S-Clarke

I totally agree, I think we are in the league by luck if I'm honest. I don't quite know how we managed to stay in it given the complete mess of recruitment we made post VVD. I think this is the first summer the shackles seem a little bit looser though, fair enough we're not going above 10/15m but we're spreading that across a lot of positions rather than spending an entire chunk of the budget on one. There are so many clubs who have been bitten by their record signings - Lukaku, Pogba, NDombele, Sigurdson, Haller, Carillo....! The list goes on. Decent scouting could have probably got you someone 3 times cheaper than any of those and they'd have made more impact.

The general trend is that the more you spend, the more successful you are. But there are also some big anomalies in that mix which means its sensible to apply a sense of caution, looking at ourselves and Everton as two examples. Everton spent half a billion on new players and ended up almost getting relegated, so they spent that to make their team worse. We spent over £90m on players we had to give away for free, whilst also making our team worse. So whilst spending money can get you moving up the table, it only really happens if your scouting is right and aligned. If you have a strong DoF, strong recruitment team, joined up philosophy etc then it works - but if you don't, you can easily overspend on players that don't fit the club and get little return back. Equally, the strong DoF/Recruitment team may be able to see value transfers that others overlook for the more flashy big fees.

Yeah I remember he was an example of being a truly standout player in the MLS, his assist records were crazy if I remember. Other players who have stormed the MLS is a certain BWP.......nothing more than a mid to lower Championship player in this country. (although he may have developed over there to be fair to him)

Broja is kind of an example of what we're trying to do as a club, sign talented somewhat 'unproven' players, give them a platform and allow them to go onto bigger and better in a year or two. So I never saw it as realistic we could sign him, I think we'd done our job with Broja and we gave him that window to showcase himself. I think Sports Republic have now given us the opportunity to permanently sign these sort of young players, rather than having to loan them, so we actually get some financial benefit at the end of it should they do well.

The only one I can think of doing as such is Miguel Almirion, fairly sure he came from the MLS straight to Newcastle. He hasn't been 'amazing' for them, but far from terrible. (He always seems to score against us, but then who doesn't)

£25-30m is a huge amount of money on someone who in the main is still what I'd class as an inexperienced/unproven player. I think that fee is paying for the potential as he clearly has a ton of it and will become top class - but for that fee I'd expect someone a tiny bit more experienced. Unless any buy-back is in the region of £60m then it's a poor deal for West Ham. I'd 'hope' our scouting is more than good enough to find a player who can score us 9/10 goals and is in and around the £10-15m mark. Basically we missed a trick not signing Broja last summer, I think we probably wanted to but we had no money (I reckon we'd have got him for £10-15m).

That's a quote from the video just put up on Youtube. He was also asked if a striker is often the 'hardest' one to bring in, and Ralph says yes if we're talking about money!

I don't think this debate is about what country we should copy, it's about making what we have better and I think it's pretty obvious what we can do to make it better. There are a lot of good things about our model and why countries do look envious at it, but it also creates it's own problems in terms of bloated organisations and a lack of accountability. As I said above, ICB's are a sign that more joined up care is in the thinking again as immediately it has removed a ton of duplication of roles and services done by commissioners. Still a lot of work to do, but I think the next 18 months - 2 years will see some fundamental changes to the way the 'back office' commissioning arms of the NHS is run, and not before time imo. Until that side is sorted out, care will always suffer.

I don't think people are saying ''cut all non-clinical staff'', but I think there needs to be a realisation that there is simply too much middle management and a hell of a lot of duplication. That isn't cheap to fund and that money could be directed elsewhere. Read up on CSU's, NHS funded organisations packed to the rafters with Band 8a and above management (50k+ salaries) and tell me exactly what their purpose is, and why their jobs cannot be done by an 'ICB' as it is now? (or a CCG back in the day). There is a need for middle managers and non-clinical staff, absolutely, but there is simply too much as of today - but I'm somewhat hopeful, maybe naively, that ICB's will be the start of some sense being re-applied by removing some of that duplication. (CCG's were a ridiculous duplication at the time)

To be honest the only clubs who can sign proven PL players are the likes of Spurs, Arsenal, Man Utd, City, Chelsea etc. The 'PL' experience comes with a premium which is usually in excess of £35m. The only other way we can sign 'PL' experience is to get some older players at the end of their careers, like Ben Mee or Theo - but less said about that approach the better. Our only option is to sign younger players who we can then provide PL experience to, after which we can then ask for the premium when clubs come sniffing. That's our place, that's not going to change.

I've never been able to work out how the hell Martin Braithwaite ever became a Barcelona player, it's unreal.

