it’s more of a market thing imo i’m not sure there are that many non skint clubs with a need
Florian and the (Slot) Machine
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If there's a Dutch manager at a rich enough club we could sell him easily
He's imposing himself more, and that's an excellent place to start
I was always confident he'd be good for us, just a shame it took til now for him to make more of a difference
Mitigating circumstances.
I wonder about the last bit. Leaving aside Diaz's one pathological hater on here, my impression is that most of us are aware of the loss involved and the fact - because it IS a fact - that we haven't addressed it adequately yet. I'd like to see Chiesa given a run in that position personally.
This has been done to death. I think it's more that they didn't want to offer him a huge new contract (and Bayern did) and the offer from Bayern was really good for a player of his age. Pure economics rather than any dislike of Diaz as a player. Our failure (Slot's failure) was relying on Gakpo to replace him full time.
Agreed. It’s not that we sold. It’s that we never replaced those brilliant runs (oft without direct end product, but with plenty of indirect.)
We should have sold. We just didn’t fecking replace with a similar level. So many errors by this new management team. They broke up the band and thought they could recreate it. Turns out it is not that easy.
We should have sold. We just didn’t fecking replace with a similar level. So many errors by this new management team. They broke up the band and thought they could recreate it. Turns out it is not that easy.
Well, the newly minted management team, the one that is top of the world at that point, went out and bought the best player in Germany, one of the best young strikers playing in Germany, the best 9 in the Premier League for an excess of 300m. On paper it should more than compensate for an aging LW who was more effective playing as a 9. We bought two top class 9s to replace him after all!
Of course 6 months on, it hadn't worked out, they should rightly be responsible for it. But let's not pretend to know any better when we are simply typing on the keyboard.
Of course 6 months on, it hadn't worked out, they should rightly be responsible for it. But let's not pretend to know any better when we are simply typing on the keyboard.
It doesn't help that the manager is an idiot.
This is just silly. He was never more than a stand-in no.9 and none of "the best player in Germany", "one of the best young strikers playing in Germany" or "the best 9 in the Prem" that we bought was a LW. As for your final sentence, try telling the guy you see in the mirror every morning.
It's disappointing Diaz left, and we absolutely miss him. But the football guys played that one right. They approached him early enough to renew his contract, it was clear he didn't want to sign (either at all or on mutually acceptable terms) so, with regret, they sold him, got a decent fee and reinvested that into the squad.
Which was exactly what we should have done with any number of other players in the past, most notably Trent and Konate in recent history. Give them enough time to sign and sell them if they don't, while we still can. I can kind of understand Trent as, with Klopp leaving, it was harder to sell the next five years, same reason Mo and Virgil went down to the wire. Konate less so. We should have been in advanced talks with him this time last year at the latest and should have sold him in the summer if he hadn't signed by then. We'd have only lost 12 months of him (not a great loss given the season he's having) and could have pushed harder and earlier for Guehi in to replace him.
Based on my understanding of their contracts, we should be having those discussions now with Alisson, Gomez and Curtis, and should be opening discussions with Dom, Mac and Gravy in the summer with a view to being well progressed this time next year. I'm assuming we'd be looking at exits for Ramsay, Harvey, Kostas, Mo, Endo, VVD and Bajcetic, whose deals are also up in summer 2027, meaning next summer is the last opportunity to get decent fees for them / or to shift their wages off the books if they're not looking up to scratch by then.
This whole thing of keeping players past their sell-by date, no matter how good they are, has to stop.
Which was exactly what we should have done with any number of other players in the past, most notably Trent and Konate in recent history. Give them enough time to sign and sell them if they don't, while we still can. I can kind of understand Trent as, with Klopp leaving, it was harder to sell the next five years, same reason Mo and Virgil went down to the wire. Konate less so. We should have been in advanced talks with him this time last year at the latest and should have sold him in the summer if he hadn't signed by then. We'd have only lost 12 months of him (not a great loss given the season he's having) and could have pushed harder and earlier for Guehi in to replace him.
