Les-TA-Jon

We saw how bad Dawson was for a game. I don't think these 2 are ready to be chucked in.

P14 W2 D1 L11 F9 A34 GD-25 Blanks 9, Clean Sheets 0 Pretty rancid stuff EDIT: Add full context

Whether we can afford the pay off or not - surely he's not the right man for next season anyhow? There's no point in appointing a permanent manager now - they'll be tainted by this relegation before next season's promotion attempt. So it's either RVN to the end or some interim/fall guy in the meantime.

Multiple things can be true at once: Cooper was terrible RVN is terrible The squad is terrible

How many ball playing CB with PL experience were available on a free that summer? I’m not saying Vestergaard was the correct call but it’s easy to see how the club made that decision when it did

Same!

It'd be really interesting to try and benchmark this sort of stuff - failed signings and talent leaving on frees - vs other PL clubs.

The current squad and contract expirations: And a rudimentary look at the book values of players this summer - i.e the minimum we need to sell them for to break even. Quite a few there that will be hard to shift...

See above - for us to sell Winks someone has to pay £4m for him and match or better his wages. Not impossible, but probably unlikely.

Obviously based on (unreliable) internet reporting, but here's another look at the current 'book value' of most of the relevant players The book value is the transfer fee divided by the contract length, minus the number of years past on the contract. So for example, you sign a player for £20m, on a 5 year deal. They're 'worth' £4m per year. When their contract has 3 years remaining, their book value is £12m. If you sell them for less than this, they go in the accounts as a loss. So looking at the Book Value of players this summer gives us a 'rating' of how easy/difficult it is to make a profit/loss on them. Players like Justin, Ricardo, Ndidi who have all signed extensions in their time here - so harder to figure out (or do they not have a book value?).

The categories are largely back of the fag packet musings. Knowing LCFC's recent transfer dealings, you can probably put every player into the 'hard to sell' category anyhow. We struggle to sell players because we've offered them wages that (virtually) any interested party cannot match.

But Nelson was deemed not good enough/ready for the Championship or the PL, Souttar has been out of favour under 3 managers here... And obviously a 1 year deal wasn't an option - the players have a lot of leverage in those sorts of situations.

Note that I'm not the DOF. I'm not a huge fan of his. He definitely isn't a defensive midfielder. But at times he's looked one of our better midfielders this season. He's about the only one who can progress the ball from box to box. All the players with 1 year left you either have to sell, offer a new deal or accept they'll be leaving on a free. He's about the only one on that list that could get better, so a new deal could make sense.

Given we only had the money to sign Okoli in the summer, we'd be even more short of defenders had we not re-signed Vestergaard. Don't forget he was a mainstay under Maresca and was the ball playing CB for his system. The new deal was offered and signed whilst Maresca was manager too. It's not great that we're lumbered with him. But there wasn't really an alternative.

Think he's the least of out problems. Probably on a very small wage.

They have an option to sign, not an obligation

The squad is a right mess.

Alternatively, part of the problem is we set up to try and go toe to toe with most sides. Look at Friday night - we're against a mid table side and we leave ourselves so open and try and go toe to toe with Brentford, but we're not going to get many (or any!?) points this season by outplaying the opposition. We make no attempt to be hard to beat or to try and grind out results. But this is the problem with our squad. We don't have the attacking players to play basketball and win games 3-2 or whatever and we don't have the defensive players to play Cooper/Dyche ball and grind out results.

So I need to know, in advance, which people here might do it, and block them preemptively? You got a crystal ball?

Should be Red for Ugarte

The squad is a right mess

And Forest broke the rules to stay up and now look at them...

I think we're just misunderstanding each other. I agree we absolutely need wins, and that ultimately draws won't be much use to us. But draws, set in context, can be big. Yes Everton are ahead of us because of their 3 extra wins, but their ability to draw games much better means they get more points, lose fewer games and every game you're drawing increases your chance of winning it. But a draw away at Everton, after the Spurs win, after 7 losses on the bounce could have been the start of something. It's not about 'settling' for draws. It's simply about grinding out results. Like, let's say we win 3 out of the remaining 14 games. That puts us on 26 points. We'd probably also need to draw 1-2 games as well to have a chance of staying up.

Not an argument either. But this aged like milk The general point being, that be able to grind out draws here and there is why Everton keep staying up each year whilst circling the drain. Looking like they're going to do it at our expense for the 2nd time in 3 years...

We’ve tried Okoli, Coady, Faes and Vestergaard at CB. We’ve tried JJ and Ricardo (when not injured) at RB. Kristiansen at LB and Thomas to cover. Who exactly is in the squad that we’re not using!?