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urban.spaceman

Premier League 2020/21 Thread

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Fair play to Wolves, I think it is a sensible approach which seems to be having great success for them.

Just a different way to try and compete with the established clubs at the top.

From what I can see, developing new approaes to attract the top players is the only way that teams of our sizes can compete, because the top clubs have too much financial muscle to do it any other way.

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8 hours ago, Finnegan said:

 

Surely you know how this works by now pal. He's worth what Uncle Jorge says he's worth. Come on. 

 

He could be excellent and Wolves could really get their moneys worth but let's not pretend there's not something else going on here. 

He's expensive, but we've been scouting him for four years according to our Chairman and he's one of the highest rated teenagers in Europe. Mendes does us favours and gets us access to players and clubs no doubt about it, but we only take players who we actually want.

 

The money side of it is less clear, we can get players on the cheap (Moutinho £5m, Patricio £16m, Neves  £16m, Jota £13m), but no doubt we have occasionally paid over the odds for one or two. Or let Doherty go on the cheap. 

 

Jimenez cost us £30m despite spending most of his time on the bench for Benfica and Mexico, and having a very average scoring record. That one worked out ok. Neto and another lad (Bruno Jordao) cost £20m from Lazio, but that was the deal so we could get Neto who looks like he'll be a really good player. 

 

Costa and Cavaleiro were Mendes/Benfica players and cost us £20m for the pair. We just sold them for £40m.

 

It's swings and roundabouts and the cost of having Mendes in your corner. We all knew that would be the deal, but I'd say it's worked out pretty well for us. 

Edited by The Bear
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55 minutes ago, AS78UK said:

They are going to comfortably finish above us this year, and are making signings that will potentially keep them ahead in the future too now. 

How dare they have ambition. The ambition we allowed others to believe and now they're arguably going to surpass us with potentially.

 

Fair play to them.

 

As for others judging, salt anyone?

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Just now, Matt said:

How dare they have ambition. The ambition we allowed others to believe and now they're arguably going to surpass us with potentially.

 

Fair play to them.

 

As for others judging, salt anyone?

Can't disagree with this. So what if there's something else going on at Wolves with Mendes? Does anyone seriously think Wolves fans currently give a shit?

 

Considering they were a poor Championship side when the new owners took over, they're now flying high and can attract players other clubs simply cannot. 

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57 minutes ago, Matt said:

How dare they have ambition. The ambition we allowed others to believe and now they're arguably going to surpass us with potentially.

 

Fair play to them.

 

As for others judging, salt anyone?

 

Are you inferring the club that's just spent £90m on building one of the top sports training facilities in the world isn't ambitious?

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14 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

 

Are you inferring the club that's just spent £90m on building one of the top sports training facilities in the world isn't ambitious?

In terms of building a squad to progress whilst selling every year, questions must be asked yes.

 

I'm implying we could have more ambition, be more pro active in building a squad amongst other things, whilst others are arguably more ambitious and I think it's more than likely Wolves will finish above us.

 

Edited by Matt
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11 minutes ago, Matt said:

In terms of building a squad to progress whilst selling every year, questions must be asked yes.

 

I'm implying we could have more ambition, be more pro active in building a squad amongst other things, whilst others are arguably more ambitious and I think it's more than likely Wolves will finish above us.

 

 

So if we frame ambition in your terms then we are not ambitious enough.

 

But we could be more ambitious if we spent 35m quid on 18 year olds and not 90m quid on infrastructure.

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26 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

 

So if we frame ambition in your terms then we are not ambitious enough.

 

But we could be more ambitious if we spent 35m quid on 18 year olds and not 90m quid on infrastructure.

It’s a balance though don’t you think?

 

Whilst it’s all nice to have a new £90m (1 Maguire, what about the other 4 we sold commanding mega money) training facility to attract new players, will it attract new players after all I keep being told we can’t attract them because of location - ‘we’re not in London’ on that train of thought the training facilities aren’t going to change that no matter how much we spend on it, a new training facility was needed but I’m sure we could have got one that was competitive whilst not costing that much - we’re going off on a tangent here, this wasn’t even in anyone minds it was just decided that’s what the club were doing.

 

Whilst it goes without saying our 11 is great, competitive, up there, we keep selling members of that 11, you delve deeper into our squad and it must rank towards the lower end of the table, massive investments need to be made in our squad.

 

I’m not asking for £35m 18 year olds, I’m asking for steady investment over the last few seasons in our squad, a competitive squad, we saw last season how couldn’t cope, it’s only going to be worse next season did we not learn after 16/17, all I’m saying is Wolves managed to juggle Europa League and being competitive in the league - if we struggle (we may not but the prep suggest we will imo) Europa League will be used as an excuse - they managed it though.

 

Edited by Matt
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1 hour ago, Matt said:

It’s a balance though don’t you think?

