Transfer Talk Topic

[Mark Kelly]

6 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

Am I alone in thinking there must be a much cheaper alternative out there? 

Christ, north of 60m for a bloke who has been in the PL a season, who cost 5m 18 months ago seems barmy.

 

Absolutely , this is what our expensively assembled procurement team should be looking at 

[Bison]

11 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

Am I alone in thinking there must be a much cheaper alternative out there? 

Christ, north of 60m for a bloke who has been in the PL a season, who cost 5m 18 months ago seems barmy.

Arsenal are desperate for different reasons:

[paulw66]

7 hours ago, Bison said:

Arsenal are desperate for different reasons:

Can you imagine how it will look to his club, and indeed the PL, if The Player is found guilty, and has been allowed to play for a whole season as though nothing happened?

Edited January 27, 2023 by My Blood Is Blue
Removing references to specific name and club

[ROTG]

39 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

Am I alone in thinking there must be a much cheaper alternative out there? 

Christ, north of 60m for a bloke who has been in the PL a season, who cost 5m 18 months ago seems barmy.

 

Absolutely. 

TB recruitment empire seem more akin to the recruitment bloke Everton hired and spent £50m on sigurosson and over the top fees mid table players and unknowns from Europe. 

[thevelourfog]

7 hours ago, paulw66 said:

Can you imagine how it will look to his club, and indeed the PL, if The Player is found guilty, and has been allowed to play for a whole season as though nothing happened?

The club are an absolute disgrace for continuing to play him. Say what you want about United or City, but they have acted as any competent, public-facing organisation should on Mendy and Greenwood. What the club have done, that there appears to have been so little dissent from their supporters, and that they've had such little criticism beggars belief.

Chelsea would have had my ST back in the post.

[paulw66]

59 minutes ago, ROTG said:

Absolutely. 

TB recruitment empire seem more akin to the recruitment bloke Everton hired and spent £50m on sigurosson and over the top fees mid table players and unknowns from Europe. 

Can you not see the contradiction here?

If we'd had signed this guy for 5m, you'd probably moan that we bought some "unknown from Europe"

Now you have an issue with us wanting to buy him, now that he is known.

Really is complaining about whichever way suits your argument. New forum, same old......... 

[McCreadie]

3 hours ago, ROTG said:

Absolutely. 

TB recruitment empire seem more akin to the recruitment bloke Everton hired and spent £50m on sigurosson and over the top fees mid table players and unknowns from Europe. 

Er you seem to be missing the bit where "TB recruitment empire" are the ones who found Caceido in the first place and bought him for £5m...

[ROTG]

2 hours ago, paulw66 said:

Can you not see the contradiction here?

If we'd had signed this guy for 5m, you'd probably moan that we bought some "unknown from Europe"

Now you have an issue with us wanting to buy him, now that he is known.

Really is complaining about whichever way suits your argument. New forum, same old......... 

no argument from me just an opinion. Maybe you can enlighten me on the players signed under the TB regime that have improved the squad. 
 

 

[ROTG]

22 minutes ago, McCreadie said:

Er you seem to be missing the bit where "TB recruitment empire" are the ones who found Caceido in the first place and bought him for £5m...

I go back to Everton

Walsh scouted obscure players such as Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy and N'Golo Kanté for Leicester, and their contribution to the club's success in the 2015–16 season ostensibly led Arsenal to express an interest for his services. He had a £1 million release clause written into his contract.[5] On 8 May 2016, a few days after the club secured their maiden Premier League title, both Walsh and assistant manager Craig Shakespeare agreed to extend their contracts with Leicester City.[1]

On 21 July 2016, he returned to his native North West England, joining Everton as Director of Football, signed by their new majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri.[6]

In November 2017, Walsh's job was reported as under pressure. Everton had spent £150 million on new players over the summer but found themselves in danger of relegation and were eliminated from the UEFA Europa League.[7] In addition to the expensive players that Everton signed,

 

although some are successful at with limited funds, doesn’t mean they are guaranteed to be successful when given an unlimited budget to play with. 

