Brendan Rodgers

[Sharpe's Fox]

Just now, pmcla26 said:

Not true for Leicester - that means we had a better squad without Fofana, JJ, Castagne, Perez, Daka and Lookman. 

This. Are we supposed to believe Soyuncu, Benkovich, Chilwell, Gray, Diabate and Ghezzal are all better than those above? Come on.

[smudgerfox]

43 minutes ago, pmcla26 said:

We signed Soumare and Daka last summer who both fitted "the model". I don't understand why people think we've deviated from it, when it's quite obvious that we haven't. 

I suppose it depends what you imagine the “model” to be. What I understood to be the secret of our success, was that we identified a lot of affordable players and followed their progress , got to know them as players and as people. Let them know we were interested in them before other clubs. It wasn’t just about their ability but about their attitude.  In that way we’d uncover what Brendan would describe as “silver medalists” with growth potential. So Tielemans - rotting away at Monaco - despite a great history and level of experience, was typical of that model. I think I’m right in saying Castagne wasn’t first choice at Atalanta. 

This was to avoid the kind of transfer calamity we had this summer. Take Soumare. It became clear from an early stage that Brendan felt he would need him to radically alter his game to play successfully for us. Now to my mind, if that was the case, why sign him at all? This ought to have been sorted out before he arrived. Listen mate, we’ve signed you because you were so good for Lille but now we want to turn you into something else. It makes no sense. This is what worries me. Are the club signing players Brendan doesn’t really want? And if so, why? Or is Brendan agreeing and pushing for transfers while underestimating what it will take for them to be effective? Either way it doesn’t exactly bode well. 
 

And by the way I just use Soumare as an example. you could say the same of Perez, who has barely started in his best position for us, And of course Vestergaard and Bertrand who departed from the model in a myriad of ways. 

[SafewayFox]

It’s a weird one as myself included on paper thought we had a good transfer window (bar Jannik) yet 12 months later it seems obvious good is an overstatement.

 

Perhaps we need to just close our eyes and enjoy the ride?

 

We all hope it will be a much better transfer window but it’s never that black and white - I’m a huge believer (have said on here numerous times) an addition/refresh of Rodgers coaching staff would be the biggest win in the summer if ask me.

Edited 26 May 2022 by SafewayFox

[coolhandfox]

1 hour ago, Muzzy_Larsson said:

Most clubs have a glass ceiling in who they can attract bar a handful in world football. I'm not suggesting competing with sides like Liverpool for players, that's just not going to happen.

 

There are however a myriad of players in between guys like Diaz and Vestegaard for example you could attract. Tielemans for example was £40m at the time am I right, an international at one of the top 3 international sides in the world. Leicester are very much an attractive enough draw to be able to sign quality players that should improve the squad.

 

Bowen

Guimaraes

Gvardiol

Zakaria

Not sure Guimaraes at 33.3m + 6.5m is a modest fee? The fact his on 120k a week would rule us out as no way are we rocking the boat with players already here, Bowen was one that got away, but once again the club wasn't willing to pay 100k a week to a new player. 

 

Can't see Gvardiol leaving RB for us, as he's well and on Chelsea radar. and Zakaria went to Juventus.

 

Only one of those I would agree we could have got is Bowen as he was cheap which off sets his wages.

 

I'm not saying it impossible just not easy. 

 

1 hour ago, Muzzy_Larsson said:

The above are just a few off the top of my head who were pretty modest fees that would have been attainable that have moved in recent times. There's tons more if I went off and looked into it.

 

There's been a clear shift in the transfer model of the club in the last couple of years from a hugely successful model that signed guys such as the above to overpriced EPL jobbers.

I don't think there has been a clear shift. We are still recruiting players in the bring in young players to develop, Daka, Soumare, Fofana like we did with Justin and Maddison etc. (Under 24 years old) 

And we are signing older statesmen like Bertrand as we did with Evans (30+ years old).

 

We have struggled to buy players in the 25-28 years bracket, like Praet, Perez, Vestergaard and Castange, with only the latter proving to be a success.

