no matter how you spin it ... the squad building have been a bit of shambles. The money spent and the players bought.... yet this team is still not locked as a top 4 team. Take Palmer out and its even worse. He has been their saving grace alongwith the heavy lifting done by the likes of Caicedo and the CB pairing of Fofana / Colwill (when they were playing together).
2 years and almost a billion spent... yet the squad is full of holes in key areas. Our very expensive attackers like Mudryk, Sancho and Neto dont even have 10 goals amongst them!
There is no back up for our midfielders and one more injury there will screw us more.
There is no back up for Jackson and hence no pressure on him to be more consistent.
Close to 100m spent on CBs and our best ones are from Cobham!
The PSR issues have been self created by buying too much and paying over the odds for most of them. They deserve no sympathy there. The have wasted millions on players like Disasi, BB, Viega, Felix and KDH. These players are not trusted by their hand picked coach! Gusto looks poor with every game.
Nkunku and Noni were not even their buys.... they were Vivell buys.
If we are to be a serious club they should be held accountable. You cant run the sporting side of a club and base your deals on PSR manoeuvrings, agent favours and opportunistic signings (which you dont need).
My article literally says we've wasted about £250m under these sporting directors, including on KDH and Disasi, so I don't totally disagree with your assessment. I just think there's more nuance.
I don't see Caicedo, Enzo, Jackson, Palmer, Noni, Sancho, Neto, Santos, Lavia, Gusto, Jorgensen, Veiga (despite their openness to selling him he's been good IMO), Tosin or Guiu as poor signings. Badiashile was good for 6 months under Potter and then got injured, this year he was starting to look himself again before his injury. I wasn't a fan of signing Felix, but he has contributed, whether you like it or not. Gusto is 21 and in bad form, to write him off that quickly is absurd given how good he was last season.
I get the feeling you're not really objective, you can't' criticise them for bad results or bad signings and not give them credit where its due, otherwise its just an agenda.
I think there's a difference between talent ID and squad building - I said their squad building hasn't been good enough. Its not all agent stuff either, again, a mass generalisation with not much evidence. PSR is a reality for all clubs, not just us, many clubs did PSR-linked deals.
I have no problem with opportunistic signings, but only if its the right player.
Have to agree with this. It's nice to list the positives and negatives, but I don't think they can all be weighted equally - admittedly, not everything can be laid at their door, so let's say the ownership as a whole in this sense.
Simply put, the return has not matched the expenditure, to the point that it's having a serious impact on our financial situation in terms of sponsorship (I really wish I didn't have to care about that).
They've had some wins, as you said. Palmer is a great surprise, but Caicedo and Cucurella (lately) are performing on par with what we paid. Not exactly great scouting when we paid nearly 160m for the pair and they were standouts in their former club.
The bad signings far outway them imo - having 8 players in your list who should be sold or failed, at nearly 300m, is criminal for two reasons:
1) Most were unnecessary
2) None of them fill the gaping holes this squad has had for YEARS, even before the takeover
Many of them might come good, and we may grow into a top four team that goes on to challenge for titles again. But I expect for that to happen, most of these signings will be moved on and replaced with 3 or 4 high value moves that finally give us the spine we need.
Right now, or tl/dr, I'd say the sporting directors are burning the house down, but they've given us a few lovely lawn ornaments to stick out front.
yep. Also then look at how they have treated players like Trev, Carney, Chilwell, Connor and recently Josh. Yes, clubs do it to a player or two but that's a long list and only because you want to push them out or bully them to sign a longer contract. That's disingenuous!
And yes, owners are complicit in this shit show of recruitment too. Eghbali cant keep himself out of spotlight..
Their deals have crippled us on and off the field.
Also this credit that they get for scouting is bonkers. Look at their signings and maybe expect for Palmer and Jackson none would fall as a 'scouting' success. Though Palmer was very well known in the English footballing circles as we played for City!
