Claudius wrote:
Our ownership has been inept. We constantly throw away the chance to make to make money. We can allegedly make money on Nketiah now and could’ve made money on AMN last summer. Together that could be £40-45m. I bet together they never sell for more than that in the future. We are poor at timing sales and creating a market for our players. We will also lose Xhaka, Laca and Mustafi for probably a combined £30-40m at best when we should’ve made 2-3x that by selling them a lot earlier. Ozil, Sanchez, Ramsey. Just value evaporating everywhere.
The purchase are a different story. They’re only wasteful because there is no overall plan. I highly doubt that this Garlick solves this. It will probably be more dicking around as we have been since Law took over from Dein
It's not just KSE & I mostly blame AW for his willingness to compromise on everything about our transfers other than technical ability and his philosophy regarding contracts and wages.
We can agree the fundamental difference to senior squad player trading between a big6/UCL club and the rest is primarily football ambition v revenue streams. CFC are slightly different in they have used player trading outside their senior squad to replace Abramovich's revenue to comply with FFP. Big6 will look to build in order to win - LFC, MC & CFC being typical. The 'rest' will sell to build towards becoming established in UEFA as their priority in the short term, and then adjust towards looking to win as the opportunities present.
The 'issue' at AFC is we are neither one thing nor the other because of AW's stated approach to give players 3 seasons (to adapt to new positions or roles) before he would make a decision on their suitability, let alone their future. Similarly he had said he would not make any decision on a player's future until they had turned 23, as this was when in his opinion he considered players to be fully developed technically and physically, and able to repay selection on merit. So far as market activity went he would always prioritise keeping what he had & internal options to positions/roles. He would only look to the market for players who were available and those to improve the quality as starting players, or as bench options to provide experience and/or depth.
The next core issue regarding our recruiting/trading is it is also incomplete, and as such it means we do not have a team that is balanced, let alone fit for purpose in terms of quality re top4/UCL. IMO we have not have a team that has been fit for purpose / balanced since 07/08. Again this was part of AW's philosophy regarding the composition of both the team and the 25 man squad, and his ideology to develop players via playing time so as to develop player intuition amongst the team.
All of this worked for the most part until the latter years of his tenure after the TV deals. The issue then was the strategy didn't change - just the price/cost of the players we signed in terms of fees and wages.
The current issue is we have not as yet replaced AW's strategies/policy/philosophy, and will continue on this cycle until such time as the club determines what it wants - not just some vague outline but also provides the drive in terms of KERs & KPIs, let alone financial support in relation to time frames.