 

Not sure you can accuse a club of having a strategy of buying EPL over price jobber when we have only signed 4 players from the EPL in the last 3 seasons, of which one was free and the other a loan.

 

We have signed 8 players from aboard and 1 from the championship in the same period. 

 

You can only chuck Perez and Vestergaard in the bracket. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[coolhandfox]

There is a little looking back with rose tinted glasses at some summer windows, looking back at the last 5 seasons under all of Shakespeare, Puel and Rodgers there has been some stinkers (Highlight in bold)  

 

21/22
Patson Daka	Red Bull Salzburg	RB Salzburg	£27.00m
Boubakary Soumaré	LOSC Lille	LOSC Lille	£18.00m
Jannik Vestergaard	Southampton FC	Southampton	£15.84m
Ryan Bertrand	Southampton FC	Southampton	free transfer
Ademola Lookman	RB Leipzig	RB Leipzig	loan transfer
20/21
Wesley Fofana	AS Saint-Étienne	Saint-Étienne	£31.50m
Timothy Castagne	Atalanta BC	Atalanta BC	£18.81m
Cengiz Ünder	AS Roma	AS Roma	Loan fee: £3.15m
19/20
Youri Tielemans	AS Monaco	Monaco	£40.50m
Ayoze Pérez	Newcastle United	Newcastle	£30.06m
Dennis Praet	UC Sampdoria	Sampdoria	£17.28m
James Justin	Luton Town	Luton	£6.03m
18/19
James Maddison	Norwich City	Norwich	£22.50m
Ricardo Pereira	FC Porto	FC Porto	£19.80m
Caglar Söyüncü	SC Freiburg	SC Freiburg	£18.99m
Filip Benkovic	GNK Dinamo Zagreb	Dinamo Zagreb	£13.05m
Danny Ward	Liverpool FC	Liverpool	£12.60m
Rachid Ghezzal	AS Monaco	Monaco	£12.60m
Jonny Evans	West Bromwich Albion	West Brom	£3.60m
17/18
Kelechi Iheanacho	Manchester City	Man City	£24.93m
Adrien Silva	Sporting CP	Sporting CP	£18.45m
Vicente Iborra	Sevilla FC	Sevilla FC	£13.50m
Harry Maguire	Hull City	Hull City	£12.33m
Eldin Jakupovic	Hull City	Hull City	£2.07m
Fousseni Diabaté	GFC Ajaccio	G. Ajaccio	£1.80m

 

Edited 26 May 2022 by coolhandfox

[Out Foxed]

silva and iborra at least covered their transfer fees right

[Fox92]

30 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

There is a little looking back with rose tinted glasses at some summer windows, looking back at the last 5 seasons under all of Shakespeare, Puel and Rodgers there has been some stinkers (Highlight in bold)  

 

21/22
Patson Daka	Red Bull Salzburg	RB Salzburg	£27.00m
Boubakary Soumaré	LOSC Lille	LOSC Lille	£18.00m
Jannik Vestergaard	Southampton FC	Southampton	£15.84m
Ryan Bertrand	Southampton FC	Southampton	free transfer
Ademola Lookman	RB Leipzig	RB Leipzig	loan transfer
20/21
Wesley Fofana	AS Saint-Étienne	Saint-Étienne	£31.50m
Timothy Castagne	Atalanta BC	Atalanta BC	£18.81m
Cengiz Ünder	AS Roma	AS Roma	Loan fee: £3.15m
19/20
Youri Tielemans	AS Monaco	Monaco	£40.50m
Ayoze Pérez	Newcastle United	Newcastle	£30.06m
Dennis Praet	UC Sampdoria	Sampdoria	£17.28m
James Justin	Luton Town	Luton	£6.03m
18/19
James Maddison	Norwich City	Norwich	£22.50m
Ricardo Pereira	FC Porto	FC Porto	£19.80m
Caglar Söyüncü	SC Freiburg	SC Freiburg	£18.99m
Filip Benkovic	GNK Dinamo Zagreb	Dinamo Zagreb	£13.05m
Danny Ward	Liverpool FC	Liverpool	£12.60m
Rachid Ghezzal	AS Monaco	Monaco	£12.60m
Jonny Evans	West Bromwich Albion	West Brom	£3.60m
17/18
Kelechi Iheanacho	Manchester City	Man City	£24.93m
Adrien Silva	Sporting CP	Sporting CP	£18.45m
Vicente Iborra	Sevilla FC	Sevilla FC	£13.50m
Harry Maguire	Hull City	Hull City	£12.33m
Eldin Jakupovic	Hull City	Hull City	£2.07m
Fousseni Diabaté	GFC Ajaccio	G. Ajaccio	£1.80m