Disasi, BB are from Stewart' previous club. Paying 100m for 2 midfielders is not a scouting success.
Not getting Duran / Samu is painted as a 'scouting' success now? If anything it shows how bad a squad build this is... which ignored the scout suggestions to keep Mendes happy and getting Felix.
First, I agree they way they have treated some players is wrong, absolutely, its poor man management - again, my article says this.
You still have to scout players, even if you're paying big money for them. You can't withdraw credit for good signings and then make sweeping statements blaming them for everything negative, that's not objective at all.
The deals have not "crippled" us, last time I looked we're doing better than last season and were 2nd in the league only 2 weeks ago, so that's utter fiction, with respect. We've clearly improved from last season.
We didn't go for Samu due to injury concerns, which led Porto to paying a very low price for him, and Duran due to attitude problems - which seems even more true given the rumours Villa want to sell. Nothing to do with Mendes. Those are facts, and well reported at the time. Felix is a player the owners liked, simple as that, I didn't want him.
Shocking when you put it like that. Think of the goalkeeper expense as well about £75mill on Sanchez, Jorgensen, Petrovic and Penders, and we are still need a number 1. Clusterfuck.
There primary role is to buy players and a lot more of the players they have brought have not been good.
Enzo and caicedo every team in the world would have signed. Cole palmer and lavia are Joe shields recommendations. Jackson has been good but had too much belief in him so didn’t sign any other ST’s.
We can all go into bottom-up analysis and what not and find excuses for their wide responsibilities. If you spend almost 700 mn (not counting what Boehly spent as SD), and take a squad from UCL winners(!!!) to fringe CL participation with long term potential, it is poor.
Especially regarding successes…. Buying Enzo for 105 and him being a top 10-20 midfielder in the PL instead of top 5, is a failure. For that money Newcastle got 2.5 out of their 3 midfielders that are on par with Enzo at least
You’re a very brave man @ The Score. I suspect you know where I sit with your review and I buy enlarge support your approach. However, you just put a target on your back unfortunately. As you quite rightly say there’s a much bigger picture to look at here. Firstly, the squad had to be rebuilt and needed a big refresh long before the new owners and the sporting directors were even in place. That cannot be ignored they were forced to make a series of decisions. Like you have, I don’t like some of the man management. Another factor that needs to be taken into account and respect their overall performance is the amount of money that has been raised through sales. The club was left in a precarious position and they have helped streamline the squad, remove ineffective overpaid players and drastically reduce the wage bill. Another remit that they have been given and met. As a result through cost structure of the club as a whole is far better than it was three years ago. I suspect this will be further improved in the next six months. Added to this the complete rebuild behind the scenes has been without question a success and it’s probably better now than it ever has been. Yes there have been mistakes with the purchase of sales players but we need to look at the big picture of all of their areas responsibility and not just pick on those items that headline.
£62mm on Mudryk who is facing a 2 year ban is not "jury out", it would've been a failure on how bad he's been on the pitch alone let alone that we can't now play him for two years.
Relative success on Neto, he has 1 PL goal in January...
Thanks for the article, The Score. Well expressed with facts. I sum up the SDs tenure so far more like average and to put a grade it would be 5 out 10. Reason being is that the biggest factor (money) in football we didn't use as wise as we should have. Hence the current situation and the issue we've been having. Newcastle is a prime example how in a little time the club managed to create such a good spine in their squad for not so much money spent and owners don't put fingers where they shouldn't.
Difficult one for me.. mostly positive to be fair, i see what they trying to do longterm.. but so far there are just to many silly ones..
1. The Lewis Hall situation, will probably go down as a worse loss than Mohamed Salah. He was ready when we had him, Salah was not. He was homegrown, versitile and just wanted to play. And he was good when given a chance. Would not suprise me if we end up paying 70+ to get him back.
