Well done LCFC on a commendable transfer window

[MPH]

49 minutes ago, studentofthegame said:

Is there a particular reason behind the strong links to Brighton? feel loaning 3 players from the same club is odd unless you have some kind of connection, I don't think the new DoF had anything to do with them did he?

 

a mutual agent is probably all it is.

[MPH]

3 hours ago, Tielemans63 said:

I'd say the OUT column makes for good reading. Too early to tell when it comes to the IN column. Some of the new arrivals (Cullen, Burns, Bristric) haven't looked great so far.

 

if we win games in this division, it’s not going to be in the same way  we did when in the prem and things were great. One of the reasons  players havnt looked great and no offense to them but we are buying 1st division standard players and we the fans need to come to terms with that. Not many players will look great that we can afford to buy.

[john ridley]

Think we've done good business  reshaping the squad but not everyone  we've brought in will be a success and could move on if not playing regularly. It just shows what can be done and shows up Rudkin  for what he is ,fvcking useless. 

[Supergray22]

5 minutes ago, john ridley said:

Think we've done good business  reshaping the squad but not everyone  we've brought in will be a success and could move on if not playing regularly. It just shows what can be done and shows up Rudkin  for what he is ,fvcking useless. 

I agree with you especially the last part. It’s a bit early to tell yet. How many times have we celebrated or sobbed at the end of the transfer window only to reverse our opinions a few months later. Hope that this lot will have more hits than misses. Some will have been signed to be starters and some to fill the squad but let’s hope we get some pleasant surprises!

[iancognito]

2 hours ago, murphy said:

We have got rid of a lot of players but relegation to division three will tend to create a rush for the door and give you more options.

 

Incomings have been unconvincing and some have been poor.  12 (?) players in and our best players are still our kids. Still too many with no resale potential.

 

To call this a good window is premature.

This is always going to be the case. If you bring in that many they're not all going to be hits. They're not always going to be sellable.

 

All clubs are the same. Our 2016 squad had 4 names that we made profits on - Drinkwater, Kante, Mahrez, Schlupp. None of the back four or keeper generated a profit but they were solid players that performed. 

 

AT the same time I've seen enough come through the doors at this place in the last forty years that I'm not going to judge them after a handful of games. Right now, the business looks good, squad depth, decent players for this level. The swamp is massively drained and the average age of that starting X! has plummeted too.

[CleudoG]

12 minutes ago, Supergray22 said:

I agree with you especially the last part. It’s a bit early to tell yet. How many times have we celebrated or sobbed at the end of the transfer window only to reverse our opinions a few months later. Hope that this lot will have more hits than misses. Some will have been signed to be starters and some to fill the squad but let’s hope we get some pleasant surprises!

Hope the squad fillers weren’t told they’d be regular starters is my only worry. Martin needs to somehow keep them all happy whether they are main players or supporting acts. But there are lots of games and there will be injuries as we’ve already seen. Also especially with the wingers it’s more of a squad game with subs being just as important. Hope he can manage Bristric and  Kangasniemi well and support them to flourish along with our very promising academy lads. 

[MPH]

4 hours ago, Jattdogg said:

On paper, looks like a decent window for where we are and need to be.

 

I hope we do well and will find our way to promotion. Anything less will be a problem (we aren't shite enough to get relegated with this squad).

 

Wish them all the best and hope we are singing about "we are championship" by season's end.

 

I’ve said that for the last two seasons in a row…

Edited 2 September by MPH

[Jon the Hat]

The main positives are 1) getting rid of the negativity.  If Faes or Okoli are also in that camp we should pay them off.

 

2) is a massive reduction in the wage bill.  Even if a few of the older signings are not perfect, or are deadwood in the Championship in a year or two, it won't matter because they can be moved on due to sensible salaries.  Our main problem shifting players in the past has been overpaying for transfer fees and wages making it impossible to move them on.  We appear to have stopped doing this.

 

3) is while we were looking to sign players, our academy lads have done brilliantly, earning themselves a spot at the table.  Its now up to them to keep the new boys out of the starting 11.

[Trent Steel]

22 hours ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

 

On paper, it's a very good window. 

