Transfer Talk Topic

[xceleryx]

3 minutes ago, Dale86 said:

Pivot

We all know Friends is the inferior Seinfeld. 

[ROTG]

1 hour ago, xceleryx said:

https://www.howtogeek.com/701536/how-to-use-pivot-tables-to-analyze-excel-data/

Prawn sandwich brigade understanding of a pivot

https://www.britannica.com/art/pirouette-ballet

[Sleeping Dave]

15 hours ago, xceleryx said:

Or Guehi and Iling-Junior, both left pure their own accord.

Guehi wanted regular first team minutes upon his return from Swansea, as he's spoken about before. The club tried to convince Iling-Junior to stay but he had opted to begin his professional career at Juve. 

Excuses as usual. The real issue here is that bar possibly Barcelona, not sure, we’ve produced an awful lot of players for the big leagues in Europe. Over the three last years we’ve spent £720m. 

The equation is all fucked up here. And I don’t care if “they left by their own accord”. If we have players of that talent and they fee they have to leave us to have a career we have some serious issues mate. 

[Sleeping Dave]

7 hours ago, paulw66 said:

Well Livramento (and Lamptey) clearly felt they were stuck behind Reece James. Ironically if Tino had stayed he would have had LOTS of opportunities in 2021/22.

Christensen slightly different........played 161 games before deciding he wanted to move on. Not like he was not playing and was dumped by the club. Also a massive bottle job.

Musiala......who knows, but perhaps he wanted to move back to the country of his birth.

Mount........well, who knows, but game time / opportunity certainly wasn't the problem

There are plenty of reasons why players move on, and often we don't know the full picture.

Yea. But 25 PLAYERS just over the last few years? We are well beyond looking for individual reasons for each case, the general trend when it comes to us producing good academy players only to fuck it up is clear. We could have had a marvellous squad with largely home grown prospects. If they really believed that was the way the club wanted to operate I will get you most of them would have stayed on. 

Imagine to spice that up with a handful of true world class players. We’d be challenging every year for all the big prizes. But no, it is apparently more fun to sell them and buy worse replacements for very big money. I’ve been beating this drum for quite a while and is most often met with ridicule. If you stop sticking your head in the sand and try to look up you will see that I’m right. This needs to change asap. The club must understand that for us to be a continuous challenger we can’t have a squad where 90% are bought on big money. If we want to compete for the best players we need to focus our resources on them and not on squad players with questionable attitude from all over the world. Not only are they worse players, you ALSO lose the cultural aspect of building your club with your own. 

[thevelourfog]

2 minutes ago, Sleeping Dave said:

Yea. But 25 PLAYERS just over the last few years? We are well beyond looking for individual reasons for each case, the general trend when it comes to us producing good academy players only to fuck it up is clear. We could have had a marvellous squad with largely home grown prospects. If they really believed that was the way the club wanted to operate I will get you most of them would have stayed on. 

Imagine to spice that up with a handful of true world class players. We’d be challenging every year for all the big prizes. But no, it is apparently more fun to sell them and buy worse replacements for very big money. I’ve been beating this drum for quite a while and is most often met with ridicule. If you stop sticking your head in the sand and try to look up you will see that I’m right. This needs to change asap. The club must understand that for us to be a continuous challenger we can’t have a squad where 90% are bought on big money. If we want to compete for the best players we need to focus our resources on them and not on squad players with questionable attitude from all over the world. Not only are they worse players, you ALSO lose the cultural aspect of building your club with your own. 

The times we have been continuous challengers, or winners, the squad has been 95% bought on big money. The clubs that have continuously challenged and won in recent years, 95% of their squad have been brought in at considerable expense. There is more than one way to build a culture, a value base, at a club. This is clear because plenty have one and almost none have a team with more youth products than us.

The thing I find baffling about this logic is that, surely, the period of time we have been the furthest away from consistently challenging for and winning the biggest trophies is also the period of time we have brought through the most youth products? I don't personally think there is a causation there but it does hugely undermine the idea that more of them would have helped. 

