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Daniel Levy - Chairman

glorygloryeze said:
This last summer was their chance to at least look like that was their plan. Instead it felt a bit deja-vu and much like the transfer window of summer 2004: looks of promising players that make sense in building a squad for long-term 'sustainability' but did not look like one where the aim was to go for a title challenge etc.
Take away Solanke (who could be argued was a year too late after banking the Kane fees) who else was bought to actually play in the first team?
We knew we needed a LCB and a LB to take the strain off both MVDV and Udogie, but who did we attempt to buy to fill in that glaring vulnerability? Instead we seem to have asked Ange to make do with Spence (who wasn't wanted by a previous manager).
We seemingly tried for Neto but instead seemingly get gazumped by Chelsea despite them going to a different model to when RA was there. Again, such profitability for us didn't seem to help there. We ended up with Odebert. A lot of potential but again, was that a buy to win now?

I really don't see much change in the way we operate, in terms of pushing to challenge the likes of Arsenal, Emirates Marketing Project, Liverpool etc, rather than challenge for top 4/5 places, which i've always felt the owners were much more comfortable with as it's much more profitable.
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No team is going to be able to go out and buy the number of ready made players to jump from where we are to title challenging in one window. Look at how Arsenal and Liverpool gave Arteta and Klopp a number of windows to build a team. Arsenal did that mostly by buying young players and developing a proper team and squad. It's only once they were close that they bought the one or two players that are ready made.
 
I'm no Levy worshipper - Levy messed up with the Conte and Mourinho era (there was a fair few of us who also got bought in to this type of manager to be fair) and when Ange was appointed it was clear that there was a long term plan. Who on earth mentioned a title challenge? A few on here deciding that is where we should be? Everyone on here was claiming they was happy with a long term plan which meant there was going to be bumps in the road and we wasnt going to go from where we were to title challengers. Did Arsenal under Arteta look like challenging one and a half years into his rein? How's Man Utds title challenges of recent years been going with all those 'for now' buys? We have a clear development strategy and are very much invested in it. Whether it works out in terms of winning things remaining to be seen but why on earth anyone would be expecting us to be challenging Liverpool/City etc at this stage is ridiculous.

And out of curiosity who are all these great chairman who are much better than Levy on the footballing side? He doesnt always get it right but I don't know which chairman does, and as far as I was aware clubs of our stature were the likes of Leeds, Everton and Aston Villa. Remind me how much better they have been at achieving things on or off the pitch since Levy took us over.....
 
Daisuk said:
Levy has hired a director of football, or whatever it is called this year (as he has many times before over the years). He's gone through all kinds of managers to set us up for success, but all have failed. He has bought a lot of expensive players, and we arguably spend more than other teams on players now - all thanks to how well we're run economically. He built the greatest stadium in the world that makes brickloads for us.

What exactly is it, according to the haters, that he does wrong? Is he just someone who sits at the top and is therefore easy to blame? What chairman that you know of does a better job? And how?

I just don't get the Levy hate everytime we're bad. What exactly is he doing wrong? How could anyone do it any better? Is he just hiring the wrong people? Is that it?
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1. Flits from one model to another and also goes from one type of manager to the opposite type of manager quite regularly then not giving the new man the time and the signings they need to implement their own style. I can't believe there are some on here who actually want Levy to replace Postecoglou so that we can repeat that standard 18 month cycle that has got us nowhere.

2. Presides over a premier league club that is fine with having Steve Hitchen as head of recruitment.

3. Led a period of serious underinvestment into our youth, scouting and recruitment structures. Many championship club had more investment and better structures in place than us, for several years under his tenure.
 
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Baleforce said:
Going big isn't the answer anymore, its about systems and squads.

The best player in the PL right now is probably Haaland, but even he can't make up for Guardiola's tactical meltdowns.
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Emirates Marketing Project winning 4 premier league titles in a row suggests your statement is wrong.
 
DubSpur said:
No team is going to be able to go out and buy the number of ready made players to jump from where we are to title challenging in one window. Look at how Arsenal and Liverpool gave Arteta and Klopp a number of windows to build a team. Arsenal did that mostly by buying young players and developing a proper team and squad. It's only once they were close that they bought the one or two players that are ready made.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that is true at all....

22/23 they brought in Jesus and Zichenko from Emirates Marketing Project, as well as Trossard from Brighton and Jorginho from Chelsea.
23/24 they brought in Declan Rice, Kai Havertz and David Reya.
24/25 they brought in Merino, Sterling and Neto

Arsenal are clearly trying to find the balance of brining in young players and players already equipped to make an instant impact in the premier league.
 
Finney Is Back said:
1. Flits from one model to another and also goes from one type of manager to the opposite type of manager quite regularly then not giving the new man (and signings) they need to implement their own style. I can't believe there are some on here who actually want Levy to replace Postecoglou so that we can repeat that standard 18 month cycle that has got us nowhere.