It's clear that if we wanted to, we have the money to put down £25-30m on a player. But because we have so much to do (full back, goal keeper, cb, cm, number 10's, striker etc) we cannot afford to use an enormous chunk of our budget on just one position. If we get ourselves a settled team in a year that doesn't require as much work, then we will probably break out transfer record. We need to get ourselves a decent team first though.

This is my argument. If it was Winks and still money for a striker It wouldn't be too bad, but I just don't think we have the money for both? Unless we are actually loaded.

The prob with GP's, is whilst they brand themselves NHS, they are just private companies in their own right and run themselves exactly as they want. They are bound to certain rules stipulated by NHSE/CCG's, but in the main the running processes they employ are individually managed. That's why responses from different GP's vary so much. They also do what they want with their budgets, so they can spend money on phone systems if they want to without being accountable to anyone.

This is true, once you can 'get' to where you need to get to the care is pretty good. But it's getting the referral, getting seen, the delays, waiting lists etc - that's the problem. And that all steams from cruddy management. Nothing wrong with the care in the NHS, there's just too much stopping people getting the right access.

The articles I saw a few months ago were talking of £20-25m, which would be horrible. Their stance may have changed now.

I guess the negativity around Winks is a little more subdued because we signed Lavia, so he won't be our only midfield signing. Plus, whilst he's pretty average, it's easy to say that he's better than Diallo and certainly has more experience at this level than Diallo. My only concern would be the fee. The priority, in my eyes, needs to be a striker - that's where our budget needs to go. If we spend £20m on Winks and miss out on a striker then we've done it wrong.

It's a half way house at the moment, parts are being privatised by stealth and parts aren't. Nothing is joined up in the middle. If we're going to privitaise it then just do it, that's my view. I'm not precious about 'my NHS' or bollocks like that, all I know is from being on both the inside and the outside is that it's currently not working. The 'public' ownership of the NHS is actually making it worse, as like Turkish said above it encourages entitlement. Not just from patients, but also those who work in it. I have worked with people who have left the NHS and went into the private sector, they lasted a matter of months before they came crawling back to the NHS and into another cushy job. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all NHS jobs are cushy at all - there are some amazing people that work in the NHS, but there is a hidden cohort of absolute nobodies who are paid extortionate amounts for doing very little.

The NHS is a bit of a sore subject for me, as I'm very close to it and have been for almost 15/16 years. To cut a long story short, there is way, way, way too much middle management. Back in 2012 the Torries abolished 'PCT's to do away with middle management, but actually the extreme opposite happened. - PCT's were abolished. The staff who were part of PCT's moved into CCG's (clinical commissioning groups), CSU's (pointless organisations that provided support to CCG's), NHS England, NHS Property Services. In most cases in 2013, when this all kicked off, there were at least 6/7 CCG's per region. So from single PCT's with single boards of directors, you ended up with 10+ additional organisations per region each with their own levels of directorship and management. Absolute nonsense. - Guess what's happening now? CCG's are being abolished and are moving into what is being called an 'ICB' (integrated care board). In all purposes this is just a new name for a PCT, as they've brought all the CCG's and local authority services back under a single organisation per region. I don't know if this latest re organisation will work or not, but there's still a hell of a lot of nonsense in the NHS before you even get to the 'care' side of it. I know people clamor for money needing to be spent on the NHS, but a lot don't realise how much is wasted on middle management nonsense and re-organisations. Taking a tiny thing into isolation from a few years ago, 'NHS England' put pressure on all the CCG's to ensure 'Patient Wifi' was available at all GP Practices. This lead to lots of organisations such as Daisy, Virgin Media, BT etc smelling the $$$$ and offering massively overpriced solutions to the NHS which they paid for, and are now struggling to get out of the contracts as they're not fit for purpose - and no one uses them. Who'd have thought it, patients use their own mobile data when in GP practices...not patient wifi! So, there's a lot of money that goes into the NHS. Lots and lots and lots of waste, until the waste is sorted the and the nonsense 'looking after themselves' middle management is done away with then there shouldn't be anymore money pumped in, as it never gets to where it needs to as there are too many hoops for it to cross.

You always seem to get the completely wrong end of the stick.

Theo isn't fit? Who'd have thought it.

Leicester are looking to reunite that 9-0 defense aren't they? Bertrand - Vestergaard - Bednarek. Can we throw in Valery as part of the deal? Then they have the set.

Do we often announce kids leaving? Wouldn't be unusual for this to have already happened and the first we'd know about it would be Chelsea's or Newcastle's U18 team sheet next season.

Potentially another club out of the race for Broja?

I can only assume that in the striker position we're looking for someone more proven, so with those sorts of transfers you need to wait for all sorts to fall into place with regards the selling clubs replacements/or the clubs waiting for other teams to show an interest etc. All sorts of things need to happen. And in relation to Delap, if it's him we are also interested in, he's still away on holiday after the U19 Euro's I believe. Man City prob want a look at him.