hypochondriac

I just think losing very experienced and well liked players from our already young and inexperienced squad is not necessarily positive.

So much for the poster on here who was convinced that Alcaraz was staying due to big willy...

Willy has gone to Leicester? Hmm not sure this is a good thing.

You can just tell that the players are really going to respect him more when he can actually do what he is asking them to do (and by the looks of things be one of the best at doing it!) it's a really great start to changing the mentality of the team. I quite like him and hope he is a success.

I know it could all be for nothing, but I have to say I'm absolutely loving the clips of him being involved in training. It's beautiful.

At least I got that bit right.

I think that the alternative to him in the squad at the time would have done worse than he did with the little opportunity he had therefore he improved the squad

Why are you replying to me like I'm endorsing us buying squad players and no one else? I don't agree with the philosophy and the club have said it was a mistake.

Over the entirety of the season yes because he didn't play but he had a positive impact at the start of the season when he was in the team. It's hardly his fault if the managerial geniuses that are Selles and Jones prefer to play Elyounoussi.

He showed he had a bit about him in early games. He was then dropped entirely in place of solid and shot players through no fualt of his own. He had very little impact in truth. He was a young squad player brought in to gain a season of experience, hopefully improve over time and then be sold on for a profit.

Ridiculous comment.

Yes. Because he was a squad player.

What evidence do you have that he was being signed as a starter? At 7 million I would say he was very much a squad player, one that woukd show enough quality that we could flog him in a few years for a profit (something that could still happen)

There's no evidence that we used up funds on youth prospects which prevented us from buying experienced players. Given our spending in January, we clearly had funds, our experienced buys (Gakpo, martinez) turned us down.

Yeah he was shit. Failing to sign the right experienced players (or not signing any) was the issue.

So if we'd done what we should have done and brought in some experience alongside Edozie whilst he learnt his craft last season, would you still be saying he was signed to deliver in his first season in the Premier league? His signing was not the problem, failing to sign others of a different profile so we're forced to be overly reliant on the young talent was the issue.

I'm not sure you'll find anyone arguing that we shouldn't have signed a decent striker last summer (least of all me since I was banging on about it on here despite the likes of Lighthouse trying to tell me that Mara had been our striker signing.)

I don't think there's any evidence that we weren't prepared to spend more on a striker. In fact the evidence suggests the opposite.

Yes but it may not have been a binary choice between the two.

So the issue wasn't with Edozie last year then, it was with the failure of our more experienced players to deliver.

It's not great expense though. Buying a more experienced version of some of these players would be an obscene cost that we couldn't afford.

Great to see all these links coming in suddenly. Seems like we are getting to work now finally. I expect we will see a lot of movement next week.

Salisu and ABK are leaving.

Exactly. It depends what you mean by failure. I don't think he was ever signed last year to be a first team regular.

I couldn't disagree more. We badly need a striker.