2. Presides over a premier league club that is fine with having Steve Hitchen as head of recruitment.

3. Led a period of serious underinvestment into our youth, scouting and recruitment structures. Many championship club had more investment and better structures in place than us, for several years under his tenure.
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Yeah those are definitely valid criticisms and the type of things he has got wrong. I will say he has learnt from such mistakes in those areas. And I do think he is going to give Ange more breathing space to accomplish his targets than previous managers have had, when he sent out his end of season message just before Ange was hired I sensed a change in his tone and a real acknowledgement of how he had allowed us to veer off path with the Jose/Conte appointments and recruitment during that time.

Unless things get really bad I think he is properly invested in both Ange and the route we are taking with our recruitment - but if you disagree and think he will revert to type then fair enough, there is only one way we will find out either way....
 
DubSpur said:
No team is going to be able to go out and buy the number of ready made players to jump from where we are to title challenging in one window. Look at how Arsenal and Liverpool gave Arteta and Klopp a number of windows to build a team. Arsenal did that mostly by buying young players and developing a proper team and squad. It's only once they were close that they bought the one or two players that are ready made.
Click to expand...

We've seen it all before though. When we are very close and need that one or two special player, the club reverts to what we saw last summer anyway. When we need to broaden the squad and buy young with resale value we always opt for that no matter what.
From a business perspective, that is very profitable. And fine in or of itself. But when the time is right to take the plunge as it were, they never do. In my opinion because they are not interested in that.

We have created a brand new stadium to carry on doing what we always did instead of challenge higher as was claimed. We bought ONE first-teamer, when we needed at least 3. That's what we used to do before the stadium, so as i say i don't think the top brass are interested in really challenging. Whilst, for me, there are tactical misgivings with how Ange is setting us up to play, he wasn't backed in a way befitting of a club who actually want to use the stadium to change how we operate in terms of football ambition.
 
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harr1984 said:
I'm no Levy worshipper - Levy messed up with the Conte and Mourinho era (there was a fair few of us who also got bought in to this type of manager to be fair) and when Ange was appointed it was clear that there was a long term plan. Who on earth mentioned a title challenge? A few on here deciding that is where we should be? Everyone on here was claiming they was happy with a long term plan which meant there was going to be bumps in the road and we wasnt going to go from where we were to title challengers. Did Arsenal under Arteta look like challenging one and a half years into his rein? How's Man Utds title challenges of recent years been going with all those 'for now' buys? We have a clear development strategy and are very much invested in it. Whether it works out in terms of winning things remaining to be seen but why on earth anyone would be expecting us to be challenging Liverpool/City etc at this stage is ridiculous.

And out of curiosity who are all these great chairman who are much better than Levy on the footballing side? He doesnt always get it right but I don't know which chairman does, and as far as I was aware clubs of our stature were the likes of Leeds, Everton and Aston Villa. Remind me how much better they have been at achieving things on or off the pitch since Levy took us over.....
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Most chairmen (not all) were performing better on the football side of things, but very few were anywhere near Levy on the commercial side. The sad thing for me is how long it took Levy to realise his own weaknesses with football ops. 20 years to finally acknowledge that Trevor Birch needed to come in and be Managing Director of Football Operations, not just your normal DoF role. That was 2019 and unfortunately Birch took the top job in the EFL, soon after joining us. Perhaps he didn't get off to a great start with Levy, or perhaps the EFL job was too good to turn down. Either way we had to wait until Paratici and now Munn came along to really get Levy moving in the right direction.....upstairs.

In my mind, Munn's role has to be MDoF for us to change gears. Levy still has a massively important role to steer the entire ship though, but we need a different person running the football side.
 
Finney Is Back said:
I'm not sure that is true at all....

22/23 they brought in Jesus and Zichenko from Emirates Marketing Project, as well as Trossard from Brighton and Jorginho from Chelsea.
23/24 they brought in Declan Rice, Kai Havertz and David Reya.
24/25 they brought in Merino, Sterling and Neto

Arsenal are clearly trying to find the balance of brining in young players and players already equipped to make an instant impact in the premier league.
Click to expand...
And the 3 seasons before that? So, they only start signing ready made players when they start getting close.
 
glorygloryeze said:
This last summer was their chance to at least look like that was their plan. Instead it felt a bit deja-vu and much like the transfer window of summer 2004: looks of promising players that make sense in building a squad for long-term 'sustainability' but did not look like one where the aim was to go for a title challenge etc.
Take away Solanke (who could be argued was a year too late after banking the Kane fees) who else was bought to actually play in the first team?
We knew we needed a LCB and a LB to take the strain off both MVDV and Udogie, but who did we attempt to buy to fill in that glaring vulnerability? Instead we seem to have asked Ange to make do with Spence (who wasn't wanted by a previous manager).
We seemingly tried for Neto but instead seemingly get gazumped by Chelsea despite them going to a different model to when RA was there. Again, such profitability for us didn't seem to help there. We ended up with Odebert. A lot of potential but again, was that a buy to win now?

