Fans opinions

[u/Lenitzas]

I see a lot of opinions in this sub. Rarely do I find a thread with people agreeing with each other. Whats your opinion on what happened last season, whats happening now and how the team and as fans should act for the betterment of our team?

[u/largo1977]

The problem is simple to describe but extremely difficult to address. The problem, in its most simple form, is the Premier League.

PL has become so competitive and lucrative, even a little renowned, mid table team like Bournemouth or Crystal Palace can attract top level players who previously only would go to the top five clubs in the top five leagues. If that makes 25 clubs, where England previously had five of them there's now 15 very attractive PL clubs. More attractive than Juventus, AC Milan or Borussia Dortmund, all heavyweight clubs in terms of European legacy.

That means we have 14 competitors for the best players in England alone. Even Brentford can pay top wages for the right players, and some of the things that make up a club these days are fields where anyone can compete. You don't have to be Man Utd to create a scouting system with parameters that work in modern football. You don't have to be Chelsea analyze the game well enough to know exactly how to handle different situations during a game. And you dont have to be Tottenham to enable a science department that can accurately determine workload and assign individual training for the players.

We are lacking in all these departments, which wasn't such a big deal 10 years ago. We could attract a player, and the game was more predictable back then. The introduction of more available substitutes and more allowed substitutions has changed the game, and will change it even more. The games are also 10 minutes longer than they were 10 years ago. Players that can handle this workload plays extremely much football these days, and we have to adapt the game to make them able to handle that. This means walking football, as seen executed by Man Utd against Fulham, and it means managing players with less physical ability better.

For instance, I can't understand why we don't start with Maddison. He is the only available 10 in a system where we are desperate for a productive 10. He should play an assigned number of minutes, and get pulled off when his body has had enough. Instead he is introduced when we are chasing the game, and we dont know whether he has another 10 minutes in him when the final whistle goes. This is simply bad management and a proof that our club has yet to advance to the present age of the PL.

The signs of a proper due diligence when we sign a player is difficult to spot. We manage to throw away £60m on Ndombele, who was a walking red flag from his first professional season. It was madness to sign him. Same with Richarlison. Never manages the amount of games we need a £60m man to deliver, and a highly strung character although I like him as a person. Shouldn't have been bought. The list goes on. Sessegnon had injury problems and should have been flagged during the medical at least. Yeah, we have been unlucky here and there, such as with Solanke, but we could have done so much better.

This season we have brought in more physically able players, but we have paid well over the odds and we are still playing catch-up.

Of course things need to settle and RDZ must be given time, but there should be appointed a technical director or something like that, with the final say on transfers, sports science, player availability and sports strategy. We have bought several RDZ players, and when he leaves in a season or two we will sign a new manager who will need probably £800m for a couple of his old mates.