 

Harsh on Perez and Iborra. And maybe even Praet too. Those three weren't as bad as Diabate/Ghezzal/Vestergaard.

[coolhandfox]

5 minutes ago, Fox92 said:

Harsh on Perez and Iborra. And maybe even Praet too. Those three weren't as bad as Diabate/Ghezzal/Vestergaard.

I was going on general foxestalk consensus.

 

I'd agree with you on all 3, I think Praet and Iborra were underused.

 

Perez get battered because he's price but his play a 100 games and contributed 

 

 

[SpacedX]

8 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

 

 

Perez get battered because he's price but his play a 100 games and contributed 

 

 

I've read this a dozen times now and I'm still struggling to comprehend. Hold on, let's try for thirteen... 

 

...nope. Sorry.

[SafewayFox]

19 minutes ago, pmcla26 said:

Yeah can we stop calling Perez a stinker? When he’s been pretty decent for us overall, if not amazing. 

I’m genuinely quite dumbfounded how history seems to have been totally re-written for Perez.

 

Besides the PSV assist for Madders THIS season.

 

Can you genuinely name 2/3 game changing moments from him in THREE years?

 

In three seasons, he pressed a bit, got muscled off the ball numerous times, ran around very slowly and scored goals when the game was finished and failed to hit the target against Chelsea last year when the was pressure on - the ultimate soft under belly player.

[sacreblueits442]

1 hour ago, SafewayFox said:

We all hope it will be a much better transfer window but it’s never that black and white - I’m a huge believer (have said on here numerous times) an addition/refresh of Rodgers coaching staff would be the biggest win in the summer if ask me.

...a bit like Boris, blame everyone around him as it can't be his fault!!!

  Why is he handicapped by these Coaches as he would have picked them himself. Tearing up his entourage will inevitably leave the problem in place to manifest it self under the new regime. Saying that you now understand where you have gone wrong and now putting things in place only serves to protect yourself having littered the road with their bodies and the dubious practices, that he has cultivated himself.

[volpeazzurro]

1 hour ago, coolhandfox said:

I was going on general foxestalk consensus.

 

I'd agree with you on all 3, I think Praet and Iborra were underused.

 

Perez get battered because he's price but his play a 100 games and contributed 

 

 

He may have played 100 but his contribution in the majority was of little consequence 🤣

[kingston_fox]

I seem to remember the consensus being that last summer's transfers hit the spot in terms of adding extra quality to the squad. The fact so many of them (and judging by the list above this isn't a one off thing) didn't meet expectations shows how difficult it is to integrate new transfers.

 

As always we go again and hope we find the missing pieces

[Ric Flair]

2 hours ago, pmcla26 said:

Not true for Leicester - that means we had a better squad without Fofana, JJ, Castagne, Perez, Daka and Lookman, having lost Chilwell, Morgan, Maguire and Fuchs in that time. 

Sorry I think you've misunderstood my post. Rodgers inherited better signings than have been signed whilst he's been here - easily identifiable looking at our best XI. As it stands our starting XI still only contains 3 players (when Ricardo doesn't start, 2 when he does) he's brought in 3.5 years later. At Celtic it was very much the same. Now some could say he didn't need to strengthen the XI by much because those already here were a rebuild already done but that is where I think we've gone wrong in the last year or so. We've tried to strengthen the squad to better cope with the demands having ran out of steam in 2019/20 and 2020/21 rather than improve the starting XI. Yet by improving the starting XI you improve the squad.