2. Not signing a 9. The last ”9” we had was Auba, that is a crazy thing to say but thats the way i see it. I dont count Broja, Jackson and Nkunku are both decent players, but they are not that profile. Guiu is not ready, and dont get me started on 18M pound on Deivid Washington.. 12M on Datro Fofana.. thats 30M, thats a lot of money, on absolute nothing.
3. Not include cover for Enzo/Caicedo. We knew Lavia would be out a lot, and we still didnt ad cover for them, not good.
4. The GK situation, reminds me of our nr 9 situation, a lot of new names, not much more.
5. The Samu-Gallagher deal. Samu was the profile we were looking for, Felix was not. Cannot believe we messed that one up.
6. Signing KDH… why? Why? Must be some weird psr related thing. Was never, ever going to get a startingplace, so why ad a fifth choice? Cold put that money on someone else and promote a dm from the academy.
Petrovic is not a failure, Nkunku is our top scorer this season, so he's not a failure. Caicedo is the best midfielder in the Pl this season. Pedro Neto is not a failure in any regard.
I just can't agree with this assessment at all, respectfully.
I liked Petrovic but they've shipped him out and he'll be sold that's not a success. Nkunku has scored plenty of goals against Dog & Duck FC he has 2 goals in the league (this is more down to the manager IMO but he's obviously been told he's gonna be sold and not to use him) Caicedo has been good but he cost £115m has he lived up to that? Neto has 1 goal in the league he cost £54m and he's so painfully average and living up to his 11 career goals before he joined us. You can continue to think everything's all rosy but it's not. If the manager doesn't win the Conference League and get us top 4 this year SERIOUS SERIOUS questions of this ownership let alone him.
I for one appreciate the fact that The Score has given a rounded assessment of the SD’s role and what they been involved in club structure wise.
For most fans though the main thing that matters is the 1st team and results. Therefore with regards to the 1st team people’s opinions are subjective and far too often I’m afraid set with super glue for example it took a lot of fans last year almost to the end of the season before grudgingly admitting Poche really hadn’t done too bad getting the team to 6th.
So let’s assume I agree with The Score’s player assessment for a now.
Where the SD’s have thrown money away regardless of what the owners game plans might be is knowing that we need for example a Number 1 best of class Goalkeeper they went and blew 10s of million on youth goalkeepers 5 or 6 at least which amounted to some more 10s of millions added to the bill.
This wasn’t the only area where this has happened either.
Finally let’s all just remember if you put 100 Chelsea fans in a locked room and asked them which forward we should bring in to provide competition upfront we would get 110 different names, whilst I know that an exaggeration I personally would like to thank the Score for sharing this article which provided a more balanced view of the SD’s role.
For the record I still think the SD’s are pants and wouldn’t let them anywhere near my kiddies savings jar let alone let them spend money on transfers with the club cheque book!
no matter how you spin it ... the squad building have been a bit of shambles. The money spent and the players bought.... yet this team is still not locked as a top 4 team. Take Palmer out and its even worse. He has been their saving grace alongwith the heavy lifting done by the likes of Caicedo and the CB pairing of Fofana / Colwill (when they were playing together).
2 years and almost a billion spent... yet the squad is full of holes in key areas. Our very expensive attackers like Mudryk, Sancho and Neto dont even have 10 goals amongst them!
There is no back up for our midfielders and one more injury there will screw us more.
There is no back up for Jackson and hence no pressure on him to be more consistent.
Close to 100m spent on CBs and our best ones are from Cobham!
The PSR issues have been self created by buying too much and paying over the odds for most of them. They deserve no sympathy there. The have wasted millions on players like Disasi, BB, Viega, Felix and KDH. These players are not trusted by their hand picked coach! Gusto looks poor with every game.
Nkunku and Noni were not even their buys.... they were Vivell buys.
If we are to be a serious club they should be held accountable. You cant run the sporting side of a club and base your deals on PSR manoeuvrings, agent favours and opportunistic signings (which you dont need).
My article literally says we've wasted about £250m under these sporting directors, including on KDH and Disasi, so I don't totally disagree with your assessment. I just think there's more nuance.
