 more instances of similar ineptness and Rudkin still has a job is galling.

Why is anyone complaining that the lineup is shit? We have a shit squad.

2025/2026 championship winners confirmed!

Any news on Will Alves's injury?

Sadly Cordova Reid and Ayew will probably still start over him in the championship. The club are just addicted to making the wrong decisions.

I dont understand why he thinks his best bet of winning games is starting Cordova Reid and Ayew. The wings are the areas of the pitch where you need to threaten the opposition which they dont offer

If an academy player was having the season that this guy is having we would say he's never going to make it at this level. If the best thing you have to say about a player is that he has loads of top flight appearances, he's usually not up to it.

Genuinely the club is so rotten to have young players like Evans and Monga available whilst having the starting wingers be Ayew and Cordova reid and not even give the first two any first team minutes.

Sheffield United just spent £10mil on Tom Cannon, I am not sure they are the benchmark for a well run club.

Selling Tom Cannon for a profit is some of the best business the club has done in years. Dont know why some of our fans were up in arms about it, he's not very good.

The summer of 2019 when we desperately needed a right winger and spent £30mil on Ayoze Perez and £20mil on Dennis Praet to perenially ride the bench. We had a good run at the start of the season but when Ricardo Pereira got injured we no longer had any ability to attack down our right hand side and it all fell apart. The next season we had another run of form when Castagne came in but if we bought in a proper winger we wouldnt have been so dependent on fullbacks to attack down the wing.