Edited January 27, 2023 by ROTG

[Mark Kelly]

38 minutes ago, McCreadie said:

Er you seem to be missing the bit where "TB recruitment empire" are the ones who found Caceido in the first place and bought him for £5m...

You're back ! Brilliant !

[Bison]

4 hours ago, paulw66 said:

Can you imagine how it will look to Arsenal, and indeed the PL, if Partey is found guilty, and has been allowed to play for a whole season as though nothing happened?

It's bizarre how there's such little being said about this situation.

@ROTG I read a really interesting piece today on a study done in the Netherlands involving 100 scouts that found that there was hardly any consensus amongst them when rating players.

Here's the key bit from the study:

Quote

According to Jon Cotterill, the author of Anatomy Of A Football Scout: An In-Depth Look At Player Recruitment, the method and format of a player report are usually left up to the scout. “Clubs rarely do it, which is really unfortunate, but one club was good enough to send me a one-page template,” he said. “They had an A, B, C, D system, and then they had a guide that said A means this, B means that…”

Based on the studies of hiring managers, Bergkamp believed that giving scouts a structured scorecard like the one described above would make their player assessments more reliable than scouts who used a holistic, intuitive method. Working with a team of researchers from the University of Groningen in his homeland, Bergkamp recruited about a hundred scouts and coaches affiliated with the Dutch Football Association and professional clubs to participate in a study that, he hoped, would point to a better way to scout.

The professional raters were asked to imagine they were trying to find a young full-back for a mid-table club in the Eredivisie (Dutch football’s top division). They would watch half an hour of Wyscout clips of one random player from a pool of 25, rate his performances and make a prediction about how he would develop.

Some of the raters were simply asked to grade the player’s overall performance in the clips they watched on a seven-point scale. Others were given a list of eight tasks relevant to the full-back position, such as whether the player was “available to stop the counter, apply pressure, and retain compactness” during defensive transitions. Raters in this structured group graded the player on each task, then gave their overall score just like the unstructured group.

When his team analyzed the scores, Bergkamp was taken aback by what they showed. “‘Surprising’ is the word, I would say,” he said, when asked to describe the results.

Raters who gave only an overall score could barely agree with one another on how well a player had performed, as the researchers might have expected. But the grades from the group that used a carefully designed scorecard disagreed even more. Even if you ignored the second group’s overall ratings and averaged their eight specific task scores together instead, there was little consensus among the scouts on what they had seen.

 

[paulw66]

32 minutes ago, ROTG said:

no argument from me just an opinion. Maybe you can enlighten me on the players signed under the TB regime that have improved the squad. 
 

 

Well, let's break the signings down.

Slonina, Hutchinson, Chukwemeka, Casadei were all signed for the future, not for 2022/23

Then there are those who have signed in January, who are yet to start a game, namely Mudryk, Fofana II, Modueke and Santos, so I'll reserve judgement in all cases if that's ok.

Badisahile, also signed in January has only started two games, and we have had two clean sheets. A good start, but too early to call a success or failure. 

Then you have two loan signings, Zakaria and Felix. Zakaria has done well given the chance, and Felix looked our best player in his one game until the red card. 

So that leaves the summer signings;

PEA - waste of time

Koulibaliy - hugely disappointing

Fofana - been injured. Not blaming the recruitment team there

Cucurella - again disappointing, but I'll reserve judgement as Potter has indicated some off the field problems, and he seemed to turn a corner at Anfield.

Sterling - our best attacker until injury (albeit with modest competition)

 

Overall, 2 failures, and the rest all TBC.  In the summer we needed some sticky plaster to make up for the outgoing Rudiger and Christensen, but overall I am fully behind the idea of signing players U23, which bar 3, they have been. 

I am not going to pass judgement on any of these young players until they have had a fair crack.

 

[Bison]

@paulw66 Just to add, none of the new recruitment directors/analysts were around for the summer window.

Macaulay joined in September with Potter. Winstanley and Vivel were appointed in November and December respectively. Laurence Stewart (from Monaco) and Joe Shields (ex Man City and Southampton) are both due to join Chelsea in February. 

If I'm not mistaken both Caseaei and Chukwuemeka were recommended by Neil Bath.

