- Aug 22, 2014
- 13,603
- 58,005
I originally posted this in summer transfers but it doesn't fit there, I looked at other threads, I can't see where it fits so I've made a new thread, admins if you think there's a better place for this, by all means move it.
I made a post in the Reguilon thread about being hopeful Sessegnon gives him a run for his money next season and a poster pointed out, they'd hope so for the money we spent on him. It's made me realise that despite the fact that we have signed some players with great potential over the last couple of seasons, we as a club despite having limited money have decided to lump so much money on players who are basically vying for one position. Let me preface this by saying, all the players I'm going to mention, as a fan I'm happy we signed them because they're great players but I'm analysing this in terms of the strategy employed by a football clubs recruitment team
Our recruitment seemingly has no plan for how to set the team up and has basically snapped up talents based on potential rather than a coherent line up.
Sessegnon - 25-30 million - Being developed to play LB
Reguilon - 27 million- a LB
So that's 55-60 million spent on a single position to where you can only fit one into the team at a time. On a glance you think well that's great having 2 potentially great players fighting for one spot. It is if your first 11 doesn't have any weaknesses across it to where you can then focus on beefing up the reinforcements but that is clearly not where we are in terms of building a team at the moment.
To further highlight what poor decision making this is, We supposedly also have a left back coming through with huge talent in Cirkin, we already had Ben Davies who is a adequate back up for a left back in terms of if you need to spend your money on strengthening your first team. You only need to replace Ben once your first 11 is at it's peak and you have the resources to begin boosting the bench.
If you're looking to defend the decision, I guess you analyse it and say well Sessegnon can also play left wing but wait a minute, we already have one of our top 2 players there in Son and then we've decided to add yet another player whose best position is left wing in Steven Bergwijn, So;
Bergwijn - 27 million Left wing
That's a huge chunk of change on a position filled by one of our best players and a position we had already recruited a player who could potentially play there should Son be injured despite the fact that we have a glaring hole over on the right wing. Of course what we've tried to do is shoehorn Bergwijn over on the right wing where he has been completely ineffective compared to how good he was for his original club in his usual position.
Then on top of all that we then purchased two midfielders of the same ilk for over 100 million.
Ndombele - 50-55 million - CM
Lo Celso - 45 Million - CM
So these were signed for the famous diamond shape we were going to play which we never played with them in the team, despite the fact we didn't have a defensive midfielder to play at the bottom of the diamond. There's a fairly easy solution here which is to play the 4-3-3 and fit them both in, the problem with that is, the defensive midfielder we've signed isn't a traditional sitting defensive midfielder but more of a ball winning midfielder which would typically have another more defensive style of midfielder next to them as an example we used to have similar with Wanyama and Dembele who both were more known for their ability to win the ball than their attacking exploits.
The other issue is we haven't attempted to play the 4-3-3 yet, we've (despite the two expensive midfielders we've signed) gone for the 4-2-3-1. There's two issues with that, one is that we already had dele for that role though he is one player people would perhaps deem replaceable in our first 11 so that's fine so we're looking at it as well we could play either Ndombele and Lo Celso in that 10 role, despite neither have the skillset of say Eriksen who previously did that sort of role for us or say a Bruno Fernandes who we decided we didn't want - I think that one was the manager. The other issue also with playing these 2 players in the 4-2-3-1 is the aforementioned Hojbjerg problem to where he isn't the sitting midfielder which means when you pair him with the likes of Lo Celso or Ndombele, we are very often opened up in a big way. I know there will be those who will disagree with me on my Hojbjerg assessment on that front and to those I'll say, look who was next to him on the pitch at Southampton, It was Romeu.
In other words we have essentially bought 3 midfielders who seemingly do not click together whether it be diamond, 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. The one hope we have is having Skipp come in and save the day but he's actually a similar skillset to Hojbjerg and has been sitting next to Tettey all season.
What this means is, we have the same problem in midfield as we do on the left side of the pitch which is. We have multiple players who in the right system can shine and have huge potential. The problem is they're concentrated to a certain number of positions which means we've spent all our money recruiting players who can only fit a certain number of positions and will be tremendously difficult to put all of that money spent on the pitch at the same time instead of spending the money to where you build a coherent first 11 that all fits together.
