HarvSFC

The issue with last summer was the lack of a plan and the old belief of maintaining the £15-£20m price range, which doesn't get a lot in the Premier League these days. 15 players signed across both windows, too scattergun. We could have signed 4 players for £35m - A goalkeeper, a centre-back a centre-mid and a striker and the team would have been serviceable depending on the quality of those coming, while spending the same amount of money. We bought VvD for quite a high fee of £13m eight years ago, making him the most expensive Dutch defender. But, we still made a £62m profit on him and there probably wasn't as many add-ons as we see in all our deals these days because we paid a good initial fee. The club, weirdly has just been ignorant to inflation. You see Brighton making £40m bids for Levi Colwill this summer and Brentford bidding £30m for Brennan Johnson. The two current benchmark clubs. But, you couldn't imagine us spending fees like that, which is what you need to pay to get a proven player these days. £10m is expensive for a Championship signing, Ruben Neves and Britt Assombalonga are the record transfers for this level at £15m, so we should at least be able to sign some top players down here.

A club who signed Chris Wood for £25m and Anthony Gordon for £45m and a club who now has infinite resources can't pick up Livramento for £12m. Livramento has three years on his contract and a £37m buyback clause, meaning that if it wasn't for his injury, we expected to him to at least become a £37m player when he signed, and is still possible. £12m is a joke fee to start, Bazunu cost that and Ryan Fraser is a horrible little mercenary given what he did at Bournemouth and would only add to the reported poor atmosphere at the club.

The Swansea coaching team, apparently. Probably the most concerning thing about the article, we don't have any senior coaches at this moment in time, which is why they weren't announced alongside Martin. While a lot of clubs started their pre-season testing on Friday. After the shambles of last season and the past year of Sports Republic's ownership, it would have been nice to not have any early summer drama going into the new season.

The overriding memory is that "header" against Grimsby. Get rid, need dependable, safe players at the back in a promotion run. His erratic play could cost us a lot.

I thought I may have missed him doing well at Bolton, but he only scored one goal in 13 appearances there. Amazingly, he made 12 Premier League appearances. No loss at all.

Anyone know when pre-season starts? A few clubs in the league went back yesterday.

Martin and Kraft have talked about winning promotion this season. That's the expectation, for once we're talking about ambition prior to a season, now it's over to them to prove they're not just words. That's what they need to be judged on, once the competitive fixtures start.

Look at Bournemouth showing off by sacking their manager and appointing a new one on the same day. We did it once with Pochettino and have been relaxed ever since.

Nope, JWP, Romeu and Tella were the players the summer Ings left. Ings did the summer before, the sash and blue away kit.

Normally a player in a kit unveiling means they’re staying. Interesting that it’s JWP and Mara. Two players I would be supportive of staying. Or, it’s a case of if JWP wasn’t in it we’d all know that he was obviously leaving.

Neves leaving Wolves for Saudi Arabia is a bit of a surprise.

Sorry lads, but I don't think there's a chance Swansea are in agreement with paying Martin's wages because we don't want to announce him until we can officially reveal Jason Wilcox has completed his notice period and has joined the club. All media have reported the contractual fee dispute, which is probably the reason. Personally, don't think we have much to stand on legally either when it was out in the public that we were approaching Martin while we still had at least one Premier League fixture left to play, as a Premier League club. At the end of the day, we're just being our usual ponderous, slow and "relaxed" selves, as we were in January with a striker and as we were last summer, again with the striker. Not too much to worry about at the moment with players on holiday, but we're hardly an attractive place for new signings at the moment, who you'd expect talks to start with now given we can kind of say Russell Martin is the new manager, he wants you, but it could fall through and we'll appoint a different manager who won't play you.

After the China experiment, I wouldn't be too surprised if he tried out Saudi Arabia.

Reading are a mess: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65929124

Ankersen went to Europe to buy an Aston Martin...

Thought he turned us down to stay another year with Guardiola? 🤷‍♂️

Tried his best, but the bloke couldn't run, so I'm not too sure how effective trying his best was.

Thank fuck. I've been done wasting money and watching him play every week for well over a year now. Like with Aribo, you can get away with not being able to run in the SPL. But, in the Premier League and Championship, it's a much needed attribute.

Solskjaer and Smith would be disasters in that they wouldn't get Leicester near the top, so hopefully one of those two. Maresca's an unknown quantity and while I wouldn't want Parker here, he has got two promotions to his name. Not an exciting list of names, though.

Annual link.

Deadline for the 10 month payment plan is midnight tonight. Renewed once again after the horrors of the last few seasons. £500, works out at £21 a game which is good going by modern prices.

Our annual linked player Brandon Williams didn't take the Man City win last night too well. https://www.joe.co.uk/sport/man-utds-brandon-williams-takes-dig-at-man-city-on-insta-after-their-treble-win-397002 9 more posts on his story about it, regarding going on podcasts on Monday, exposing all and getting "nibbles" from City fans.

Ederson wins Man City the Champions League. Always thought he's had a bit of an easy time at City, but proved himself tonight. McManaman and Lescott being City loyalists was weird. One will go back to licking Liverpool's arse next week, while the other from Birmingham isn't even thought of by City fans and wouldn't get near their current team. Nathan Jones can add stopping City winning the quadruple to his CV, alongside being the fittest man in the world and the best manager in Europe, with the greatest respect.

Ligue 2 is good fun. On the last day of the season, Bordeaux, who were playing to win promotion and Rodez, who were playing to stay up had their match abandoned after a fan ran on the pitch and pushed a Rodez player after they went 1-0 up. Don't think a decision has been made yet, so the table still stands with Rodez relegated and Bordeaux missing promotion with one game played less than the rest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022–23_Ligue_2