Our transfers in January have been nothing like what happened in the summer thankfully.

[Bob Singleton]

55 minutes ago, Bison said:

It's bizarre how there's such little being said about this situation.

 

Because it's sub judice.  A newspaper can report a player being investigated, having bail extended, etc., but they can't mention the club they play for, let alone the player's name.

Whilst it seems some fans have worked out who the player is, mentioning his name here could technically get this forum taken down... just as it has got going again!

[RDCW]

1 hour ago, Bison said:

It's bizarre how there's such little being said about this situation.

@ROTG I read a really interesting piece today on a study done in the Netherlands involving 100 scouts that found that there was hardly any consensus amongst them when rating players.

Here's the key bit from the study:

 

That's really interesting and pretty much what most of us would have predicted! It appears that scouting needs the eye of an artist more than the slide rule of a scientist and that great artists are mercurial and rare!

[paulw66]

1 hour ago, Bison said:

@paulw66 Just to add, none of the new recruitment directors/analysts were around for the summer window.

Macaulay joined in September with Potter. Winstanley and Vivel were appointed in November and December respectively. Laurence Stewart (from Monaco) and Joe Shields (ex Man City and Southampton) are both due to join Chelsea in February. 

If I'm not mistaken both Caseaei and Chukwuemeka were recommended by Neil Bath.

Our transfers in January have been nothing like what happened in the summer thankfully.

Yup, good point. The January ones seem exciting.

[My Blood Is Blue]

2 hours ago, Bob Singleton said:

Because it's sub judice.  A newspaper can report a player being investigated, having bail extended, etc., but they can't mention the club they play for, let alone the player's name.

Whilst it seems some fans have worked out who the player is, mentioning his name here could technically get this forum taken down... just as it has got going again!

Bob is right, let’s please refrain from naming any individual or the club we believe he plays for.

Thanks

[Blue27]

Seeing some talk about a Malo Gusto agreement for a summer transfer.

Also Gordon to Newcastle will keep the folks around here happy 😆

[My Blood Is Blue]

15 minutes ago, Blue27 said:

Seeing some talk about a Malo Gusto agreement for a summer transfer.

Also Gordon to Newcastle will keep the folks around here happy 😆

Yep, sounds like Gusto having a medical tomorrow and then joining in the summer. I don’t know much about him, but from the bits I’ve read and seen, seems like another very good young talent. 

[Ham]

This is odd. 

[Ham]

27 minutes ago, Ham said:

This is odd. 

Hmmmmm......

[Bob Singleton]

31 minutes ago, Ham said:

This is odd. 

If you take into account that English isn't his first language, this looks like a "please let me move now" sort of plea to Brighton.

[Bob Singleton]

1 hour ago, My Blood Is Blue said:

Yep, sounds like Gusto having a medical tomorrow and then joining in the summer. I don’t know much about him, but from the bits I’ve read and seen, seems like another very good young talent. 

Unlike Reece James, he's not built like a tank... but in other respects he's very much like him. A more than decent defender, quick, good cross and a decent finish. Ideal cover for him, but also good enough to push him, too.

[Ham]

7 minutes ago, Bob Singleton said:

If you take into account that English isn't his first language, this looks like a "please let me move now" sort of plea to Brighton.

This was clearly written by his new Agent. 

[xceleryx]

1 hour ago, My Blood Is Blue said:

Yep, sounds like Gusto having a medical tomorrow and then joining in the summer. I don’t know much about him, but from the bits I’ve read and seen, seems like another very good young talent. 

From what I've read and heard he seems very good in possession and going forward - high pass completion rates across all ranges, likes a cross, gets the ball into the box frequently, composed under pressure, technically sound, ranks highly in key passing statistics. Basically all the good things you want in a modern attacking fullback. Defensively though he's been said to be a little more suspect and is virtually a non-factor in the air (being 5'10" probably doesn't help this either). 

As long as he's not a complete sieve defensively, he should be able to give us the attacking output we lack whenever Reece James isn't in the side. I think that's arguably the most important aspect to this deal and will help retain some degree of balance.