 

Overall our signings have been hit and miss a bit more so than when Macia was here. This isn't all on Rodgers though, he's not signing them all but it just seems he has a very unfortunate track record, he's been tarnished even worse at Liverpool. 

 

 

[Muzzy_Larsson]

8 hours ago, moore_94 said:

That would be nice to do if we already had the squad depth in place to get away with only bringing in 1 or 2 players every summer

 

Summer 2019 and Summer 2020 he did that though and spent big on the areas needed

 

But going into last summer we would not have been able to get away with signing 1 or 2 players when we had big holes all over the pitch due to long term injury issues, players wanting to leave, and possibly even questions around your star striker

So did go and signing a bunch of players that Rodgers doesn't trust and barely uses actually improve squad depth? I don't think so. All that's happened is there's more dead wood about the place, he's resorted to playing players out of position rather than playing these players who are alleged to provide squad depth and the league position has suffered as a result. Rodgers of all people should know this as he tried to do the exact same thing at Liverpool, trying to add "squad depth" by signing a bunch of players who weren't any better than they already had and it blew up in his face.

 

The way to add depth is to buy better than what you already have and have players that can actually challenge for starting places every week.

[Muzzy_Larsson]

7 hours ago, coolhandfox said:

Not sure Guimaraes at 33.3m + 6.5m is a modest fee? The fact his on 120k a week would rule us out as no way are we rocking the boat with players already here, Bowen was one that got away, but once again the club wasn't willing to pay 100k a week to a new player. 

 

Can't see Gvardiol leaving RB for us, as he's well and on Chelsea radar. and Zakaria went to Juventus.

 

Only one of those I would agree we could have got is Bowen as he was cheap which off sets his wages.

 

I'm not saying it impossible just not easy. 

 

I don't think there has been a clear shift. We are still recruiting players in the bring in young players to develop, Daka, Soumare, Fofana like we did with Justin and Maddison etc. (Under 24 years old) 

And we are signing older statesmen like Bertrand as we did with Evans (30+ years old).

 

We have struggled to buy players in the 25-28 years bracket, like Praet, Perez, Vestergaard and Castange, with only the latter proving to be a success.

 

Not sure you can accuse a club of having a strategy of buying EPL over price jobber when we have only signed 4 players from the EPL in the last 3 seasons, of which one was free and the other a loan.

 

We have signed 8 players from aboard and 1 from the championship in the same period. 

 

You can only chuck Perez and Vestergaard in the bracket. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I never mentioned "modest fee" at all. The point I'm making is these players are attainable at a price point that's realistic for Leicester as this kind of money has already been spent on other players. Guimaraes was in the same ball park as what the club paid for Tielemens almost 3 years ago so in that vein, very much attainable. Fofana is another example.

 

Bowen wasn't on 100k a week when he signed for West Ham that's completely made up. He was on 30-40k thereabouts, it's only when he signed his new contract his money was bumped up and deservedly so. Had Leicester signed him and he had made the same impact I doubt there would be any qualms around paying him the same money, after all there are already a few players at the club earning more than that.

 

The point with Gvardiol is he could have been got before Leipzig got him, similar age and profile to Fofana but cost a lot less, again attainable.

 

Players don't necessarily have to be 25-28 to make an impact, look at Fofana for example. Tielemans, Justin, I could go on.

 

Perez and Vestergaard are £50m worth of EPL jobbers alone, I'm not sure that can be dismissed however you want to spin it, to spend that amount on those two who have contributed next to nothing for 12 months then questions must be asked. That alone reinforces my original point, that money spent correctly on a quality wide player for example could have made a tangible difference this season or last. The players are out there at that price point, who are attainable and who could make a difference, transfers like Tielemens and Fofana in recent years are testament to that.

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

X

Edited 27 May 2022 by Miquel The Work Geordie

[Sampson]

I'm not really convinced we'll really need the same squad depth next season without Europe though.

 

The likes of Thomas, Amartey and Mendy are supposed to be in the squad to play a few early round League Cup ties and 3 or 4 league or FA Cup games in a season in emergencies, not 30 games or anything. I think they'll revert back to their normal roles next season.

