Hit:Miss Ratio | Vital Football

Hit:Miss Ratio

C

Critical_Spur

Vital Football Hero
Out of 4 signings last summer only Wanyama was a hit, i.e., 1:4. Second in the league, would fans be happy with 1:2 or 2:3? To kick on from last season, we really need to get better returns. We have been linked several big name + costly options and most, if not all, have found another club, not only matching the cost, but probably offering the going salary. We now seem to be linked with 19-23 age group players, most of whom I would see as potential, with quoted buys at 10 to 20 mill. The 19 yr old kid from S America is creating a bit of a stir on social media, but is that where we want to be spending 10 mill as we did with N'Jie and then N'Koudou? Personally I'd rather see the likes of Barkley and Kovacic, a couple of 25 mil players that can actually challenge the 1st teamers and make the academy lads work even harder to break through. To me, the latter type of signings will produce a better combined effect than another 4x'potential' cheapo options. If we are considering the 'potential' route, then I'd rather we didn't bother and stick with promoting 'one of our owns' as they should already be tuned to Poch's way.
 
Janssen - unknown
Wanyama - excellent
N'Koudou - Unknown but looks promising
Sissoko - fill in the blank

1 dud that was an overager based on our typical buying patterns.

I think we are doing quite well. At least 2 out of 4 with the possibility of 3 out of 4.
 
Critical_Spur - 10/7/2017 21:39

Out of 4 signings last summer only Wanyama was a hit, i.e., 1:4. Second in the league, would fans be happy with 1:2 or 2:3? To kick on from last season, we really need to get better returns. We have been linked several big name + costly options and most, if not all, have found another club, not only matching the cost, but probably offering the going salary. We now seem to be linked with 19-23 age group players, most of whom I would see as potential, with quoted buys at 10 to 20 mill. The 19 yr old kid from S America is creating a bit of a stir on social media, but is that where we want to be spending 10 mill as we did with N'Jie and then N'Koudou? Personally I'd rather see the likes of Barkley and Kovacic, a couple of 25 mil players that can actually challenge the 1st teamers and make the academy lads work even harder to break through. To me, the latter type of signings will produce a better combined effect than another 4x'potential' cheapo options. If we are considering the 'potential' route, then I'd rather we didn't bother and stick with promoting 'one of our owns' as they should already be tuned to Poch's way.
Click to expand...



Good point about promoting up rather than 10 mil punts in the transfer market.

As for Barkley and anyone else of that ridiculous 40/ 50 mil price tag, all they are are overpriced PL silly money garbage.

A useless , brainless mug like Barkley can only ever hope to improve by playing week in and week out, something he couldn't even manage for a crap team like Everton last season, so he would have no hope of breaking into our first team.

But he will still earn a mega living from the game for being crap, while Sky and BT wonder why punters stream for free rather than pay their exorbitant prices, which makes crap players like Barkely multi millionaires on one contract.

The whole PL money bubble will come crashing down one day soon, the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned.
 
Big Chiv, "The whole PL money bubble will come crashing down one day soon, the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned."

That would be my wish. However, I think a super league will be the next big thing before the saturation point. Sky and BT revenues will continue to drive this for another decade imo. There's also a big divide between the top and bottom teams and you'd see many reliant on PL related money will go to the wall.

On topic, seeing we want circa 20 mill for Wimmer, Walker worth 50 mill, Siggy at 50 mill. Based on that, 10-15 mill can only buy you potential. Dele @ 5 mill was an exception.
 
Would rather take a punt on a kid in a lower league for a lower fee than spend 40-50m on players like Siggy and Barkley.
 
Look at how our current squad was built over the last 5 years

Firstly, go back to 12/13 and you will see we bought Lloris, Dembele, Vertonghen and you will find that we also bought Gylfi, Adebayor, Dempsey, Holtby and Fryers. 3 out of 8 in today's squad and we never should have sold Gylfi.

Then go forward a year and we bought the famous 7 - Chiriches, Paulinho, Capoue, Chadli, Eriksen, Lamela and Soldado. We have 2 out of 7 that are part of this current squad.

Roll forward a year and we bought Davies, Vorm, Dier, Yedlin, Fazio, Stambouli, Alli....4 out of 7 are key members of our squad.