Based on my understanding of their contracts, we should be having those discussions now with Alisson, Gomez and Curtis, and should be opening discussions with Dom, Mac and Gravy in the summer with a view to being well progressed this time next year. I'm assuming we'd be looking at exits for Ramsay, Harvey, Kostas, Mo, Endo, VVD and Bajcetic, whose deals are also up in summer 2027, meaning next summer is the last opportunity to get decent fees for them / or to shift their wages off the books if they're not looking up to scratch by then.
This whole thing of keeping players past their sell-by date, no matter how good they are, has to stop.
And on a similar note, we need to stop keeping fringe players around for too long.
Nat Phillips was 27 when he left us and had made 39 appearances. He was never going to make it.
WTF is Kaide Gordon still doing at the club? A handful of appearances and for my money he's looked bang average every time. I personally would add Bajcetic to the list too. Not going to make it here. Owen Beck is 23 - is he the succession plan for Robbo? Fuck me.
City have sold loads of players in recent years better than all of them and they are a far more attractive proposition to a young kid as a result - come to us, you'll get your chance and if it doesn't work out we won't stand in the way of you going somewhere else to make a name for yourself (have a word with Cole Palmer if you don't believe us). Go to Liverpool and they'll keep you languishing in the reserves (where you'll get handed your arse on a plate every week because your team-mates are all shite) or maybe on loan at Wigan/Preston/Blackburn, or somewhere else where they live on pies and keep whippets, in the forlorn hope you might suddenly become a superstar overnight when no-one is looking.
If you're really lucky, you might come back and get to sit on the bench and keep Rio company as the pair of you watch your team-mates collapse defensively every week while the manager (sorry, "head coach") plays some other bugger out of position because he doesn't trust you, even though you're a specialist in that position.
Or if you're luckier still, you lose a couple of headers in the first game of the season against a battling championship team like, say, Ipswich, you get subbed off at half-fucking-time and then singled out in post-match interviews for criticism by the "head coach" and then barely kick a ball (when you do, confidence destroyed and match sharpness lacking, you don't fully do yourself justice) and then you are sold off to Leverkusen with a buy-back clause that you'd have to be fucking mad to allow the club to exercise. Only when you leave the club do you get the senior England cap you clearly deserved a couple of seasons before.
Fuck that shit.
Nat Phillips was 27 when he left us and had made 39 appearances. He was never going to make it.
WTF is Kaide Gordon still doing at the club? A handful of appearances and for my money he's looked bang average every time. I personally would add Bajcetic to the list too. Not going to make it here. Owen Beck is 23 - is he the succession plan for Robbo? Fuck me.
City have sold loads of players in recent years better than all of them and they are a far more attractive proposition to a young kid as a result - come to us, you'll get your chance and if it doesn't work out we won't stand in the way of you going somewhere else to make a name for yourself (have a word with Cole Palmer if you don't believe us). Go to Liverpool and they'll keep you languishing in the reserves (where you'll get handed your arse on a plate every week because your team-mates are all shite) or maybe on loan at Wigan/Preston/Blackburn, or somewhere else where they live on pies and keep whippets, in the forlorn hope you might suddenly become a superstar overnight when no-one is looking.
If you're really lucky, you might come back and get to sit on the bench and keep Rio company as the pair of you watch your team-mates collapse defensively every week while the manager (sorry, "head coach") plays some other bugger out of position because he doesn't trust you, even though you're a specialist in that position.
Or if you're luckier still, you lose a couple of headers in the first game of the season against a battling championship team like, say, Ipswich, you get subbed off at half-fucking-time and then singled out in post-match interviews for criticism by the "head coach" and then barely kick a ball (when you do, confidence destroyed and match sharpness lacking, you don't fully do yourself justice) and then you are sold off to Leverkusen with a buy-back clause that you'd have to be fucking mad to allow the club to exercise. Only when you leave the club do you get the senior England cap you clearly deserved a couple of seasons before.
Fuck that shit.
Not sure you understand the definition of fact.