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Daniel Levy - Chairman

Levy has to take responsibility here.

We finished ahead of Liverpool. They invested wisely and are challenging for the league.

Had we invested in even 1-2 players, we’d be in the CL by now. And this is where the “but stadium debt” argument has a massive hole.

If we miss out on CL, it’ll likely cost us more than 1-2 good players would have cost. Therefore, Levy’s failure to invest in the squad may ultimately cost us money.

We may still make it and, stupidly maybe, I still think we will. But what a fudging risk we’ve taken.

More importantly, the next 8 days will be hell for all of us.
This is why you don't run the club.

If Levy spent £70m on 2 players and we didn't make the CL ....we could be in a heap of trouble.

2 players gaurantees nothing.

Not spending £70m gaurantees still having that £70m and perhaps that was the only choice.

Besides Players the last two windows were all to be purchased by sales. So the squad would have been the same size, whether quality would have been better is debatable, but the squad would have still have been injured, tired etc. with the same amount of players to rotate with, no extras
 
This is why you don't run the club.

If Levy spent £70m on 2 players and we didn't make the CL ....we could be in a heap of trouble.

2 players gaurantees nothing.

Not spending £70m gaurantees still having that £70m and perhaps that was the only choice.

Besides Players the last two windows were all to be purchased by sales. So the squad would have been the same size, whether quality would have been better is debatable, but the squad would have still have been injured, tired etc. with the same amount of players to rotate with, no extras

The reason I don’t run the club and Levy does is because he’s much more clever than me and he’s tougher. Still doesn’t make him right all the time.

I really don’t believe that signing two £50-£70m players would have put is in financial peril and I’m yet to hear anyone explain in factual terms why it would have. Yes we’ve a stadium to pay off but we don’t pay that off in one go and we’ve got guaranteed revenue going to come in from it.

If we’d have had good players come in, theyd have been trusted more than the likes of KWP and Skipp. They’d have given the squad a boost. They would have meant we didn’t have to rush players back from injury (Winks and Kane being two examples).
 
And you somehow know that Poch asked for signings and Levy refused?

I don't think many managers want the exact same squad for 18 months essentially. Its why nobody else has done what we did last summer.

Absolutely. Then again, our injury record has been so bad. We wouldn't have expected to be without Lamela and Wanyama for most of the season. Nor have Kane and Dele missing for large chunks of it.

Again though this highlights the need for a massive rebuild. We have bought some dross over the last few years that Levy must accept a loss on in order to get them off the wage bill.

I would 100% have expected the likes of Lamela and Wanyama and Dembele to be injured for a large portion of the season. The likes of Dier were unlucky.

And yep we really do. Going beyond players like Trippier who many want to move on but at least contributes, we have quite a few who need to be moved on this summer who contribute nothing whatsoever to the squad to be honest.
 
This is why you don't run the club.

If Levy spent £70m on 2 players and we didn't make the CL ....we could be in a heap of trouble.

2 players gaurantees nothing.

Not spending £70m gaurantees still having that £70m and perhaps that was the only choice.

Besides Players the last two windows were all to be purchased by sales. So the squad would have been the same size, whether quality would have been better is debatable, but the squad would have still have been injured, tired etc. with the same amount of players to rotate with, no extras

Why does the figure have to be 70 million to improve the squad?

Brooks went for 11 million, Maddison 20 etc etc
 
No Kane or Son for Everton, can we blame Levy for not knowing they would both make monumentally stupid decisions and end their league season early?
 
No Kane or Son for Everton, can we blame Levy for not knowing they would both make monumentally stupid decisions and end their league season early?

Nope, not in the slightest. Today was a monumental failure from the players and the players only imo. The 18 out there today were good enough to beat Bournemouth. The tactics were seemingly working well enough.

But the season ultimately does not hinge on just one game to Bournemouth and the question is why we've collapsed so much since the turn of the new year, why you can count the number of good performances since January on one hand and why (huge shock), so many of our world cup players have been injured and so many of them have had to be rushed back from injury when they maybe weren't fully ready.

That is what I want to know, rather than the microcosm of what 2 or 3 players decided to do for one match.
 
Well, at least one good thing will come out of this nightmarish end to the season - we won't hear 'There's no one out there who could improve us' ever, *ever* again.

You know what my views are on our chairman's miserly negligence of his own football team over the last eighteen months, so I won't say it.

But in terms of what we need to do, this summer is stick or twist. There isn't a hope in hell of Levy actually spending money on the team - his miserliness won't ever change, and he would see the team filled with the U-12s over spending a red cent on it.

But we can at least spend what we earn from outgoings.

However, this utterly ridiculous Championship-level approach we've adopted (waiting until the end of window and then gathering what scraps are left like penniless beggars living in penury) has to end. We have to - *have to* - go out there and buy players first, worrying about shifting the utterly useless crap we have later.

Trippier, Wanyama, Llorente, Janssen, N'Koudou, Vorm, even Dier - they're useless to us. Flip them all on if required, no arguments there.

But don't eke out every last penny for them. Don't wait to sell before you buy, and then spring into action on deadline day, sign no one and then force all your fans to say 'there's no one out there who could improve us' again.

Take initiative for once, instead of being a reactive penny-pincher. Buy players first, good players, and fudge being utterly obsessed with selling over buying. Recoup the costs later, by all means - too much to expect some proper investment.