 

Whilst it’s all nice to have a new £90m (1 Maguire, what about the other 4 we sold commanding mega money) training facility to attract new players, will it attract new players after all I keep being told we can’t attract them because of location - ‘we’re not in London’ on that train of thought the training facilities aren’t going to change that no matter how much we spend on it, a new training facility was needed but I’m sure we could have got one that was competitive whilst not costing that much - we’re going off on a tangent here, this wasn’t even in anyone minds it was just decided that’s what the club were doing.

 

Whilst it goes without saying our 11 is great, competitive, up there, we keep selling members of that 11, you delve deeper into our squad and it must rank towards the lower end of the table, massive investments need to be made in our squad.

 

I’m not asking for £35m 18 year olds, I’m asking for steady investment over the last few seasons in our squad, a competitive squad, we saw last season how couldn’t cope, it’s only going to be worse next season did we not learn after 16/17, all I’m saying is Wolves managed to juggle Europa League and being competitive in the league - if we struggle (we may not but the prep suggest we will imo) Europa League will be used as an excuse - they managed it though.

 

I don't know the extent to which London or our location makes a difference but if it does you have to have other facets that you can sell to new recruits i.e. a top training facility. I have wondered myself whether it needed to cost quite so much. You can make an argument about opportunity costs for any purchase, Wolves could have got someone with a bit of a record for 35m or they could have signed 1 and a half players that really add depth to their squad for that amount rather than taking a huge punt on somebody who could be Joao Felix or could be Antonio Cassano. 

 

We have had steady investment in the squad over recent seasons (net spends of £28.9m, £43.3m, £57.7m) and we still have 4 weeks of a transfer window to continue that, but you'll be disappointed if you expect it to be big this year because that's the nature of the times. But we also don't have unlimited money. We've spent a fortune on a state-of-the-art training ground. We spend 85% of turnover on wages, partly because we supposedly showed ambition previously and ended up with some duds on lots of money that we can't shift. But also because we show the ambition to reward players with bigger contracts to keep them longer. We've made our manager one of the top paid in the league by giving him a huge contract. You can debate the   wisdom behind each individual decision but what I struggle to see is how you can really infer that we're not being ambitious.

 

That Wolves did well in the Europa League is surely a sign that you don't need huge depth to do well in the Europa League. That doesn't mean we will do well because it's dependant on system, draw, luck etc but Wolves don't have much depth and still did well in the league and in Europe. But tbh I feel your comments about our depth reflect your propensity to be negativity for the sake of it rather than an accurate representation. We could undoubtedly have stronger depth and there's we have nothing like what the top teams have but I don't see many outside the top teams with much greater depth. Some have got bench players I might take over ours but holistically speaking there's not much better than our collective. 

Villa - nothing

Brighton - lots of players, not many I'd want on our bench

Burnley - nah

Palace - Nothing

Everton - about as good as ours

Fulham - nah

Leeds - not really

Newcastle - nothing

Sheffield United - they're singing Oli Burke to add depth doesn't signal that it's great, I'll give the likes of Rodwell a miss

Southampton - again not much at all, nobody really wanted Vestegaard, can't imagine many would prefer Boufal or Shane Long on our bench

West Brom - nothing really needs saying

West Ham - I'd probably take Yarmolenko

Wolves - not dissimilar to us

 

Our depth probably looks worse because of the standard of player they're replacing. It's not that teams have better depth at RB than us, it's that they're not replacing a player the standard of Ricardo who is quite integral to the way we play. But even so take 4 of any team's best players at the same time and they'll be looking quite ropey.

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16 hours ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

Gotta love Wolves being used as a Mendes commission tool. 
 

Flogs one of Wolves best players to his client Mourinho below market rates and then gets the club to spunk millions on an untested kid 

Tbf it worked last time they done this with Neves and unlike at Valencia the Mendes arrangement has worked very well for them overall.

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Just a quick note. Silva isn't a Mendes player/client. His father is his agent. Mendes probably facilitated the initial contact through his contacts at Porto and maybe helped with negotiations and gets a small cut from Wolves. Nothing near like if it was his own player though. 

 

This wasn't a Mendes arrangement. We've been following him for a while. 

Edited by The Bear
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Fernando Marcal the next one incoming through the door for us for £2m. Brazilian (so at least speaks Portugese :P) CB/LB from Lyon. 31 years old and played LCB in their CL games recently. Will be signed primarily as cover I reckon or may replace Saiss at LCB. 

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1 hour ago, The Bear said:

Fernando Marcal the next one incoming through the door for us for £2m. Brazilian (so at least speaks Portugese :P) CB/LB from Lyon. 31 years old and played LCB in their CL games recently. Will be signed primarily as cover I reckon or may replace Saiss at LCB. 

So would this mean Saiss wouldn't play as much? Asking as he's in my FPL team lol

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1 hour ago, The Bear said:

Fernando Marcal the next one incoming through the door for us for £2m. Brazilian (so at least speaks Portugese :P) CB/LB from Lyon. 31 years old and played LCB in their CL games recently. Will be signed primarily as cover I reckon or may replace Saiss at LCB. 

What’s happening to Bennett?

 

And is Vinagre still nailed on for FPL?

 

Edited by brucey
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