DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Oh, yeah, not arguing that at all. However, I'd put that down to Levy's sales practices, as opposed to their intrinsic value to the club (at least in the cases of the outgoing players); but, overall, when we end up selling Lamela, Eriksen and Chadli (as we undoubtedly will at some point), we'll probably close the book on the Magnificent Seven having significantly profited from the whole business in both transfer fees and performances (at least from the aforementioned three players), a fact which I never tire of reminding smug fans of other clubs about.
Oh, yeah, definitely. Like I said, I'm not saying the crowd is right all the time - it might even be that they're not even right the majority of the time, or even half the time. But @milo said that people should stop writing our players off given how many of them have turned their careers around under Poch, and my point was merely that they're right sometimes - certainly enough to at least be able to make the case for continuing that practice.
No, Mitchell's been pretty good so far, even if (if David Pleat is to be believed) his black box isn't by itself able to fully convince Levy to shell out for players without inputs from men like Pleat. Poch...eh, not so much; I'd give it a 66-33 success-failure ratio (purely arbitrary), given the existence of successes like Alli, Dier, Wanyama (at Soton) et al but also relative failures like Osvaldo at Southampton and Stambo and Fazio here. However, it probably isn't fair to judge him alone on the success of his transfers when he's usually worked under someone higher up who also had a hand in signing the players he ended up using (Cortese and Mitchell at Soton, Baldini here at first and now Mitchell again).
