Too soon to hit the panic button?

[SafewayFox]

I’m sure it’s been mentioned numerous times before but with Alves only having a year left on his contract.

 

Why would the club not at least make a statement by tying him down on a longer deal?

 

That would create a lot more excitement than the clubs awful attempts at social media to pretend everything is fine - lame videos in the pool, Coady’s odd interview with BDCR etc 

[ronnup]

32 minutes ago, SafewayFox said:

I’m sure it’s been mentioned numerous times before but with Alves only having a year left on his contract.

 

Why would the club not at least make a statement by tying him down on a longer deal?

 

That would create a lot more excitement than the clubs awful attempts at social media to pretend everything is fine - lame videos in the pool, Coady’s odd interview with BDCR etc 

Because I suspect he doesn't see a future here.

[Gazza M]

8 hours ago, 5waller5 said:

This really highlights why so many of us feel like we do.
 

The luxury of knowing we’d secured promotion and then doing absolutely nothing with that advantage. It’s so incompetent 

We had the little matter of the manager and staff being poached and then having to recruit a new manager and staff in time for preseason. 

We have made 4 signings. I expect there will be 2-3 more by deadline day. 

[Steve Earle]

All things considered, I'd say not.

 

That is if you hadn't accepted back in May that all promotion meant was an opportunity to clean house, sort out our PSR position and put ourselves in the best possible shape for another Championship promotion campaign. 

[ClaphamFox]

57 minutes ago, Gazza M said:

We had the little matter of the manager and staff being poached and then having to recruit a new manager and staff in time for preseason. 

We have made 4 signings. I expect there will be 2-3 more by deadline day. 

Lately I’ve been wondering whether Maresca’s departure has damaged the club behind the scenes to a much greater extent than we perhaps realise. Whatever you think of his preferred style (personally I was a fan, but others clearly weren’t), I got the impression he brought an incredible sense of focus and clarity that the whole club, including the playing squad, bought into. It seems Cooper may be stuck between trying to not to change a winning formula and imposing his own ideas. Our pre-season performances certainly suggest that the ‘identity’ we had under Maresca has all but disintegrated. We’d better hope that Cooper somehow finds a way to create a new identity - and do it soon.

Edited 8 August by ClaphamFox

[JimJams]

But...

[Grebfromgrebland]

I just don't think we can convince anyone to come here. Our best talents probably want to leave too. Eg Alves.

 

PSR has truly put us in our place.

[moore_94]

2 hours ago, SafewayFox said:

I’m sure it’s been mentioned numerous times before but with Alves only having a year left on his contract.

 

Why would the club not at least make a statement by tying him down on a longer deal?

 

That would create a lot more excitement than the clubs awful attempts at social media to pretend everything is fine - lame videos in the pool, Coady’s odd interview with BDCR etc 

Unless the club says he will be definitely be part of the first team or going out on loan I wouldn’t blame him for not signing a new deal - he doesn’t need another season in the under 21s

 

From his very little game time in pre-season it doesn’t look like he will have much involvement in the first team, especially if we do sign a new number 10

[Claudio Fannieri]

On 06/08/2024 at 23:18, ealingfox said:

Our promotion was confirmed almost 3 and a half months ago btw

 

However in that time we managed to lose our manager, which has impacted our summer preparation, make no mistake our recruitment will have been structured around what Enzo had identified was required and Glover will have had a rake of options ready to go. 
 

The appointment of Cooper will have meant a change in direction, time needed to assess the squad and then potentially a shift in strategy and potential targets. Our plans will have been disrupted and hence why we have perhaps been a bit slow since Cooper joined the club. 

[SafewayFox]

1 hour ago, moore_94 said:

Unless the club says he will be definitely be part of the first team or going out on loan I wouldn’t blame him for not signing a new deal - he doesn’t need another season in the under 21s

 

From his very little game time in pre-season it doesn’t look like he will have much involvement in the first team, especially if we do sign a new number 10

Which is bonkers.

 

I wasn’t overly keen on Jannik and Wilf being given new deals but the rhetoric was it’s financially advantageous to do this.

 

With Alves, integrating him into our squad for the same as a minimum is the logical/simple choice surely?

[teblin]

The signings we are making seems to be a bit of no where. So maybe panicking isn’t right just yet.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Claudio Fannieri said:

However in that time we managed to lose our manager, which has impacted our summer preparation, make no mistake our recruitment will have been structured around what Enzo had identified was required and Glover will have had a rake of options ready to go. 
 

The appointment of Cooper will have meant a change in direction, time needed to assess the squad and then potentially a shift in strategy and potential targets. Our plans will have been disrupted and hence why we have perhaps been a bit slow since Cooper joined the club. 

That's part of the problem though isn't it - change of manager should not mean change of direction. The point of having a director of football is to ensure that isn't the case. If making a new appointment means having to rethink our transfer strategy and making players we signed for the previous manager suddenly surplus to requirements, that means we are doing something wrong.