• Released or terminated all the dross
• Loaned out some of the unsellable players like Mavididi and Skipp
• Good developmental loans for some youngsters
• Decent fees for Fatawu, BEK, Monga
• Avoided losses on Choudhury and Winks
• Sold some of the youth that were unlikely to ever break through
• Incomings - a bit harder to judge since most of them need more time - but no obviously bad ones (other than maybe Cullen, given the fee paid?)
• But we've ultimately signed in the positions we needed too

 

Hopefully some loans for Okoli and Coulibaly and maybe Faes (or termination)

I agree with all your bullet points

Good window as far as I am concerned, not over the top excited about mccarthy or lundstrum but we have weeded out a lot of crap which is what we needed to do

hopefully now we will start to see changes in our performances after the win at the weekend

Im still not sure about Russell martin though

[HarryDee8]

Finally Russell has nearly 2 players in each position (minus keeper)

 

I think with 40+ games to go, we gonna need the squad rotation.   Good situation this to be in!!  

[AKCJ]

If we say that last season's team was;

 

Stolarcyzk

Ricardo Okoli Vestergaard Thomas

Winks Skipp

Fatawu James Mavididi

Ayew

 

and the team we can make with new signings/newly promoted youth players is;

 

McCarthy

Joseph O'Hora Kangasniemi McFarlane

Braybrooke Lundstram

Howell Chaplin Alves

Riis

 

Who would win? For me the new team would batter the old one purely out of energy and commitment. That's before you add Souttar and Page into the team as well.

[TheGoldenGod]

Just now, AKCJ said:

If we say that last season's team was;

 

Stolarcyzk

Ricardo Okoli Vestergaard Thomas

Winks Skipp

Fatawu James Mavididi

Ayew

 

and the team we can make with new signings/newly promoted youth players is;

 

McCarthy

Joseph O'Hora Kangasniemi McFarlane

Braybrooke Lundstram

Howell Chaplin Alves

Riis

 

Who would win? For me the new team would batter the old one purely out of energy and commitment. That's before you add Souttar and Page into the team as well.

Hard to say without seeing half of that new squad play a single minute for us yet! Having said that, any team well coached had us beat last season.

[BrilliantFox]

22 hours ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Decent fees for Fatawu, BEK, Monga

Are you smoking crack?

[Merchant_Banker]

1 minute ago, AKCJ said:

If we say that last season's team was;

 

Stolarcyzk

Ricardo Okoli Vestergaard Thomas

Winks Skipp

Fatawu James Mavididi

Ayew

 

and the team we can make with new signings/newly promoted youth players is;

 

McCarthy

Joseph O'Hora Kangasniemi McFarlane

Braybrooke Lundstram

Howell Chaplin Alves

Riis

 

Who would win? For me the new team would batter the old one purely out of energy and commitment. That's before you add Souttar and Page into the team as well.

How many of the first team would you have in the second? For me the answer is 2 definite, Stolarcyk and James, 1 probable, Fatawu.

[skinnydipper]

The quality of the players is about what you’d expect for us in League One. With our history, facilities and potential we are going to attract the best of players willing to play at that level. The biggest plus is changing the disinterested culture that permeated the playing side of the club. There is a new energy in this squad that is quite refreshing. I haven’t seen enough of other teams in the division to have any idea of where we will end up but it’s pleasing to see a side that cares, is ambitious and more positive in it’s approach than what I had expected under RM. 

[AKCJ]

3 minutes ago, HarryDee8 said:

Finally Russell has nearly 2 players in each position (minus keeper)

 

I think with 40+ games to go, we gonna need the squad rotation.   Good situation this to be in!!  

Large part of that is that I think it took him a few games to realise that those tainted from the last few seasons will let him down.

 

I suspect we'll settle on a squad that is largely

McCarthy

Joseph Souttar O'Hora Thomas

Page Braybrooke

Howell Chaplin Alves

Riis

 

With Bristric, Aluko, McFarlane, Kangasniemi, Lundstram, Doyle, Burns, Cullen, Watson and maybe a few more youth players to come in when needed.

[Merchant_Banker]

The only thing that worries me is that we have signed players who should have had offers at a higher level, so do those clubs know something we don’t or are we paying a lot more than they would? Or do they just believe the club and manager are an amazing opportunity? 😃

[FoxesWalk]

Doyle might be the best signing of the lot and has been pretty under the radar. Hes in the last year of his deal at Brighton so not out of the question he smashes it and we can keep him. 

[Finnegan]

It was OK. 

 

It's too early really to judge because the most important signings for the long term growth of the squad and the club were Bristric and Kangasniemi and they could turn out to be flops. We need them to not only be central to our season this year, we need to start making profit off these sorts of young players. 

 

The only other young players we brought in are all loans with no future here and those represent the majority of our attacking / creative players with most of them having played very little senior football. 