Mistakes have evidently been made with who has been let go and who has been brought in, on many levels and to varying degrees of predictability. 

I wonder if 25 youth products moving on recent years is even that remarkable compared to other PL clubs. Might be surprised, but I doubt it. 

I don't disagree with your sentiment, btw. I'd love more home grown players to come through and make it. I just think your argument goes too far. A squad of home grown players with a smattering of big name stars is more often Wenger's last decade than it is the class of '92.

[DannyLB]

Important to keep in mind that the academy's top priority is not nurturing players into the first team but to instead create professional football players. 

Even just one academy player making it into the first team a season (like, say a Colwill this season) is a terrific achievement and statistically great. 

[ROTG]

7 minutes ago, DannyLB said:

Important to keep in mind that the academy's top priority is not nurturing players into the first team but to instead create professional football players. 

I would not have had that debate with SAF

[martin1905]

I couldn't care less about the academy anymore.

Too many of them have left after us spending years neutering them, Mount going to United is just the tip of the iceberg but at the same time, the final straw.

They are mercenaries, the lot of them and do not give a flying fuck about this club or us fans.

[Floyd25]

8 minutes ago, martin1905 said:

They are mercenaries, the lot of them and do not give a flying fuck about this club or us fans.

I don’t think Reece James or Gallagher are like that, certainly some of them are. I try not to get attached to any of them anymore because they leave so frequently. 

[Sleeping Dave]

35 minutes ago, thevelourfog said:

 

I wonder if 25 youth products moving on recent years is even that remarkable compared to other PL clubs. Might be surprised, but I doubt it. 

A squad of home grown players with a smattering of big name stars is more often Wenger's last decade than it is the class of '92.

No it’s not uncommon at all. The list is a lot longer than 25 players by the way, but not all of them have been at the right quality of course. 

But I can guarantee you that no other club in the world will have lost 25 players of that quality. That is also my main gripe, it almost seems like we are not able to detect the quality of these players and just assume that academy prospects can’t fill proper roles for us. Just look at the clubs these players are currently at. Of course they would have been good enough as squad players and the 19 I listed would have been a tremendous base for any league title chasing side. 

As for the last comment, not sure I follow completely? We have a few examples of clubs that have done what I propose over the last few decades. I’m talking big clubs now. Barcelona being the best example of course. 

[Sleeping Dave]

35 minutes ago, DannyLB said:

Important to keep in mind that the academy's top priority is not nurturing players into the first team but to instead create professional football players. 

Even just one academy player making it into the first team a season (like, say a Colwill this season) is a terrific achievement and statistically great. 

True. But when you had 25 players who could make it and only very few did it’s not so great. Then it’s the opposite - very, very bad because it’s not the quality of the players we are producing that’s an issue. It’s how the club operates. 

[thevelourfog]

8 minutes ago, Sleeping Dave said:

As for the last comment, not sure I follow completely? We have a few examples of clubs that have done what I propose over the last few decades. I’m talking big clubs now. Barcelona being the best example of course. 

And there's the rub, because I'd say Barcelona are the only example at the level we're talking at, not simply the best example. United, too, if we go back far enough but even that cohort is now 30 years ago (a terrifying thought in itself!).

My point is what you're proposing happens and works incredibly rarely. Who, beyond Barca, would you give as examples?

[Chelsea_Matt]

36 minutes ago, Floyd25 said:

I don’t think Reece James or Gallagher are like that, certainly some of them are. I try not to get attached to any of them anymore because they leave so frequently. 

I think you’re both right and it points - to my eyes - to the last few years where players of all clubs have become even less and less connected with the fans than ever before. 

[chrisb]

55 minutes ago, martin1905 said:

I couldn't care less about the academy anymore.

Too many of them have left after us spending years neutering them, Mount going to United is just the tip of the iceberg but at the same time, the final straw.

