verlaine1979

Are you sure? It's not like Ralph has shown much faith in our youth. Smallbone and Tella have both had a handful of games since they turned 20, but I think RH is more conservative than you might think. Not youth-related, but the decision to play Long ahead of Armstrong at the tail end of the season doesn't speak of a manager who gambles on the unknown all that much.

The proposed business model of the club relies on decent scouting, so I'm taking that as a given.

Eh, I don't like the idea of missing out on high potential young players when they're available, just because we already have some mediocre crap jamming up the squad. The buy-to-sell model needs a seamless conveyor of talent to work - you can't rely on doing all the buying and selling in one window every year.

Che's finishing isn't going to improve now. Some aspects of his all-round awareness and decision making might, but he can only hit the ball hard and straight with no finesse or placement.

No chance of Hudson-Odoi surely. He'll get better loan offers than us if that's what they want, and the likes of Newcastle could blow us out of the water if they're selling.

Justified or not, the media buzz around both Wan-Bissaka and White was higher than we've seen around Walker-Peters. In the same way that Declan Rice has been declared a 100m player for a few years now. It just happens for some players and not for others, and market perceptions matter.

It's not impossible that SR have budgeted for a year of reinforcing without major sales. After all, it's much easier to get top dollar for your players after a season of good performances and positive media coverage than it is selling your crown jewels after surviving a relegation scrap. Solak sounds like he's wealthy enough to be able to bridge our debt repayments for a year (could even do it through a loan himself).

Depends - three potentially high-resale value young CBs are better than two. The Dortmund model doesn't involve only buying just as many young players as you need for the first XI - you have to have a couple of spares in case they don't work out/succession planning. Buy to sell to buy is a really precarious strategy if you're doing it on a 1 to 1 replacement basis (as we have seen the past few years). Hopefully the new owners have enough of a financial buffer to allow us to move to the buy a few to sell to buy a few model. Oh, and Elyououssi is mediocre. Was hoping he'd be on the way out.

Fair enough, 6 million is nothing in this market.

Based on what others have done in the SPL, Aribo doesn't sound like the answer to our midfield creativity problem.

Deulofeu started out at Barca before going back there.

It's a pretty decent sum to have in hand by the time you turn 19 though.

Talking about these academy midfielders reminded me of Josh McEachran. I'm pretty sure he was tipped as the best Chelsea academy player of his generation and the closest English football had come to producing its own Xavi. Now at MK Dons after a few seasons of doing very little in the Championship.

The kid only turned 16 back in March. Given a three year contract he'll not even be 20 by the time it runs out (or even 19 by the time there's only a year left and they have to sell him or lose him for nothing). Sitting on the bench once or twice a year at Saints isn't a meaningful development opportunity.

He's not going to play for either side's first team much before he turns 19/20, so it's actually a question of whether he finishes his youth career with a million quid in the bank or not. Moving on from a rich academy to first team football elsewhere when you turn 20 is an increasingly well-worn path that we've been keen to take advantage of ourselves.

Life-changing money at 16 and a move to a club that will no doubt be investing heavily in academy infrastructure over the next few years. Run the contract down until he's 19/20 then start again if he's still in demand. Sounds like he's being well-advised to me.

Presumably the financial flexibility is that the new owners are prepared to shoulder the risk of spending money on inbound transfers before it has been generated by outbound sales. If those sales don't pan out, they must be comfortable with the idea of covering the shortfall somehow (owner loan or new debt), whereas under Gao we clearly were not comfortable with that idea at all, as evidenced by the Target and Ings sales.

He's a game changer if we get a free kick in a decent position. In open play he's just a very dependable water carrier. It's emblematic of the team's creative failings that some are pinning our hopes of staying up on points won from dead ball situations.

The point remains. Players very rarely move straight from mid-table French or Turkish sides to champion's league contenders. The multi-club model could definitely work for us, but the scouting will have to be top notch.

Gems unearthed in the French and Turkish second divisions are unlikely to go straight to teams above us in the food chain.

Far too indecisive and inaccurate on the ball for a possession-based team.

Experience in baseball doesn't always equate to huge wages, whereas it almost always does in the PL unless you're bringing in someone who is over the hill, rather than experienced and still close enough to their prime to handle the physical demands of the game.

Anyone who has played a full season in a top European league is experienced enough for a club like ours. The only players with significantly more experience that we can afford will already have been proven not good enough, or we wouldn't be able to afford them.

And create. If we go into the season with Che as our No. 1, we'll need to create 10x as many chances to account for all the ones he'll sidefoot straight at the keeper.

I'm still undecided over whether I'd rather have Lemina than Diallo, but I'd take Boufal over Elyounoussi every day of the week. If the barometer of consistency is simply knowing that a player isn't going to make anything happen, what's the point?