I don't see Caicedo, Enzo, Jackson, Palmer, Noni, Sancho, Neto, Santos, Lavia, Gusto, Jorgensen, Veiga (despite their openness to selling him he's been good IMO), Tosin or Guiu as poor signings. Badiashile was good for 6 months under Potter and then got injured, this year he was starting to look himself again before his injury. I wasn't a fan of signing Felix, but he has contributed, whether you like it or not. Gusto is 21 and in bad form, to write him off that quickly is absurd given how good he was last season.
I get the feeling you're not really objective, you can't' criticise them for bad results or bad signings and not give them credit where its due, otherwise its just an agenda.
I think there's a difference between talent ID and squad building - I said their squad building hasn't been good enough. Its not all agent stuff either, again, a mass generalisation with not much evidence. PSR is a reality for all clubs, not just us, many clubs did PSR-linked deals.
I have no problem with opportunistic signings, but only if its the right player.
So I don't totally disagree with you.
Have to agree with this. It's nice to list the positives and negatives, but I don't think they can all be weighted equally - admittedly, not everything can be laid at their door, so let's say the ownership as a whole in this sense.
Simply put, the return has not matched the expenditure, to the point that it's having a serious impact on our financial situation in terms of sponsorship (I really wish I didn't have to care about that).
They've had some wins, as you said. Palmer is a great surprise, but Caicedo and Cucurella (lately) are performing on par with what we paid. Not exactly great scouting when we paid nearly 160m for the pair and they were standouts in their former club.
The bad signings far outway them imo - having 8 players in your list who should be sold or failed, at nearly 300m, is criminal for two reasons:
1) Most were unnecessary
2) None of them fill the gaping holes this squad has had for YEARS, even before the takeover
Many of them might come good, and we may grow into a top four team that goes on to challenge for titles again. But I expect for that to happen, most of these signings will be moved on and replaced with 3 or 4 high value moves that finally give us the spine we need.
Right now, or tl/dr, I'd say the sporting directors are burning the house down, but they've given us a few lovely lawn ornaments to stick out front.
yep. Also then look at how they have treated players like Trev, Carney, Chilwell, Connor and recently Josh. Yes, clubs do it to a player or two but that's a long list and only because you want to push them out or bully them to sign a longer contract. That's disingenuous!
And yes, owners are complicit in this shit show of recruitment too. Eghbali cant keep himself out of spotlight..
Their deals have crippled us on and off the field.
Also this credit that they get for scouting is bonkers. Look at their signings and maybe expect for Palmer and Jackson none would fall as a 'scouting' success. Though Palmer was very well known in the English footballing circles as we played for City!
Disasi, BB are from Stewart' previous club. Paying 100m for 2 midfielders is not a scouting success.
Not getting Duran / Samu is painted as a 'scouting' success now? If anything it shows how bad a squad build this is... which ignored the scout suggestions to keep Mendes happy and getting Felix.
First, I agree they way they have treated some players is wrong, absolutely, its poor man management - again, my article says this.
You still have to scout players, even if you're paying big money for them. You can't withdraw credit for good signings and then make sweeping statements blaming them for everything negative, that's not objective at all.
The deals have not "crippled" us, last time I looked we're doing better than last season and were 2nd in the league only 2 weeks ago, so that's utter fiction, with respect. We've clearly improved from last season.
We didn't go for Samu due to injury concerns, which led Porto to paying a very low price for him, and Duran due to attitude problems - which seems even more true given the rumours Villa want to sell. Nothing to do with Mendes. Those are facts, and well reported at the time. Felix is a player the owners liked, simple as that, I didn't want him.
I don’t think you can look at signings in isolation. As many have pointed out we have bought players:
- we simply didn’t need.
- on the short side. I still have little confidence in us defending set pieces, and we aren’t a threat from attacking ones either.
- a group of wingers with no history of scoring goals consistently.
