Ok, I take your view on how fantastic it is at the club but I don't agree with it. I don't use our previous owners as a barometer because quite frankly our current owners have had 17 years at the helm which is virtually a generation and they are working in an era that is unprecedented in terms of cash. Whilst I can congratulate them on a job well done in many aspects and don't doubt they are trying to do a good job, I can also look at the wider picture and not just regurgitate the good stuff. There have been failings as well and its equally correct to point that out. And this window is a failing imo. People can use the smokescreen of a 10 yr viewpoint on whether a transfer was a success, that's nonsense too. Quite often, certainly in our history, we will have been through 2-3 managers in that time so this longer term look to describe something as a success is not compatible with the game today when looking at a transfer. On that basis, do we wait another 8 years before declaring whether Janssen is a success?
The owners have done a great job to get us to this point but over the last 5-6 years they have needed to stick their neck out a little which wouldn't have sent us full Leeds if it didn't work but they haven't done so because they won't invest anything outside of the what the club makes and that will not cut it anymore. Anything they invest over and above they are gonna recoup in spades not just when they sell but if we perform to our very best and win the league as example. What we needed was 2-3 signings of sufficient quality, it wasn't looking for a Emirates Marketing Project-esque spend up but the fact is that the squad is not good enough depth wise to cover for when 2-3 players in the 11 have an off day.
As for the three players you suggested, I wouldn't have described that as a good window for the reasons you have said, we are buying potential which is wonderful and De Ligt and Sessegnon especially, should be very good players in 2-3 years time but that isn't what we need. We have been shortcutting with potential and wasting money on the likes of N'koudou and N'jie so I would have looked on the window as a good one if we had bought a mix of experience and potential or just experience. So flipping it slightly, if we had sold Rose, Alderweireld and Dembele but bought in Martial, Kovacic/Rabiot and De Ligt for example then now I'm saying that's a good window aside from losing Toby because its got youth but experience certainly in the first two and undoubted quality in all three and actually, with the transfers out taken into account, would that have been an extravagant net spend? Maybe a net spend of about £65/£70m for a team who have finished in the top 3 the last 3 years? Is that really a lot to ask? Would that even be really pushing the boat out? The club have made more money this last couple of years than ever before from gate receipts, merit awards and TV money. I get the Alderweireld/Rose deals would likely have triggered movement so them not happening will have had an effect on business but hold up any other business?
I hear everything you say about the ins being linked to the outs but that's poor planning too. The club is overloaded with players that need to be moved on but haven't been. Who is in charge of the transfers out? The chairman. He can't be praised when its good but get no criticism when its bad and the planning has been bad. The world cup, the early window finish etc...….they didn't come out of nowhere, we knew they were happening. Its like when people moan about Christmas coming up, it happens the same time every year, its not like it popped up out of the blue and you were unprepared. We should have been looking at ways of getting rid well before the seasons end if it was going to prevent us buying. I am sure we will buy players once those go but we shouldn't just be replacing, we should be enhancing the quality level in the squad, not selling quality and trying to replace that directly because they won't stay, we should be adding to them.
I really don't see how we get anywhere if the name of the game is to not waste money so we can replace a world class talent with a potential world class talent...…..just buy the potential to play with the world class. And on the wasting money, I agree, don't buy another N'jie just for the sake of it because £10m is a lot of money to our club but to say to me that we couldn't afford one of the 4 players, as an example, that I mentioned? I would like to know why given how much money is flying around to be honest and to that end, I don't have any issue with that question being asked by the trust or anyone else but no one likes hard questions because they ruffle feathers.
I don't know and you don't know if that was asked slightly prior to the window closing......absolutely no way of knowing tbh but Ive questioned the transfer window despite all these 'positives' that made it a 'good window' and I don't see how its window that isn't questionable quite frankly and to me, it isn't a good window overall and the most telling part about it is that the chairman probably knows it isn't a good window because he decided against his usual page on the website at the windows end.
Anyway, your thoughts are backed up by your rational thinking and your perception of the situation and my thoughts are backed up by my perceptions. You think it was a good window and I don't...…...You don't like the trust asking questions of the board or the manner they did it etc and I don't mind that they did it at all......its really that simple.