Edited 27 May 2022 by Sampson

[coolhandfox]

16 hours ago, Muzzy_Larsson said:

Most clubs have a glass ceiling in who they can attract bar a handful in world football. I'm not suggesting competing with sides like Liverpool for players, that's just not going to happen.

 

There are however a myriad of players in between guys like Diaz and Vestegaard for example you could attract. Tielemans for example was £40m at the time am I right, an international at one of the top 3 international sides in the world. Leicester are very much an attractive enough draw to be able to sign quality players that should improve the squad.

 

Bowen

Guimaraes

Gvardiol

Zakaria

 

The above are just a few off the top of my head who were pretty modest fees that would have been attainable that have moved in recent times. There's tons more if I went off and looked into it.

 

There's been a clear shift in the transfer model of the club in the last couple of years from a hugely successful model that signed guys such as the above to overpriced EPL jobbers.

 

7 hours ago, Muzzy_Larsson said:

I never mentioned "modest fee" at all. The point I'm making is these players are attainable at a price point that's realistic for Leicester as this kind of money has already been spent on other players. Guimaraes was in the same ball park as what the club paid for Tielemens almost 3 years ago so in that vein, very much attainable. Fofana is another example.

 

Bowen wasn't on 100k a week when he signed for West Ham that's completely made up. He was on 30-40k thereabouts, it's only when he signed his new contract his money was bumped up and deservedly so. Had Leicester signed him and he had made the same impact I doubt there would be any qualms around paying him the same money, after all there are already a few players at the club earning more than that.

 

The point with Gvardiol is he could have been got before Leipzig got him, similar age and profile to Fofana but cost a lot less, again attainable.

 

Players don't necessarily have to be 25-28 to make an impact, look at Fofana for example. Tielemans, Justin, I could go on.

 

Perez and Vestergaard are £50m worth of EPL jobbers alone, I'm not sure that can be dismissed however you want to spin it, to spend that amount on those two who have contributed next to nothing for 12 months then questions must be asked. That alone reinforces my original point, that money spent correctly on a quality wide player for example could have made a tangible difference this season or last. The players are out there at that price point, who are attainable and who could make a difference, transfers like Tielemens and Fofana in recent years are testament to that.

@Muzzy_Larsson are you sure?

[shiv]

13 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

Sorry I think you've misunderstood my post. Rodgers inherited better signings than have been signed whilst he's been here - easily identifiable looking at our best XI. As it stands our starting XI still only contains 3 players (when Ricardo doesn't start, 2 when he does) he's brought in 3.5 years later. At Celtic it was very much the same. Now some could say he didn't need to strengthen the XI by much because those already here were a rebuild already done but that is where I think we've gone wrong in the last year or so. We've tried to strengthen the squad to better cope with the demands having ran out of steam in 2019/20 and 2020/21 rather than improve the starting XI. Yet by improving the starting XI you improve the squad.

 

Overall our signings have been hit and miss a bit more so than when Macia was here. This isn't all on Rodgers though, he's not signing them all but it just seems he has a very unfortunate track record, he's been tarnished even worse at Liverpool. 

 

 

Agree with this. In all fairness to Rodgers, after 2 top 5 finishes he hasn’t needed to improve the starting XI. My take is we needed more depth after the second attempt as well as PL experience - which is why Bertrand and Vestergaard were signed. Soumare and Daka on paper should have been challenging for a starting spot too.

 

The real test is this summer to see who we bring in.

[smudgerfox]

15 hours ago, coolhandfox said:

There is a little looking back with rose tinted glasses at some summer windows, looking back at the last 5 seasons under all of Shakespeare, Puel and Rodgers there has been some stinkers (Highlight in bold)  

 