- no true defensive midfielder.
- no standout centre back.
- no established quality goalkeeper despite spending a fortune, including Sanchez who is the 10th most expensive goalkeeper of all time!!!
- no competition for Jackson.
Joao Felix
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall
Omari Kellyman
There's almost £100m spent and wasted in the summer. Just think what that could have bought us instead...
Shocking when you put it like that. Think of the goalkeeper expense as well about £75mill on Sanchez, Jorgensen, Petrovic and Penders, and we are still need a number 1. Clusterfuck.
No is the simple answer
There's way more nunace than that, their job is more than transfers and not all their transfers have been bad anyway.
Their squad building I agree, has been very poor, and they've made a lot of poor signings.
They've also made some good signings as well, and good appointments. Its all nuance.
I think the end of this season there needs to be some accountability, but there probably won't be.
There primary role is to buy players and a lot more of the players they have brought have not been good.
Enzo and caicedo every team in the world would have signed. Cole palmer and lavia are Joe shields recommendations. Jackson has been good but had too much belief in him so didn’t sign any other ST’s.
They have under performed massively!
On one big point here I agree - they HAVE underperformed.
I feel like you've undershot those transfer numbers on some players drastically.
Also believe Mudryk & Badiashile, the jury is very much in, they are failures.
We can all go into bottom-up analysis and what not and find excuses for their wide responsibilities. If you spend almost 700 mn (not counting what Boehly spent as SD), and take a squad from UCL winners(!!!) to fringe CL participation with long term potential, it is poor.
Especially regarding successes…. Buying Enzo for 105 and him being a top 10-20 midfielder in the PL instead of top 5, is a failure. For that money Newcastle got 2.5 out of their 3 midfielders that are on par with Enzo at least
You’re a very brave man @ The Score. I suspect you know where I sit with your review and I buy enlarge support your approach. However, you just put a target on your back unfortunately. As you quite rightly say there’s a much bigger picture to look at here. Firstly, the squad had to be rebuilt and needed a big refresh long before the new owners and the sporting directors were even in place. That cannot be ignored they were forced to make a series of decisions. Like you have, I don’t like some of the man management. Another factor that needs to be taken into account and respect their overall performance is the amount of money that has been raised through sales. The club was left in a precarious position and they have helped streamline the squad, remove ineffective overpaid players and drastically reduce the wage bill. Another remit that they have been given and met. As a result through cost structure of the club as a whole is far better than it was three years ago. I suspect this will be further improved in the next six months. Added to this the complete rebuild behind the scenes has been without question a success and it’s probably better now than it ever has been. Yes there have been mistakes with the purchase of sales players but we need to look at the big picture of all of their areas responsibility and not just pick on those items that headline.
£62mm on Mudryk who is facing a 2 year ban is not "jury out", it would've been a failure on how bad he's been on the pitch alone let alone that we can't now play him for two years.
Relative success on Neto, he has 1 PL goal in January...
Thanks for the article, The Score. Well expressed with facts. I sum up the SDs tenure so far more like average and to put a grade it would be 5 out 10. Reason being is that the biggest factor (money) in football we didn't use as wise as we should have. Hence the current situation and the issue we've been having. Newcastle is a prime example how in a little time the club managed to create such a good spine in their squad for not so much money spent and owners don't put fingers where they shouldn't.
Fun question:
Who is the better signing - Joe Shields or Cole Palmer?
Difficult one for me.. mostly positive to be fair, i see what they trying to do longterm.. but so far there are just to many silly ones..
1. The Lewis Hall situation, will probably go down as a worse loss than Mohamed Salah. He was ready when we had him, Salah was not. He was homegrown, versitile and just wanted to play. And he was good when given a chance. Would not suprise me if we end up paying 70+ to get him back.
2. Not signing a 9. The last ”9” we had was Auba, that is a crazy thing to say but thats the way i see it. I dont count Broja, Jackson and Nkunku are both decent players, but they are not that profile. Guiu is not ready, and dont get me started on 18M pound on Deivid Washington.. 12M on Datro Fofana.. thats 30M, thats a lot of money, on absolute nothing.
3. Not include cover for Enzo/Caicedo. We knew Lavia would be out a lot, and we still didnt ad cover for them, not good.
4. The GK situation, reminds me of our nr 9 situation, a lot of new names, not much more.
5. The Samu-Gallagher deal. Samu was the profile we were looking for, Felix was not. Cannot believe we messed that one up.
6. Signing KDH… why? Why? Must be some weird psr related thing. Was never, ever going to get a startingplace, so why ad a fifth choice? Cold put that money on someone else and promote a dm from the academy.
Not gonna comment on players not here yet but think this is a lot more realistic in comparision to transfer fees/wages etc
Mykhailo Mudryk £62m - failure
Benoît Badiashile £32m - failure
Noni Madueke £30m - average
Andrey Santos £12m -
David Datro Fofana £12m - failure
Malo Gusto £26m - success
Enzo Fernández £105m - average
Moises Caicedo £115m - average
Romeo Lavia £58m - average
Christopher Nkunku £53m - failure
Cole Palmer £42m - success
Axel Disasi £38.70m - failure
Nicolas Jackson £32m - success
Lesley Ugochukwu - £23m -
Robert Sanchez - £19.80m - failure
Djordje Petrovic - £14m - failure
Pedro Neto £54m - failure
Joao Felix £45m - failure
Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall £30m - failure
Filip Jørgensen £21m - failure
Renato Veiga £14m - failure
Jadon Sancho - £20m - success
Marc Guiu £6m - average
Estevao Willian - £29m -
Kendry Paez - £18m -
Petrovic is not a failure, Nkunku is our top scorer this season, so he's not a failure. Caicedo is the best midfielder in the Pl this season. Pedro Neto is not a failure in any regard.
I just can't agree with this assessment at all, respectfully.
I liked Petrovic but they've shipped him out and he'll be sold that's not a success. Nkunku has scored plenty of goals against Dog & Duck FC he has 2 goals in the league (this is more down to the manager IMO but he's obviously been told he's gonna be sold and not to use him) Caicedo has been good but he cost £115m has he lived up to that? Neto has 1 goal in the league he cost £54m and he's so painfully average and living up to his 11 career goals before he joined us. You can continue to think everything's all rosy but it's not. If the manager doesn't win the Conference League and get us top 4 this year SERIOUS SERIOUS questions of this ownership let alone him.
Nicely put
Nearly 400m on players that we're looking to sell or the manager clearly doesn't rate LOOOOOOOL
These guys are absolute crooks
Let’s all take a deep breath and step back.
I for one appreciate the fact that The Score has given a rounded assessment of the SD’s role and what they been involved in club structure wise.
For most fans though the main thing that matters is the 1st team and results. Therefore with regards to the 1st team people’s opinions are subjective and far too often I’m afraid set with super glue for example it took a lot of fans last year almost to the end of the season before grudgingly admitting Poche really hadn’t done too bad getting the team to 6th.
So let’s assume I agree with The Score’s player assessment for a now.
Where the SD’s have thrown money away regardless of what the owners game plans might be is knowing that we need for example a Number 1 best of class Goalkeeper they went and blew 10s of million on youth goalkeepers 5 or 6 at least which amounted to some more 10s of millions added to the bill.
This wasn’t the only area where this has happened either.
Finally let’s all just remember if you put 100 Chelsea fans in a locked room and asked them which forward we should bring in to provide competition upfront we would get 110 different names, whilst I know that an exaggeration I personally would like to thank the Score for sharing this article which provided a more balanced view of the SD’s role.
For the record I still think the SD’s are pants and wouldn’t let them anywhere near my kiddies savings jar let alone let them spend money on transfers with the club cheque book!
Disagree on a lot of those ratings