honeybradger

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.

I would be more worried if he wasnt getting chances. It shows he's making the right runs and getting the better of the defenders which is the main worry with his age. Just needs to capitalise.

Bruno Durdov going to Club Brugge for €5mil to replace Skov Olsen. Would be a good transfer for us. But "everyone is struggling to make transfers in the January window" so we must accept incompetency.

Depends on how good you think players like Cordova Reid and Ayew are (or even Mcateer considering a better bench could help us stay up). If you think they're better in their positions than the best young player in a foreign league then I understand why you would think why it's hard to find an improvement. Personally I dont think Ayew, BCDR and McAteer are any good so I see there being plenty of options abroad for us to improve on them, both currently and in the future.

We got most of our money back on Diabate even after he flopped for us. After Vardy's first bad year for us we still could have made our money back. It's basic economics, there's always a larger market for cheaper players as more clubs can afford them. If a £15mil players doesnt perform for us only other PL sides are in a position to take them off our hands. If we spend £1mil on the biggest talent from the Swedish league or some up and coming youngster in the Eredivisie then we make our money back 95% of the time even if it doesnt work out.

It's easier to sell talents that were bought for cheap from obscure leagues on low wages than it is to sell experienced older players on high wages bought for millions of pounds. You have things the wrong way round.

The sad reality is that the loan fee that we use to bring in a player will probably exceed the transfer fee to sign someone like Bazoumana Toure on a permanent.

Adrian Blake 19 yr old English winger at FC Utrecht. Could get him for cheap and has talent.

This is the type of player we should be going for! Unknown gems.

They have done better in Europa League in recent years than we did in our stints. The fact that they probably have a similar or better level of squad to ours whilst spending at maximum £6-7mil pounds on players, majority under £1mil, shows the different classes in management. As above our transfer strategies are night and day. They bring Denis Undav in on a free from the 3rd tier of the German League, we spend £7mil on Tom Cannon, they buy Victor Boniface for £6mil, we buy Jordan Ayew for £5mil. Again look at their transfer fees and then internalise the fact that they likely beat us in a head to head game. Then seriously consider that idea before you say that we are run at an even vaguely similar level. I'm not going to go through every transfer over the past few years but what you've said is blatantly wrong. We have gotten far more transfers wrong in recent years than we have gotten right. The only PL level players we've signed permanently since the Fofana signing being El Khannous, Hermansen and Fatawu is criminal (maybe Soumare but that's a push). We signed Ryan Bennett on loan to complete our champions league push. We signed Soumare to cover both Ndidi and Tielemans despite being a completely different profile of player to either of them. We signed Wout Faes for £15mil. We signed Vestergaard for £15mil. We signed Souttar for £15mil and never played him. We signed Kristiansen for £15mil. We signed Praet for £20mil. We signed Ryan Bertrand. We renewed Danny Ward's contract and went into a PL season with him as a starter. We let Tielemans run down his contract. We had Soyuncu in the reserves running down his contract. It wasnt ambition, it was incompetence, pure pig headed incompetence that's going to be used as an example for years of how to not run a football club. They are 3rd in the Belgian League despite being 5th from bottom in expenditure in that league. Yes they will drop off at some point (relative to the heights they have reached since their new owners took over) but because they have such a clear strategy to transfers and squad building they wont drop very far. Us on the other hand could genuinely be in league one in the next few seasons and I wouldn't be surprised. All I'm asking for is to get an actual Sporting Director in place of John Rudkin. Someone who actually understands football, who knows what contracts players are worth, what transfer fees they are worth, what attributes we need in the players we are bring in etc.

There a numerous other clubs across Europe's top leagues outside of the PL that maintainm far better squads than ours whilst spending less on transfers/wages. Yes money helps but an abundance of it is also a hindrance. Where other clubs need to be precious with their spending we can throw £10mil on someone like Okoli in the summer and already be trying to shift him in January. The way you phrased it seems that you believe there are only 2 approaches: 1. Throw around money and see what sticks - the club's approach 2. Buy championship level players for cheap. There is a 3rd option where we take a measured approach to transfers and do due diligence before bringing them in. Where we still buy players in the £10mil-£25mil bracket like we spent on Okoli and Skipp but actually buy good quality players that fit the system that we want to play instead. https://analyticsfc.co.uk/blog/2024/12/09/transfer-gurus-royale-union-saint-gilloises-chris-oloughlin/ Feel free to read this article. This is the kind of club we need to be looking towards. Despite their recent success relative to their income they are still committed to spending within their means (bottom 5 in the Belgian League) and still manage to regularly unearth quality players for low transfer fees.

At the time of the FA cup we were massively underperforming off of the pitch, it just took a couple season to fully catch up to us. The relegation wasnt a sudden occurrence of the club being run poorly, it was built towards for many years by the club's mismanagement. For the owners the early indicators of the board not performing have been there for a while, high wage to turnover ratio (indication of improper planning in respect to contracts), players running down contracts (well run clubs regularly evaluate and talk to players on whether they want to leave), inability to sell players (usually means we initially overpaid for them or gave them too high of a wage), players getting frozen out by managers/not fitting the system (Vestergaard, Souttar, Soumare etc means players arent properly scouted with the club's current playstyle in mind). All indicators point towards us sitting alongside the likes of Everton and Man United in terms of how well we are run.

The win changes nothing. We are still barely avoiding FFP sanctions and are looking at a transfer ban if we get relegated. We have no clear transfer strategy, the players we sign do not suit the system that the ownership hires managers to play. New players quickly fall out of favour if they dont perform due to them not being scouted properly. Even if we manage to avoid relegation this season there needs to be major changes at board level. Success on the pitch should not result in us forgetting the incompetency of the people at the top as it will just come back to bite the club later on.

Surely they could buy enough quality with the £50mil to keep them up. Gets a toxic personality out of the dressing room as well.

Wonder how many have scored 10 goals in the league over the age of 37.

While i like the sentiment i dont think that's right. Ruud has 7 points from 10 games, Cooper had 10 points from 12 games, so Ruud has 0.7 ppg and cooper had 0.83. To be clear i still prefer RVN.

we already have been relegated with him 2 seasons ago. Doesnt take away from the fact that that he has been more successful over the last decade as a player than Spurs have as a club.

Hopefully all those ridiculous transfer rumours about us bringing in a goalkeeper to challenge Hermansen die off now. Stolarczyk clearly showed he had something special about him last season and now he is reinforcing that perception this season in the Premier League.

Great block by vardy

Our club is seemingly prioritising a new goalkeeper btw.

I like him more than most but €5mil for an academy graduate who hardly plays for us would be excellent business.

Pereira £13mil Soumare £20mil Daka £20mil Kristiansen £15mil Souttar £15mil Vestergaard £15mil Faes £15mil Coady £8mil Winks £8mil Ayew £5mil Skipp £25mil £150mil of further transfer fees that will leave on a free in the coming years -> loading Half a billion down the drain, John Rudkin strikes again.

Both are strikers that are low on confidence that have lost the faith at their parent club. Not sure what Ferguson has that makes fans think he will fare any better than Edouard. Brighton will probably charge us £15mil as well which is £5mil less than they are rumoured to be buying Tzimas for, who is younger and far better/more talented.