They are mercenaries, the lot of them and do not give a flying fuck about this club or us fans.

Eeek! No wonder they’re keen to leave!

[boratsbrother]

Much to late to start complaining about us losing our identity. Imho, we lost a lot of our identity as an English Club ((so too  every other EPL club over the 2 decades)) the momet Ken Bates decided to sell to Roman.

Foreign owned and backed up by money (some of it dirty) from here there and everywhere. Foreign manager and most weeks there'll be 8 or 9 foreign  players starting the game. 

It would be a detriment to the game in this country and wrong  for the  league to ban foreign owners and managers, but I would like to see a limit of 5 foreign players starting a game.

Over the years the top level foreign players have been a brilliant addition to our league, but it's those players a level or two below those top players who've become an issue for me. Those are the players which are greatly restricting the opportunities for young  English players to be given time to mature into decent players in the EPL.  A 5/5 rule would go a long way to helping that problem. Furthermore, it would mean more decent players woukd be spread out across the rest of Europe and help strengthen these increasingly weak leagues.

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by boratsbrother

[martin1905]

1 hour ago, chrisb said:

Eeek! No wonder they’re keen to leave!

Took me a while to work this out 🤣

Had to Google the spelling, never been my strong point. Clearly.

[Sleeping Dave]

3 hours ago, thevelourfog said:

And there's the rub, because I'd say Barcelona are the only example at the level we're talking at, not simply the best example. United, too, if we go back far enough but even that cohort is now 30 years ago (a terrifying thought in itself!).

My point is what you're proposing happens and works incredibly rarely. Who, beyond Barca, would you give as examples?

But it doesn’t matter if it happens rarely. We should have done it already but spurned the chance to do so. Imagine you win the lottery only to lose the ticket and brushing it aside by saying “it’s ok, it’s such a low probability to win the lottery anyways”. 

Exactly. 

[thevelourfog]

1 minute ago, Sleeping Dave said:

But it doesn’t matter if it happens rarely. We should have done it already but spurned the chance to do so. Imagine you win the lottery only to lose the ticket and brushing it aside by saying “it’s ok, it’s such a low probability to win the lottery anyways”. 

Exactly. 

So you have no other examples.

It completely matters that it happens so rarely. Why on Earth would any supporter of any club want that club to pursue a strategy that they acknowledge works once in a generation? 

The lottery analogy is the right one, even if used bizarrely. Because what you're talking about is relying on the lottery to be successful. 

[martin1905]

Badiashille apparently could be back training next week and available for the Forest game.

Much quicker than expected so really good news on the injury front for once 

[Floyd25]

2 hours ago, boratsbrother said:

Foreign owned and backed up by money (some of it dirty) from here there and everywhere. Foreign manager and most weeks there'll be 8 or 9 foreign  players starting the game. 

Although strangely enough, we fielded the first ever foreign 11 under Ken Bates ownership, which I’m sure we got slated for at the time.

[Chelsea_Matt]

7 minutes ago, Floyd25 said:

Although strangely enough, we fielded the first ever foreign 11 under Ken Bates ownership, which I’m sure we got slated for at the time.

Of course because we’re held to different standards than every other club. Right, Mr K? @Mark Kelly

[Ham]

Caicedo starting for Brighton on Sky Sports soon before the Chelsea game. 

Long night ahead. 

[Chelsea_Matt]

5 minutes ago, Ham said:

Caicedo starting for Brighton on Sky Sports soon before the Chelsea game. 

Long night ahead. 

Ahhh bless them they’ve thrown a little tantrum. Tell them to stick it, Poch!

[Ham]

18 minutes ago, Chelsea_Matt said:

Ahhh bless them they’ve thrown a little tantrum. Tell them to stick it, Poch!

I tell a lie.  He's on the bench. 

My bad 

[chara]

55 minutes ago, Chelsea_Matt said:

Of course because we’re held to different standards than every other club. Right, Mr K? @Mark Kelly

Since when ?....never noticed that before.......