I really don't see much change in the way we operate, in terms of pushing to challenge the likes of Arsenal, Emirates Marketing Project, Liverpool etc, rather than challenge for top 4/5 places, which i've always felt the owners were much more comfortable with as it's much more profitable.
Click to expand...

Why was this summer 'that' summer? We're still in the building phase and the manager was on record last season saying multiple more windows were required.
 
glorygloryeze said:
We've seen it all before though. When we are very close and need that one or two special player, the club reverts to what we saw last summer anyway. When we need to broaden the squad and buy young with resale value we always opt for that no matter what.
From a business perspective, that is very profitable. And fine in or of itself. But when the time is right to take the plunge as it were, they never do. In my opinion because they are not interested in that.

We have created a brand new stadium to carry on doing what we always did instead of challenge higher as was claimed. We bought ONE first-teamer, when we needed at least 3. That's what we used to do before the stadium, so as i say i don't think the top brass are interested in really challenging. Whilst, for me, there are tactical misgivings with how Ange is setting us up to play, he wasn't backed in a way befitting of a club who actually want to use the stadium to change how we operate in terms of football ambition.
Click to expand...
Not interested or hadn't got the funds due to the stadium build?
 
billyiddo said:
Why was this summer 'that' summer? We're still in the building phase and the manager was on record last season saying multiple more windows were required.
Click to expand...

Was this summer any different to last summer in the end though?

Last summer you start off with basics: i.e. the players and positions that were needed regardless of who is in charge: Kane was leaving so a new number 9 was needed (deferred until this summer); we also knew we wanted rid of at least 2/3 central defenders so we got in one main one in MVDV, but rumours were that we were trying for another e.g. Tapsoba etc.

So last summer we bought (or had already bought) the basics that were needed: a left back/left wing-back in Udogie, we had Right-backs already. We bought in a Central midfield creator. Plus we'd bought Brennan Johnson as an attacker.
We made a fair few buys

Then this summer after a year of seeing how Ange worked and what was needed for him to operate to a level where we're challenging for trophies and improving our league form after finishing 5th we knew we needed a number 9 (needed that for over a year), some rotation for LCB and LB as a minimum and then if we're really wanting the system to work we needed a defensive midfielder to replace Hojbjerg.
Out of those positions we only got one.
Of course, you can't do everything in one window but If you're serious about actually elevating and not just squad padding you get two of those needed positions as a minimum.
 
DubSpur said:
Not interested or hadn't got the funds due to the stadium build?
Click to expand...

You've seen the profitability table posted on a previous page right?
At what point are we going to stop blaming 'lack of funds'?
When does this stadium turn the taps on? When do we stop hearing that we couldn't buy the likes of Neto because Chelsea were in for him? Or can we still not compete with them even though many call them freaks/basket case etc?
 
glorygloryeze said:
You've seen the profitability table posted on a previous page right?
At what point are we going to stop blaming 'lack of funds'?
When does this stadium turn the taps on? When do we stop hearing that we couldn't buy the likes of Neto because Chelsea were in for him? Or can we still not compete with them even though many call them freaks/basket case etc?
Click to expand...
It was probably more likely.....

Angeball and Neto's hamstrings did not compute
 
glorygloryeze said:
Was this summer any different to last summer in the end though?

Last summer you start off with basics: i.e. the players and positions that were needed regardless of who is in charge: Kane was leaving so a new number 9 was needed (deferred until this summer); we also knew we wanted rid of at least 2/3 central defenders so we got in one main one in MVDV, but rumours were that we were trying for another e.g. Tapsoba etc.

So last summer we bought (or had already bought) the basics that were needed: a left back/left wing-back in Udogie, we had Right-backs already. We bought in a Central midfield creator. Plus we'd bought Brennan Johnson as an attacker.
We made a fair few buys

Then this summer after a year of seeing how Ange worked and what was needed for him to operate to a level where we're challenging for trophies and improving our league form after finishing 5th we knew we needed a number 9 (needed that for over a year), some rotation for LCB and LB as a minimum and then if we're really wanting the system to work we needed a defensive midfielder to replace Hojbjerg.
Out of those positions we only got one.
Of course, you can't do everything in one window but If you're serious about actually elevating and not just squad padding you get two of those needed positions as a minimum.
Click to expand...

We don't know what Ange wanted as priorities - from what I can gather he's never played with a true DM, more so 2 no.8s in which case going in with Bent Biss Sarr and then additional depth of Bergvall & Gray isn't bad, it gives 3 players first XI experience ready and highly rated potentials thereafter. In hindsight his tactics don't appear to be likely to function well enough without a DM in this league/at this level so maybe he will reach the same conclusion and make that a priority this summer?

We weren't reportedly in for a LCB, do we know Ange wanted one to replace Davies or to take minutes away from Dragusin? Fan want vs Manager want?

LB, reportedly we were in for a player from France or Italy, can't remember so we've likely not been able to do a deal for whatever reason in that position.


Why is this seen as Levy's doing as opposed to Munn/Lange or any of the other people that operate between the manager and the Chairman?
 
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