21/22
Patson Daka	Red Bull Salzburg	RB Salzburg	£27.00m
Boubakary Soumaré	LOSC Lille	LOSC Lille	£18.00m
Jannik Vestergaard	Southampton FC	Southampton	£15.84m
Ryan Bertrand	Southampton FC	Southampton	free transfer
Ademola Lookman	RB Leipzig	RB Leipzig	loan transfer
20/21
Wesley Fofana	AS Saint-Étienne	Saint-Étienne	£31.50m
Timothy Castagne	Atalanta BC	Atalanta BC	£18.81m
Cengiz Ünder	AS Roma	AS Roma	Loan fee: £3.15m
19/20
Youri Tielemans	AS Monaco	Monaco	£40.50m
Ayoze Pérez	Newcastle United	Newcastle	£30.06m
Dennis Praet	UC Sampdoria	Sampdoria	£17.28m
James Justin	Luton Town	Luton	£6.03m
18/19
James Maddison	Norwich City	Norwich	£22.50m
Ricardo Pereira	FC Porto	FC Porto	£19.80m
Caglar Söyüncü	SC Freiburg	SC Freiburg	£18.99m
Filip Benkovic	GNK Dinamo Zagreb	Dinamo Zagreb	£13.05m
Danny Ward	Liverpool FC	Liverpool	£12.60m
Rachid Ghezzal	AS Monaco	Monaco	£12.60m
Jonny Evans	West Bromwich Albion	West Brom	£3.60m
17/18
Kelechi Iheanacho	Manchester City	Man City	£24.93m
Adrien Silva	Sporting CP	Sporting CP	£18.45m
Vicente Iborra	Sevilla FC	Sevilla FC	£13.50m
Harry Maguire	Hull City	Hull City	£12.33m
Eldin Jakupovic	Hull City	Hull City	£2.07m
Fousseni Diabaté	GFC Ajaccio	G. Ajaccio	£1.80m

 

Interesting and thanks for compiling. But I think it does confirm that last summers transfer window was the poorest in this period - three out of five players outright failures and the two others hardly sensational. I think the best you can say about Perez is he’s been a useful squad player but like Soumare he has never really played in the position which made his name. And Praet is very much like Soumare - quite rapidly dismissed by the manager as unsuitable for the “system.” I’m not sure how Ward qualifies as a failure - he just hasn’t had any chance to shine. The problem seems to be with recruiting midfielders - Iborra, Silva, Praet, Soumare - all good players arriving within strong pedigrees - none of them seemingly suited to the playing style of the manager at the time. And of course the winger problem - Diabaté, Ghezzal, Perez and Under - all different types of players, none of them the answer. 

[Muzzy_Larsson]

2 hours ago, coolhandfox said:

 

@Muzzy_Larsson are you sure?

Fair enough with respect to the term  Point is though these players and paying these sort of amounts are attainable and realisttic.

[wattolcfc]

My worry is that yet again we will leave it until the last minute to get new signings in. Look at that list above and you’ll find almost all of the failures were late signings in the transfer window. 

Surely it is better paying a couple more million to get it done early, than risk a last minute buy which essentially throws away money anyway. The sooner the *new* squad is together and training with each other, the better chance we have of hitting the ground running next season.

If we haven’t learnt our lesson by now, maybe we never will.

Edited 27 May 2022 by wattolcfc

[Muzzy_Larsson]

9 hours ago, Sampson said:

I'm not really convinced we'll really need the same squad depth next season without Europe though.

 

The likes of Thomas, Amartey and Mendy are supposed to be in the squad to play a few early round League Cup ties and 3 or 4 league or FA Cup games in a season in emergencies, not 30 games or anything. I think they'll revert back to their normal roles next season.

This whole "squad depth" thing is an absolute myth in all honesty. The players signed to allegedly add depth Rodgers doesn't trust, barely play and often he favours shoe horning players out of position who he does trust instead.

[wattolcfc]

9 minutes ago, Muzzy_Larsson said:

This whole "squad depth" thing is an absolute myth in all honesty. The players signed to allegedly add depth Rodgers doesn't trust, barely play and often he favours shoe horning players out of position who he does trust instead.

I’ve always said that if you sign a couple of starters, that improves your squad much more than signing 4 squad players. This is because your old starters then become the squad players, which are stronger than the 4 average players you bring in. It is also drives competition due to the old starters wanting to fight to get back in the team. Not only that, it would be better on the wage budget to sign 2 players on 90k a week, than 4 on 50k, along with less signing on and agents fees.