In 15/16 we bought Trippier, Wimmer, Toby, N'Jie, Son......4 out of 5.

In 16/17 we bought Wanyama, Sissoko, Janssen and N'Koudou. Obviously all part of the squad but with different successes.

Then you add homegrown Rose, Kane, Winks, Onomah and Walker (bought 2009) and you realise that we bought around 30 players in 5 years to get to what we have today. On the surface, it looks like we have about a 50% success rate in the transfer window. However, when you look at the 50% success it far outweighs the failures. We've also managed to sell Townsend, Mason, Bentaleb, Caulker, Pritchard etc for way more than we've lost on the 50% of failures. That's not even mentioning Gareth Bale :-)

It's all about what we do now though in this window and so far it's too quiet !!!
 
There is one other very relevant and critical factor that isn't being discusssed here. The fact that our entire talent ID group has been replaced. The stats we are looking at are from the old set up. Not what we have now. Whether or not the new people will yield better results remains to be seen.

 
Our success rate probably isn't that different to many clubs - better than a lot but nowhere near good enough to be as complacent as some are.

During Porky's reign we have shifted a lot of players and bought in a lot more, but scarce few have claimed a first-team place. That I read on our websites that the successes were bought by Porky and the failures bought by Levy, makes me laugh a lot at the blindness some have. Two more points on our recruiting;

1. why is this mantra that we will ONLY buy a player that we can inprove and / or who will have a good re-sale, still being trotted out? - the Sissoko purchase proves it wrong.
2. why have we combed the world and spunked £10-20m at a time on emerging talent (lets' think the N' twins as examples) that is absolutley no better than what the Academy is producing? All down to Mitchell apparently, but didn't Levy personally oversee a re-vamp of the scouting / recruitment department that saw Porky recommending Mitchell?
 
Bald Archie, the other thing that puzzles me is the fact we are supposed to have scouts and a whole set up that's supposed to be scouring the universe throughout the season. (Though the current scout set up had a musical chairs session last season). The points I really wanted to make are that, why if we have scouted some players for such a long time, are deals done at almost at the last minute? Which make me believe Sissoko was never a target and we either got suckered by the hype at the last minute or desperation kicked in. Then, for example, I hear that we MAY be interested in Iheanacho as a part-ex deal with City. If that were to be the case, there is no way he's been on our radar nor scouted by us, but more an opportunist option. What happens in such case, they look at youtube video at the last minute? Of course, Levy meddling with negotiations never helps!. It's also fair for me balance my own argument....VdV was a last minute deal....an exception to the rule imo.
 
Muttley, If we were in Southampton's position, I'd have no qualms with our success/failure ratio. I'd also have no issue with making 4 x 10 mill signings and hope one comes good. But we are on the up and cannot rely on that scenario....it is too risky. A couple of key injuries and we'd be snookered seeing that other 'seasoned' teams are doing all they can to regain their status. Yes, any signing carries a risk but my main point is that for us to at least maintain status quo, we are relying on another full throttle season with the same players and the depth issue needs to be addressed with quality than quantity....leave the potential label at the academy's door.
 
VDV was a good exception for sure Critical!

I suspect how we go about recruiting is this - there are three claws, one is the scouting network that may recomend talent it comes across, and also that which it is told to look at, the second claw is the manager who says who he is interested in / what his need is and feeds this to the first claw. The third claw is the one holding the money who is Levy and is working to financial (not football) targets set by Lewis.

The first two claws produce a talent list ranked in order of priority and gives to claw three. That claw then makes desultory bids for all of the targets, without any form of prioritisation and only looking at spending low money. Most of the bids are ignored, and the target is sold to the club that really wanted the player - that might be us occassionaly. Claw three then goes down to the next on the list and ups the bid slightly, and waits to see what happens. By the end of the window adesperate club accepts our offer which the claw reduces further, whilt at the same time low-balling opportunistic bids for anyone else that has popped up in the window and made 'news' but for which no deal has been struck and whoo wasn't ever on the list given to him.

As there is no clear pursuit of the ideal football target that the team needs, we get are players who were none of claw one and two's first choice.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.