Isegrim

That’s what Staveley said to Caulkin.

I knew someone would point to January, but it is always a very difficult time to sign top players in midseason. We did also not have any money to spend then. It would have needed a miracle to sort something out then.

It does tie in with Staveley saying they had to go because they were too involved but couldn’t stay on as it’s not in their personalities to take a back seat. Despite all truths Hope does like to sensationalise and dramatise things though. I guess the truth about things is somewhere in the middle. I do agree that forcing out Staveley never seemed wise to me. I am also not optimistic about Howe rejecting England in case he gets an offer.

It’s the first transfer window since the takeover that has to be considered a failure, but I think people are a bit overreacting especially with blaming individuals. It’s not football manager and there always more than two parties involved in negotiations including agents and players. I am pretty sure we were looking in several players, sometimes the clubs didn’t want to sell or demanding excessive fees, sometimes likely players weren’t interested or demanding excessive wages, sometimes a structure of a deal couldn’t get worked out or agents were asking excessive fees. It is easy to say that we should have been able to at least finalise one or two deals without really knowing why we failed. I do worry that people will act like spoiled brats though if performances don’t pick up and we get some poor results in the next couple of games. The atmosphere around the club could easily become quite toxic.

It’s rarely good to leave things until the last moment. But as with the transfer dealings I am unsure how much if it is really down to a lack of competence. We had to sign players knowing that would put us in a bad position in regards to psr. We do also still suffer from years of mismanagement. We don’t have saleable assets, at least none we actually want to get rid off. We also can’t force other clubs to sign our players. There is only so much you can actually do. Obviously there are players like Almiron who could get sold, but I understand the reluctance to do it without having a suitable replacement in place who will improve us. I do also think that a clubs are still reluctant to deal with us and especially do us favours. We are rich on paper and got a pretty bad reputation because of our owners. I can imagine that does dealing with other clubs still difficult, especially in England. People like Parish probably feel happy to hamper our progress as much as possible. That’s why we still get those regulations that are foremost in place to hurt us.

We probably won’t know before January 31st tbh.

As always I am amazed how different the approach to deadline day is in England and Germany.

We should have abandoned our pursuit of Guehi much earlier. That’s the main grievance I do have with our failed transfer business and does make us look foolish now with attempts coming far too late. ”Planning”

Deal already off. That’s that then.

Don’t you start another thread!

Parish played a blinder tbh. I really hope it will hurt them. Horrible cunt, cuntish club with annoying fans.

Was close ti sign for San Sebastian but pulled out of it. Mocked the speculation regarding Mallorca today. He had a very good season last year but is thought to want to stay close to his family in Munich.

How to improve your squad (technically not optically)

It’s obviously a complete failure. The question is the actual degree of fault though.

The market seems quite difficult this summer. Just from my itkledge from Stuttgart where I live. Despite qualifying for the CL they lost important players but haven’t really be able to sign adequate replacements for various reasons despite huge efforts. Even Bayern struggled despite having absolutely no problems regarding money and reputation. Their fans are livid as they only lost players, especially de Ligt, but haven’t been able to make a real statement signing. They tried to sign Tah from Leverkusen but got parished so far.

I actually don’t believe that we only concentrated on Guehi without considering other options. He looks like he was the only realistic target of a certain quality possibly available. Those players from Germany that got linked were out of our reach as much as I can gather from this side of the channel. The transfer window is a meh. Ut certainly not a fuck up

I think people are quite melodramatic. Our people certainly aren’t as stupid as some think they are. I am actually quite relaxed about our transfer business. We definitely aren’t signing players for the sake of it but to make necessary improvements. There are certainly financial restrictions and we do still have a lot of dead wood on good wages. People moan about it but you can’t force other clubs to throw money at players we don’t want anymore and who haven’t shown anything for several years. There were obviously players we were targeting but we also can’t force clubs to sell players to us or force players signing on those terms we are offering. I am quite relieved that we seem to only want to sign players we think are actual improvements for the right fees and wages. Our squad could and should be better but as we have a good manager there is no reason to doubt thaf we are good enough to try to qualify for Europe again. There are enough teams with good players who will try the same. Although I am unsure about Guehi’s quality it would gave been nice to get him for a realistic fee, but I actually don’t think he would really have lifted us to another level. I actually do think a right winger or creative midfielder would have a much bigger impact on our performances but again those players do have to be available. The transfer window looks to end rather disappointing but we are still miles away from those times when we needed improvements to stay competitive and in the league.

Signing another keeper will hopefully help us to get rid of all those petulant doylums.

Harsh but fair although I think Gemmill and Gloomy aren’t that bad.

Sadly lost the wife last night and the only reason I’m posting is to make sure none of you go through the same terrible situation. She needed a blood transfusion but her blood type was not on record and I had no idea what it was. Things deteriorated very quickly and I could only hold Mrs CT’s hand and say goodbye. I will never forget how supportive she has always been. Even as she was fading away, she kept on whispering to me, “Be positive, be positive”. Summed my wife up, always thinking of others.

They were apparently not impressed by him playing the trumpet.

“All I was missing was just another middle finger and we would have won.”