But for GHod's sake, put some, *any* effort at all into backing your man, not just building infrastructure that will come to naught if all you have to offer punters in your sparkling new stadium is Europa League fare against FC Gazimukh Gulag.
 
Nope, not in the slightest. Today was a monumental failure from the players and the players only imo. The 18 out there today were good enough to beat Bournemouth. The tactics were seemingly working well enough.

But the season ultimately does not hinge on just one game to Bournemouth and the question is why we've collapsed so much since the turn of the new year, why you can count the number of good performances since January on one hand and why (huge shock), so many of our world cup players have been injured and so many of them have had to be rushed back from injury when they maybe weren't fully ready.

That is what I want to know, rather than the microcosm of what 2 or 3 players decided to do for one match.

Yep, we’ve made a lot of mistakes this season, it’s not a case of one or two moments, Son’s mistake today is no more damaging than the soft goals conceded in November.
 
Don’t think levy can be blamed alone for the lack of signings. I would however question the transfer policy that couldn’t identify one player that could have improved us. It’s nonsense to suggest there isn’t anyone out there who could improve us, were not Barcelona. And yes i accept that not all signings work out and they are always a risk. But I don’t get why fans have totally bought into the line the club sold us I.e. signings aren’t a guarantee for success.

One thing that is clear to me is the club are too picky when it comes to identifying players.
 
Don’t think levy can be blamed alone for the lack of signings. I would however question the transfer policy that couldn’t identify one player that could have improved us. It’s nonsense to suggest there isn’t anyone out there who could improve us, were not Barcelona. And yes i accept that not all signings work out and they are always a risk. But I don’t get why fans have totally bought into the line the club sold us I.e. signings aren’t a guarantee for success.

One thing that is clear to me is the club are too picky when it comes to identifying players.

Barcelona thought Paulinho and Kevin Prince Boateng could improve them. Yet we can’t find anyone...
 
I don't think many managers want the exact same squad for 18 months essentially. Its why nobody else has done what we did last summer.

Most managers spend for the sake of spending. They'll get sacked eventually anyway. There's no long term thinking.

This isn't Levy being tight or Poch being happy with no signings. If we'd found that one player that would improve us, who wanted to come and the numbers involved were reasonable, we'd have found a way. I'm not talking bargain bin, just look at what we paid for Sanchez for instance. It's disappointing to not at least have added some younger players with potential, but we have too many players on our books already. Bringing in more squad filler just adds to that problem.
 
Most managers spend for the sake of spending. They'll get sacked eventually anyway. There's no long term thinking.

This isn't Levy being tight or Poch being happy with no signings. If we'd found that one player that would improve us, who wanted to come and the numbers involved were reasonable, we'd have found a way. I'm not talking bargain bin, just look at what we paid for Sanchez for instance. It's disappointing to not at least have added some younger players with potential, but we have too many players on our books already. Bringing in more squad filler just adds to that problem.

It was painfully obvious we were light in midfield and Dembele, our best midfield player was crocked.

Sign a Fabinho or Torreira. Take a chance on a Tielemans or Brooks.

Don’t lowball Villa and go and get Grealish.

We did none of the above.
 
Most managers spend for the sake of spending. They'll get sacked eventually anyway. There's no long term thinking.

This isn't Levy being tight or Poch being happy with no signings. If we'd found that one player that would improve us, who wanted to come and the numbers involved were reasonable, we'd have found a way. I'm not talking bargain bin, just look at what we paid for Sanchez for instance. It's disappointing to not at least have added some younger players with potential, but we have too many players on our books already. Bringing in more squad filler just adds to that problem.

Regards having to many players , Levy should have done more to shift all the dead weight. Makes me wonder if he wants to much money for some of the crap we’ve bought .
 
Regards having to many players , Levy should have done more to shift all the dead weight. Makes me wonder if he wants to much money for some of the crap we’ve bought .

Or the players' wage demands are too high or they're being picky about which club to go to or agents are being clams or hundreds of other reasons.
 
Why is it Levy being questioned? It’s pretty clear from several different areas that Levy had made funds available for Poch and he chose not to spend them - he can be very anal about players he wants to sign....

It's Levy's fault that we didn't sign anyone and it's also Levy's fault that we've signed players in the past that haven't worked out.
 
Why is it Levy being questioned? It’s pretty clear from several different areas that Levy had made funds available for Poch and he chose not to spend them - he can be very anal about players he wants to sign....

Because Poch clearly wanted players and wasn’t given enough to buy them for whatever reason. Poch is our long term manager, I hope, so he should be trusted with the playing side of things. Poch didn’t go telling Levy how to build a stadium or run the club.
 
Or the players' wage demands are too high or they're being picky about which club to go to or agents are being clams or hundreds of other reasons.
Yep of course we will never understand fully the goings on. But still worrying that we can’t shift the brick.
 
Or the players' wage demands are too high or they're being picky about which club to go to or agents are being clams or hundreds of other reasons.

Signing a player isn't exactly an Apollo moon mission either, mate. Thousands of clubs everywhere manage it, every year, without a fuss. Yet for us, it's this Herculean task worthy of legend that devastates even the strong and annihilates lesser men.

These hundreds of reasons aren't unique to us. Every club deals with them. We're the only club happy to immediately give up at the sight of them, apparently.
 
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