 

Then again, maybe it is actually better to have the club's direction dictated by the whims of the current manager than by Jon Rudkin.

[hejammy]

Are we actually going to buy anyone else in this window? For weeks we've been reading the threads and nothing seemingly is coming from it, frankly I am a bit tired of it now. I do fear for this season to be honest. I imagine we will be getting a hammering quite a few times this season. I see the Spurs game as a heavy loss aswell. 

[Chrysalis]

On 03/08/2024 at 13:34, 5waller5 said:

This thread will quickly descend into two camps and become an argument about whether you’re a proper fan or panic merchant.

 

Before it does… My feeling is that it’s difficult to feel positive about our great club right now.

 

We seem to have no long term vision / plan / leadership, and take the easy low effort route all too often.

 

To appoint the most local out of work football manager after weeks of delay seems to summarise our lacklustre business. 
 

With little early transfer activity, the players are back to training and have burnt through the friendlies without any obvious first team signing being made.
 

We’ve only signed players in our strongest positions, have a weaker squad than we had in the league below… it’s difficult to be positive right now - expressing that will be seen as panic by some. For me it’s just another example of the grinding under-performance of our Board. 

Sums up my feelings, analysing our decision making, we seem to be to often now reacting to situations, making short term decisions, then reacting to the consequences of those short term decisions as if we didnt plan to make them, and it feels like club is just firefighting right now instead of planning ahead, and making rational decisions.

 

This is not just on player acquisitions, but also financial management, managerial decisions, and communication.

 

On top of that we even had Enzo reveal last season that despite us having almost no money and a unsuited squad, Top being totally deluded actually asked him to make us play like Manchester City, and Enzo had to set him straight on expectations, hoping Cooper has done the same, and I expect previous managers have been fighting Tops ideology as well.  There seems to be a massive over estimate of our squad's abilities from Top and a theory that these players just need the right coach to become Man City, madness.

 

Whilst signing Huth was a master stroke at the time, I am generally not a fan of signing older players who have an average record in the EPL, Huth actually had a decent record, but some signings we have been making are really bad when you consider how good our scouting system used to be, they just feel very lazy now, like we looking for people locally transfer listed that will be easy to acquire rather than unearthed gems.  Then on top of that add the incompetence in failing to get rid of the proven failures and players the manager has no interest in.  What on earth were we thinking when turned Athletico's offer for Soyuncu when Rodgers had basically disowned the player, so we paid salary for a year and lost whatever that offer was worth even if it was just a few million.

 

The obvious problem is we lack someone strong and performant at the top of the club who has a football brain, Rudkin is far too comfortable and entrenched, and I think this is contributing to bad decision again and again.

Edited 9 August by Chrysalis

[chapero82]

The problem with this club is that they never learn for their mistakes!

 

They just do the same things over and over again. 
how many times have we heard that they are too slow and reactive to transfers. 

[MadsEmil]

Seen this on our reddit forum, thought it was quite fitting

 

 

[Royston.]

Don't panic just cos we've wasted most of pre season doesn't mean we can't get 3/4 players in two weeks

[SafewayFox]

I know that I was talking about lack of transfer activity but Cooper’s lack of tactics today has made me smash the glass box on my panic button.

[Ryy]

I’m on my 3rd panic button since Palermo 

[Jobyfox]

In answer to the title I think it’s “Yes” when this thread was originally created.

 

Now it’s an unambiguous and definitive “No” 

[Lcfcwigstonblue]

Having a team worse than the one that finished the Championship is the biggest issue.

Heads should roll for that alone.

[FoxinNotts]

History tells us it’s never too soon

[LeePhilpottsBaldSpot]

Feels like we're going to struggle until we offload the dross signed in Rodgers' last 12 months.

 

Daka, Faes, Soumare, Kristiansen, Souttar etc - none are good enough, and they commanded inexplicably high transfer fees and wages.

 

Sadly I can't imagine too many offers coming in for any of them, so we're probably lumbered with them (and this situation) until they leave on Bosmans.

[Wortho]

We can’t be worse than Sheff United fgs!!! I fear we will be in the bottom 3 all season and end up relegated by March.

 

What would the transfer activity been like had Enzo stayed? I’m sure it would have been a lot different!!!

[LeePhilpottsBaldSpot]

As I get older, I tend to not get too carried away in a positive or negative way - especially in pre season. I learned my lesson after writing off Jamie Vardy as not good enough both when we signed him and then before the great escape!

 

But it is weird that we seem to really need new options at AMC and CF. But we only seem to be bringing in wingers.

 

Mavididi and Fatawu were two of the players I'd be most confident in stepping up. We need to be be able to rotate and have depth so I get buying BDR and Buonanotte.

 

But we're still seemingly linked with Asprilla, Ayew, Nelson and Zaha. (All good players - but similar in profile to what we:ve got, and you'd have thought the very limited money could be better spent elsewhere).

 

Maybe some of those I've listed are more versatile than I appreciate and could play as a 10 or centre forward, but it seems strange to be basically linked to no players other than wingers.