Farmer Saint

Wow, more Championship quality players to complement the current Championship contingent. No thanks.

I don't see the smiley indicating that this is a joke?

The issue with non-free agents is perhaps PSR - let's say it costs £6m to get rid of Martin and his backroom staff, we then have to spend the same to bring in a new lot and this may take us over our PSR threshold for this year.

I think the issue is I'm not sure any of those names are an improvement - it's an awful list of Managers who have managed in the PL but with little success. I would be more confident of getting re-promoted with Martin than any of them and none of them are keeping us up imo.

Fucking hell 🤣🤣🤣🤣

But who would be interested that has decent PL or top division experience? There is every chance that we can't afford to pay out someone's contract and pay off the current team due to PSR restrictions, so may need to be a free agent.

Not exactly known for being able to coach a defence, but he's probably better than what we have now.

Not sure we'd still be favourites for relegation if we did, but the choice wasn't buying 3 or 4 players for £30-40m and £100k PW, it was buying a couple of players at £30-40m and £100k PW, and not purchase anyone else this Summer. PSR meant it was not possible, so we had to go shallow on fees and wages as we had such a shite team to start the season. What would the team be without Ramsdale, Downes, THB, Sugawara, Archer, Fernandes. Scarily bad for the PL. I mean, it's bad now for the PL but if we only had Rutter and Smith-Rowe for example...

I put a winky smiley to show I was joking...

It's insight like that that makes you such a valued member of the Forum 😉

I don't really care - in general I would expect us to score a penalty. Yes, we missed our last one, but it seems odd that this is the hill you're looking to die on.

Yes, I would expect us to score a penalty.

Mainly because it's very unlikely we lose if the ref hadn't fucked up - we weren't losing from 3-1 up, and it's unlikely that we would have conceded the penalty and got Fraser sent off.

I have been told that both Potter and Moyes were sounded out by SR in the last 2 weeks and are not interested.

Could say the same about Martin tbh...but to me the fact that Kompany decided against signing him for Burnley, and the way he has started this season, it points towards him not being good enough. If he improves then great, but I'm not sure I see it myself.

That may be true, I agree - our central defenders are jank - but I am erring on the side of caution that he is just not that good, as we've only seen him be not that good in the PL.

We were an established Premier League team, with a decent(ish) quality squad. Hassenhuttl didn't come out of nowhere - he finished 2nd in the Bundesliga with a newly promoted Leipzig, played CL football and then finished 6th the following season. That calibre of Manager is not coming to us now.

It's to do with not wanting to ruin their reputation by taking us down (as OPTA and the betting markets outlined before the season we are judged to have the worst team in the League) as opposed to SR denoting a style of play - remember SR brought in Jones who certainly did not play that way.

Not sure anyone is going to buy THB - doesn't look PL quality tbh.

Irrelevant that we're 6th biggest spenders in a Summer where PSR has hit clubs hard - what was the investment profile of those players? Were they high value high wage older established players, or low value, low wage young players? How many players did we buy that look like players ready for getting relegated again (Wood, Edwards etc)? Ramsdale was mid value, high wage, but has a relegation release clause and we can recoup the money for him. As said it is only a theory, but the existence of a 10 year plan and is not being worried about getting relegated certainly makes me think this is the strategy.

All I took from those hashtags was titshow.

Moyes isn't interested - turned our enquiry down last week (as did Potter).

I don't think it's the plan per se, more that the investment profile means that it doesn't particularly matter which division we're doing it in if we are confident of getting out of the Championship within 3 years.

"Probably" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

3 years, but no as you're investment is far smaller - an extra £20m per player purchased and £50k PW per player is huge amounts.