Rudkin

[Daggers]

31 minutes ago, Cincinnati Fox said:

Surely nobody tries to defend Rudkin???

They're coming...

[em9999]

I think the club has done a decent job this window solid 7.5 from me .. 

[adejo92]

I mean, I wouldn't call it a fantastic window...

 

We've signed a 31 year old below par winger, a 32 year old who can play multiple positions yet seemingly be not very good in any.

 

Skipp is a 'meh' signing for me and the last minute deal for Edouard feels better due to the desperation. If we'd have signed him early in the window then most would have been heavily disappointed. 

 

All that whilst retaining the useless squad players who continue to syphon the club week in week out.

 

The two young lads look to be good signings though.

 

[Simonb]

14 minutes ago, em9999 said:

I think the club has done a decent job this window solid 7.5 from me .. 

To be fair I'd probably rate it around the same.. maybe 6.5 or a 7

 

The main disappointment for me is I don't see any improvement in defence. We're stuck with Vesty for 3 years and Okoli doesn't look like a footballer to me. Needed a LB and now we're picking from Kristiansen and Thomas. For me though, this is now on Cooper to see sense and use Riccy at RB and move JJ over 

 

Skipps an improvement on Wilf. He offers the tackling and interceptions that Wilf does, but appears to be able to pass and hold on to the ball too.

 

Facundo looked decent against Spurs but faded against Fulham (bar the corner assist). But KDH did fade away for games even in the championship. I just worry we haven't replaced the goals we've lost with kdh.

 

Bilal looks like he could be great, just worry he may need time. Future potential though and should at least retain his value.

 

Abdul now permanent. Started the EPL steadily and his value will increase

 

Golding value should hopefully hold. One for the future maybe 

 

Ayew and BDCR offer experience, not sure what else but we need it

 

Eduoard is decent enough for a relegation battle if we create chances.

 

Plenty of young lads out on loan.

 

Really hope we utilise Alves, looked decent against tranmere in his cameo

 

On the whole, a couple of old heads, a striker with no obligation and a fair bit of young talent with an upsale value.. not too shabby. 

 

I don't think it's enough to stay up realistically, especially with a deduction, but it's probably about as good as we could've hoped for 

 

Btw, I am not defending Rudkin. I want him gone. This window is as good as it could've been (except for no LB) but it's only that way because of how poor the previous premier league windows we've had 

Edited 30 August by Simonb

[Jon the Hat]

Is glover still here and in charge of recruitment?

[-sodapop]

They've done well on the loans; especially if Alves can get a spell away in Portugal or the Netherlands (assuming he's not going to be involved with the 1st team). I'm super excited to see how they all get on; might be the saving grace of this season.

 

The signings I'm less enthusiastic about; from the permanents, only El Khannous is exciting to me. But he is also the sort of signing that can crash and burn.

 

Less exciting, but probably necessary, are Skipp and Ayew who I think will both do well. The fee for Skipp looked bad at the time - and I still think there were better bargains to be had - but I think the club wanted a known quality, and he's certainly that.

 

BDCR and Okoli are weird ones, where I can see the thinking but I'm not sure if they were the best use of our resources.

 

Okoli in particular screams that they felt somebody (probably Faes) was about to leave. He's been called up by Italy though, so the quality is somehwere there. Hope we get to see a bit of it this year.

 

Golding, sadly, seems like he was purely brought over as a makeweight for PSR bullshit. The lad seems good and I hope he can make an impression and get a chance - can't imagine how it must feel to be 18 and used as the football equivalent to getting a bag of prawn crackers with your Chinese takeaway.

 

Buonanotte looks like the real deal - I have the feeling he's going to be one we all miss sorely this time next year.

 

Edouard feels like a bit of a last second "**** it, he'll do" type of signing - he'll probably bag about ten goals across all comps. Maybe that's good enough?

 

Obviously it all depends if Cooper can get a tune out of them (or if he's even the man capable of doing that). The squad is, I would say, now better than what we had last year, but for 75m~ spent, I can't say I'm loving what we have. I don't think there are 3 worse squads than ours; but we're not far off the likes of Everton/Forest/Brentford imo. If we do stay up, in the face of everything, I'll eat my words and give Rudkin his flowers - maybe he's done enough here. I doubt it though.

[Aus Fox]

To be fair, the window can’t be judged until the end of the season. How many windows have we been excited by or disappointed by, and at the end of the season it looks a whole lot better/worse than we thought.

If we get to May and we stay up, and Skipp is player of the season, El Khanouss has provided the assists and Edouard has scored 10+ goals and Okoli has replaced Vestergaard in the starting 11 we look back and say what a great window. Likewise with the players we’ve signed it can all go the other way pretty quickly.

All in all still Rudout.

[CosbehFox]

3 hours ago, KFS said:

All in all that’s a grade C window I’d say. Clear mandate to get Premier league experience. Boring padding the squad with unwanted crap.

 

Bilal, you better be decent mate 

Yep. Beige and overpaid for it too 

[Claudio Fannieri]

Incomings have mostly been functional signings. although Bilal and Facundo are exciting additions, whilst the rest are very solid but very unspectacular signings, little imagination and very meh, very much in the mould of Coopers appointment. 
 

At least we have at last started to give our talented youngsters the opportunity to go on loan with some great deals in place which will hopefully benefit the club in in readiness for next season. 
 

However where the club and Rudkin continues to disappoint and to a degree show a level of incompetence is our inability to move on our fringe players, here we are after the window closes with Ward, Iversen, Thomas, Soumare and pre his injury Daka still here when we have been trying to shift them all for well over 12 months and across 3 windows.  It feels like we set a valuation and refuse to budge from that even if a deal still makes sense from a PSR perspective and it’s really hurting us in terms of restricting our ability to work in the market. 

[Fazzer 7]

Bang average for me. Still not enough quality to keep us in this league. Potentially the most exciting is the boy from Genk who's name I cant yet remember. 

[Viva]

6 minutes ago, Claudio Fannieri said:

Incomings have mostly been functional signings. although Bilal and Facundo are exciting additions, whilst the rest are very solid but very unspectacular signings, little imagination and very meh, very much in the mould of Coopers appointment. 
 

At least we have at last started to give our talented youngsters the opportunity to go on loan with some great deals in place which will hopefully benefit the club in in readiness for next season. 
 

However where the club and Rudkin continues to disappoint and to a degree show a level of incompetence is our inability to move on our fringe players, here we are after the window closes with Ward, Iversen, Thomas, Soumare and pre his injury Daka still here when we have been trying to shift them all for well over 12 months and across 3 windows.  It feels like we set a valuation and refuse to budge from that even if a deal still makes sense from a PSR perspective and it’s really hurting us in terms of restricting our ability to work in the market. 

Might as well keep Ward now as we’d be paying most of his wages if he went out on loan. Thomas will be needed in the squad and Iversen would fetch peanuts now anyway. Soumaré is the only one I’m a bit surprised we didn’t shift out. Maybe a Turkish club will take him. 

[Claudio Fannieri]

37 minutes ago, Viva said:

Might as well keep Ward now as we’d be paying most of his wages if he went out on loan. Thomas will be needed in the squad and Iversen would fetch peanuts now anyway. Soumaré is the only one I’m a bit surprised we didn’t shift out. Maybe a Turkish club will take him. 

But we could and should have shifted Iversen last summer for £4-5m and would have been pure profit, we seem to set a high expectation in regards to fees, don’t budge and then get stuck with players to then let them leave for free. It has become a recurring theme and it points at a DoF who does not have the creativity, ability or network to shift on unwanted players and yet so many other clubs do it year in year out, this is really hurting us, just look at the some of the players who have been able to walk away for free in recent seasons, it is criminal - 

 

Soyuncu

Tielemans

Perez 

Praet

Iheanacho 

 

To name but a few just those 5 well over £100m of talent allowed to walk away for nothing. You can see Ward, Thomas, Iversen, Soumare and even Daka eventually leaving under similar circumstances. It’s really not a good look and surely for a club that has to rely on transfer income, to help with both PSR and generating additional funds it cannot continue to be accepted. 

[Iwebema]

6 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

Is glover still here and in charge of recruitment?