Our recruitment is simply identifying players with great potential regardless of how they fit and then having no money remaining to fix the remainder of the problems in the team. At least we have 4 left backs though.
I made a post in the Reguilon thread about being hopeful Sessegnon gives him a run for his money next season and a poster pointed out, they'd hope so for the money we spent on him. It's made me realise that despite the fact that we have signed some players with great potential over the last couple of seasons, we as a club despite having limited money have decided to lump so much money on players who are basically vying for one position. Let me preface this by saying, all the players I'm going to mention, as a fan I'm happy we signed them because they're great players but I'm analysing this in terms of the strategy employed by a football clubs recruitment team
Our recruitment seemingly has no plan for how to set the team up and has basically snapped up talents based on potential rather than a coherent line up.
Sessegnon - 25-30 million - Being developed to play LB
Reguilon - 27 million- a LB
So that's 55-60 million spent on a single position to where you can only fit one into the team at a time. On a glance you think well that's great having 2 potentially great players fighting for one spot. It is if your first 11 doesn't have any weaknesses across it to where you can then focus on beefing up the reinforcements but that is clearly not where we are in terms of building a team at the moment.
To further highlight what poor decision making this is, We supposedly also have a left back coming through with huge talent in Cirkin, we already had Ben Davies who is a adequate back up for a left back in terms of if you need to spend your money on strengthening your first team. You only need to replace Ben once your first 11 is at it's peak and you have the resources to begin boosting the bench.
If you're looking to defend the decision, I guess you analyse it and say well Sessegnon can also play left wing but wait a minute, we already have one of our top 2 players there in Son and then we've decided to add yet another player whose best position is left wing in Steven Bergwijn, So;
Bergwijn - 27 million Left wing
That's a huge chunk of change on a position filled by one of our best players and a position we had already recruited a player who could potentially play there should Son be injured despite the fact that we have a glaring hole over on the right wing. Of course what we've tried to do is shoehorn Bergwijn over on the right wing where he has been completely ineffective compared to how good he was for his original club in his usual position.
Then on top of all that we then purchased two midfielders of the same ilk for over 100 million.
Ndombele - 50-55 million - CM
Lo Celso - 45 Million - CM
So these were signed for the famous diamond shape we were going to play which we never played with them in the team, despite the fact we didn't have a defensive midfielder to play at the bottom of the diamond. There's a fairly easy solution here which is to play the 4-3-3 and fit them both in, the problem with that is, the defensive midfielder we've signed isn't a traditional sitting defensive midfielder but more of a ball winning midfielder which would typically have another more defensive style of midfielder next to them as an example we used to have similar with Wanyama and Dembele who both were more known for their ability to win the ball than their attacking exploits.
The other issue is we haven't attempted to play the 4-3-3 yet, we've (despite the two expensive midfielders we've signed) gone for the 4-2-3-1. There's two issues with that, one is that we already had dele for that role though he is one player people would perhaps deem replaceable in our first 11 so that's fine so we're looking at it as well we could play either Ndombele and Lo Celso in that 10 role, despite neither have the skillset of say Eriksen who previously did that sort of role for us or say a Bruno Fernandes who we decided we didn't want - I think that one was the manager. The other issue also with playing these 2 players in the 4-2-3-1 is the aforementioned Hojbjerg problem to where he isn't the sitting midfielder which means when you pair him with the likes of Lo Celso or Ndombele, we are very often opened up in a big way. I know there will be those who will disagree with me on my Hojbjerg assessment on that front and to those I'll say, look who was next to him on the pitch at Southampton, It was Romeu.
In other words we have essentially bought 3 midfielders who seemingly do not click together whether it be diamond, 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. The one hope we have is having Skipp come in and save the day but he's actually a similar skillset to Hojbjerg and has been sitting next to Tettey all season.
What this means is, we have the same problem in midfield as we do on the left side of the pitch which is. We have multiple players who in the right system can shine and have huge potential. The problem is they're concentrated to a certain number of positions which means we've spent all our money recruiting players who can only fit a certain number of positions and will be tremendously difficult to put all of that money spent on the pitch at the same time instead of spending the money to where you build a coherent first 11 that all fits together.
Our recruitment is simply identifying players with great potential regardless of how they fit and then having no money remaining to fix the remainder of the problems in the team. At least we have 4 left backs though.
Last edited: