Donwebbio

I think the first half would have been passable if we had received fees for them. Spending £70 million on Perez & Tielemans and watching them both leave for free is awful contract management and has set us up to fail.

I would go further and say Rodgers was NOT a good appointment either. It was at that point that the club placed all of their faith and power in the manager who talked them into, or agreed to have a pop at breaking into the top 4. The sustainable recruitment model was abandoned and we began overpaying for average players and stopped moving players on for profit. The recruitment record under Rodgers is the reason we are in so much financial and footballing trouble at the moment in my opinion: James Justin - 6.7M - Ayoze Perez - 33.4M George Hirst Tielemans (already there on loan) Callum Hulme - free Dennis Praet - 19.2M Ryan Bennett (loan) Castagne - 20.9M Under (loan) Fofana - 35m - 80M Daka - 30M Soumare - 20M Bertrand - free Vestergaard - 17.6M Lookman (loan) - Smithies - free Wout Faes - 17M Victor Kristianson - 14M Tete (loan) - Harry Souttar - 17M Spend €230m 1 sold for a profit (Fofana) Yes he won the FA Cup but that was with a team built by others and he used that talent already at the club to enhance his own reputation without strengthening or even maintaining the clubs standing in the game.

Because we don't have an effective DoF and a seemingly absence of any other boardroom competence, any new manager needs to have talent and knowledge in sustainable recruitment (manager/DoF hybrid). It is the no.1 priority for clubs of our size to remain competitive and remain the right side of PSR. Buying talent with good athletic profiles, good character profiles at good ages (u25), for the best prices and financial packages with high ceilings should be the basis of 90% of our business (allow 10% margin for "experience") before getting 2 seasons of performance out of them before selling for a profit and reinvesting. Under Pearson & Puel we had that system working seamlessly (in spite of Rudkin) and formed the basis of successful, trophy-winning teams. You can pinpoint the start of the decline, if not with the death of Vichai, then the appointment of Rodgers who veered off the sustainable recruitment model and somehow talked the club into thinking it no longer needed to sell their assets to compete (€230M purchases, 1 player sold for profit Fofana) Discounting his tIme at MK Don's, Martin's recruitment at Swansea was good from the 5 transfers involving fees (bought and sold values) - Flynn Downes - €1.7 - € 10.65 Michael Obefemi- 2m - 4m Andy Fisher- 0.475 - still there - Nathan Wood - 465k - 3.5m - Harry Darling - 2.5m - still there - His recruitment at Southampton is obviously dubious as the team performed terribly, but his signings there look thought out with 90% under 25 and players like Harwood-Bellis, Ronnie Edwards, Cameron Archer, Mateus Fernandes and Sugawara should all hold or increase in value and have good careers in the game. What is harder to justify with Martin is the ponderous playing style, or poundshop Pepball, which has definitely had its day. If it is Martin, we can only hope he has enough self-awareness to adapt his style a bit to get us fans on side. So even if the football and results are not in line with expectations, maybe our terrible recruitment policy will at least start to turn a corner....until the next sacking obviously!