Yes, but I dont think hes had it all his own way. Ayew and BDR were 100% coopers wet dreams, potentially skipp aswell as his thirst for premier league experience at all costs was unquenchable.

I think we have taken some from Glover and some from Cooper and kind of botched it all together.

Certainly given ourselves a chance at staying up if Cooper can make it work that's the main thing.

[Babylon]

6 minutes ago, Claudio Fannieri said:

But we could and should have shifted Iversen last summer for £4-5m and would have been pure profit, we seem to set a high expectation in regards to fees, don’t budge and then get stuck with players to then let them leave for free. It has become a recurring theme and it points at a DoF who does not have the creativity, ability or network to shift on unwanted players and yet so many other clubs do it year in year out, this is really hurting us, just look at the some of the players who have been able to walk away for free in recent seasons, it is criminal - 

 

Soyuncu

Tielemans

Perez 

Praet

Iheanacho 

 

To name but a few just those 5 well over £100m of talent allowed to walk away for nothing. You can see Ward, Thomas, Iversen, Soumare and even Daka eventually leaving under similar circumstances. It’s really not a good look and surely for a club that has to rely on transfer income, to help with both PSR and generating additional funds it cannot continue to be accepted. 

I really don't think it's as black and white as that, the PSR problems caused a lot of the other issues. For instance, you couldn't offer players decent contracts to get them to sign up again if we wanted them to, as the newly instated European rules meant we needed to cut our wage bill by 30% if we ever wanted to play in Europe, and at the time we were. So it means a massive pay cut for every single player. 

 

Secondly, you reach the point whereby if you have no money to spend, you have the quandary of keeping x player and hoping they keep you up rather than selling them at a massive loss and producing little in the way of budget to sign a replacement. 

 

Then of course you have players who know they are likely to walk into a decent offer if they run their contracts down, and more and more players have been taking back the power and doing just that. 

 

Of course there is going to be an element of what you say, but we accepted offers for Soumare and Vestergarrd and they turned down moves. Praet said the club had offers, but essentially took the view of their didn't think they could afford to lose his versatility. Now the idea is ok, but in hindsight if he spends the season injured, then a deal would have been better. 

 

These issues are only a relatively new thing, we've shifted plenty of players before. So you have to look at the whole and say what's changed, and the money issues are obviously one thing. 

 

Yes, people will say it would have been easier if they weren't on as much etc etc. But that's a different point. 

[filbertway]

15 hours ago, Raj said:

Biggest crime this season is how we didnt go all out for Blackburns Sammy Smodics(sp), let Ipswich buy him, panic like fvck, buy Jordan Ayew and then our fans still try and convince themselves its decent business!!🤣🤣

No wonder he gets away with it!

Szmodics would have been poor business for the price imo. Gambling £25m on a 29 year old (next month) with one decent season under his belt.

 

Equally as poor as paying £5m for a 33 year old (next month) in the last year of his contract when his team are clearly desperate to get rid.

[SafewayFox]

3 minutes ago, filbertway said:

Szmodics would have been poor business for the price imo. Gambling £25m on a 29 year old (next month) with one decent season under his belt.

 

Equally as poor as paying £5m for a 33 year old (next month) in the last year of his contract when his team are clearly desperate to get rid.

Szmodic’s didn’t go for anything close to £25m though.

 

 

[SafewayFox]

1 hour ago, Claudio Fannieri said:

But we could and should have shifted Iversen last summer for £4-5m and would have been pure profit, we seem to set a high expectation in regards to fees, don’t budge and then get stuck with players to then let them leave for free. It has become a recurring theme and it points at a DoF who does not have the creativity, ability or network to shift on unwanted players and yet so many other clubs do it year in year out, this is really hurting us, just look at the some of the players who have been able to walk away for free in recent seasons, it is criminal - 

 

Soyuncu

Tielemans

Perez 

Praet

Iheanacho 

 

To name but a few just those 5 well over £100m of talent allowed to walk away for nothing. You can see Ward, Thomas, Iversen, Soumare and even Daka eventually leaving under similar circumstances. It’s really not a good look and surely for a club that has to rely on transfer income, to help with both PSR and generating additional funds it cannot continue to be accepted. 