 

It's also a bit early to know what we're paying the likes of Riis and Lundstram monthly and whether or not they're going to feel like millstones round the neck of our wage bill for the next couple of years. Riis in particular feels a lot like a Vestergaard-esque panic buy that we're stuck with for four years and I can't imagine his wages being on the low end within the squad. 

 

Cullen is another one, an exceptionally poor signing that's likely going to be on fairly painful wages relative to our level. What's especially painful about this is that Cullen is exactly the profile of signing we shouldn't make and was very obviously signed because the head coach wanted him specifically, a head coach that will be sacked years before Cullen's contract ends. That's exactly what a Director of Football is meant to protect you against. 

 

We'll make zero profit off either of those and will likely struggle to find buyers when they turn out to be unproductive. 

 

The O'Hora deal is one I do like, pretty inexpensive, really strong personality, should be decent at this level. Should also help Kangasniemi which will increase his value and help us make profit there. 

 

The main reason people seem to be heaping praise on the club is cutting the wage bill and getting rid a lot of the dead wood. Whilst I'm happy we've made some progress there, we're also still stuck with Faes (for now) and Okoli, Souttar is still here costing a lot when he doesn't really want to be. We've been playing our worst left back as a Centre Back while we try and get ourselves settled and an injury to O'Hora or Kangasniemi makes that a prospect again. 

 

And most of that clearing out the squad happened not because the club suddenly performed miracles, it happened because of a combination of three things - those players had less time left on their contracts they'd had another wage deduction from another relegation and most importantly we're under different rules now which make it easier to move people on and makes the overall wage bill our biggest compliance problem. 

 

Feels like a lot of negativity overall and I probably sound like a right moaning twat. But I definitely think what we've achieved is about the minimum expected of the club and whilst it's sadly an improvement hitting that bar, I'm not sure it's worth a thread patting the club on the back and I definitely wouldn't use the word commendable. 

 

Edit: just as a caveat, what we have done is managed to field a squad for pennies having brought a decent chunk of transfer revenue in to stabilise our losses. If we do somehow limp to promotion, the Brighton lads turn out to be brilliant and Bristric and Kangasniemi look like excellent captures then it will of course be a brilliant window. But that's my main point, it's way too early to say. 

 

Edited 3 September by Finnegan

[Les-TA-Jon]

58 minutes ago, BrilliantFox said:

Are you smoking crack?

Fatawu, £20m

Monga £10m + add-ons and sell on clause

BEK £20m 

 

They make up 3 of the top 4 biggest sales ever in League One. 

 

On what basis were these ‘bad’? 

 

Could we have gotten more if we hadn’t been relegated? Yes, probably. 

 

Did we actually get relegated, weakening our negotiating position? Yes. 

[BrilliantFox]

1 hour ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

On what basis were these ‘bad’? 

 

None of them represent the players' actual value because Leicester City are known for under-selling their players.

 

Barnes, Maddison, the list goes on.

[coolhandfox]

17 hours ago, studentofthegame said:

Is there a particular reason behind the strong links to Brighton? feel loaning 3 players from the same club is odd unless you have some kind of connection, I don't think the new DoF had anything to do with them did he?

 

Martin is from Brighton and has a place there, good chance in his time off he watch a decent amount of there 21s 

 

Also Doyle was at Southampton prior to Brighton 

Edited 3 September by coolhandfox

[Les-TA-Jon]

1 hour ago, BrilliantFox said:

None of them represent the players' actual value because Leicester City are known for under-selling their players.

 

Barnes, Maddison, the list goes on.

Maddison had 1 year left on his deal, had already been ‘too good’ for us for 12-18 months and our relegation massively lowered our negotiating leverage. 
 

Barnes had 2 years left and ‘didn’t want to go’ but ultimately the club needed to sell to try and comply with PSR. 
 

Both transfers are the 6th and 8th biggest ever from the Championship. 

[Gamble92]

This thread is a bit like watching your house burn down and thanking the bloke who did it just because he saved your Hoover on the way out. 

[BrilliantFox]

58 minutes ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Both transfers are the 6th and 8th biggest ever from the Championship. 

For a club that was never meant to be in the Championship with players that should never play in the Championship.

Putting it that way, not exactly fees we should be happy about.

 

Southampton over the last 4 years have had worse players and finished in worst positions than us, yet have sold inferior players for much higher values.

Poor negotiation of transfer fees is a Leicester City problem. Saying otherwise, is falling into the excuse trap that Rudkin and KP have put out for naive fans.

Edited 3 September by BrilliantFox