Couldn’t agree more.

 

Take the Iversen case as a prime example of our lack of cohesion between manager and Rudkin.

 

He clearly wasn’t in Enzo’s plans and we turned down a bid for him….like you said, it would have been 100% profit and we had an impending PSR charge so surely know about the importance of that.

 

I can’t see how anyone can defend that Rudkin overpays for players and has unrealistic values for our squad dross.

 

The only “easy” outgoings are ones that you’d deem “our Crown Jewels”.

[AjcW]

Teflon Jon will be loving life today, reading some of this  

[filbertway]

16 minutes ago, SafewayFox said:

Szmodic’s didn’t go for anything close to £25m though.

 

 

Good correction. This is what I get for not verifying pub chat!

 

Wow, 9 rising to 11 would probably have been a fair gamble

[Kitchandro]

Unless Edouard turns out to be the second coming of Vardy it’s been a poor window. Strange thread this, very negative until the window shuts and then people are happy because we signed another Palace reject on loan.

 

We simply haven’t got enough goals in the squad and creativity comes down to Buonanotte, Fatawu and El Khannouss, who are realistically the only players who offer potential. Defensively we are very poor; too slow and mistakes all over the place.

 

Yes we’ve signed players, but the majority of them don’t even improve our first 11. Are we better than last season? Not likely to be honest. 

 

I know it’s a difficult situation with the points deduction and spending restrictions. But once again the planning seems to be lacking. I can’t see the thought process in several of our signings besides just filling the squad with bodies.

 

 

 

 

[1972 Fox]

53 minutes ago, AjcW said:

Teflon Jon will be loving life today, reading some of this  

Teflon Jon will be loving life everyday as he continues to kiss ass and steal a living indefinitely.

[Daggers]

If you sent Rudkin out to buy a caravan

 

 

[ozleicester]

9 minutes ago, Daggers said:

If you sent Rudkin out to buy a caravan

 

 

rudkin fan i see...

What you actually get....

[Claudio Fannieri]

2 hours ago, Babylon said:

I really don't think it's as black and white as that, the PSR problems caused a lot of the other issues. For instance, you couldn't offer players decent contracts to get them to sign up again if we wanted them to, as the newly instated European rules meant we needed to cut our wage bill by 30% if we ever wanted to play in Europe, and at the time we were. So it means a massive pay cut for every single player. 

 

Secondly, you reach the point whereby if you have no money to spend, you have the quandary of keeping x player and hoping they keep you up rather than selling them at a massive loss and producing little in the way of budget to sign a replacement. 

 

Then of course you have players who know they are likely to walk into a decent offer if they run their contracts down, and more and more players have been taking back the power and doing just that. 

 

Of course there is going to be an element of what you say, but we accepted offers for Soumare and Vestergarrd and they turned down moves. Praet said the club had offers, but essentially took the view of their didn't think they could afford to lose his versatility. Now the idea is ok, but in hindsight if he spends the season injured, then a deal would have been better. 

 

These issues are only a relatively new thing, we've shifted plenty of players before. So you have to look at the whole and say what's changed, and the money issues are obviously one thing. 

 

Yes, people will say it would have been easier if they weren't on as much etc etc. But that's a different point. 

I think you some fair points, I don’t know if it’s perhaps a fear of us losing our reputation for being such good negotiators when we have in the past been very good at getting top dollar for our Crown Jewels or whether it has created an unrealistic expectation of what we should be selling our mid range or unwanted players for, but we seem to really struggle in this market. 
 

Whether it’s Rudkin directly or maybe the over arching strategy of the club but something needs reviewing as clearly we are nowhere near a lot of our competitors when it comes to getting fees for our fringe players especially when they are only 1 or 2 years left on a contract. 

[Raj]

2 hours ago, filbertway said:

Szmodics would have been poor business for the price imo. Gambling £25m on a 29 year old (next month) with one decent season under his belt.

 

Equally as poor as paying £5m for a 33 year old (next month) in the last year of his contract when his team are clearly desperate to get rid.

Ipswich paid £10million