Sport Republic

[SaintNewForest]

I'll give them some credit here; 

Its genuinely impressive how, despite spending a fair whack of money in their time here, and yet, every season, they've somehow made the squad worse than the year before. 

[sfc4prem]

Am I wrong for expecting squad quality to reduce after being relegated? I thought that would be a guarantee and would be expected?

Please help me with this one.

I only ask because it seems to be a common gripe that our squad has gotten worse?

[LGTL]

1 minute ago, sfc4prem said:

Am I wrong for expecting squad quality to reduce after being relegated? I thought that would be a guarantee and would be expected?

Please help me with this one.

I only ask because it seems to be a common gripe that our squad has gotten worse?

We finished on 12 points, and had a worse squad than the season before. It actually wasn’t that difficult at all to make the squad better. That’s if you don’t have these fucking jokers in charge, of course. 

[Willo of Whiteley]

I think the most frustrating thing is we can all say how simple it can be. Target and buy players that have played at the required level or are on the fringes already at a higher level.

Don’t target unknowns or youth players and expect them to work.

They have to really pull something out the bag over the next seven days and I honestly don’t see it.

[tdmickey3]

5 minutes ago, sfc4prem said:

Am I wrong for expecting squad quality to reduce after being relegated? I thought that would be a guarantee and would be expected?

Please help me with this one.

I only ask because it seems to be a common gripe that our squad has gotten worse?

The acceptance of the low end of mediocrity 

[sfc4prem]

Just now, tdmickey3 said:

The acceptance of the low end of mediocrity 

I mean, more often than not relegated teams have to sell their best players, right?

 

We were always going to lose the likes of KWP, Fernandes and Dibling.

Surely it is agreed that to get in a replacement of better or equal quality would be fucking tough for a relegated club?

[tdmickey3]

1 minute ago, sfc4prem said:

I mean, more often than not relegated teams have to sell their best players, right?

 

We were always going to lose the likes of KWP, Fernandes and Dibling.

Surely it is agreed that to get in a replacement of better or equal quality would be fucking tough for a relegated club?

True but we seem to be reducing it

[LGTL]

3 minutes ago, sfc4prem said:

I mean, more often than not relegated teams have to sell their best players, right?

 

We were always going to lose the likes of KWP, Fernandes and Dibling.

Surely it is agreed that to get in a replacement of better or equal quality would be fucking tough for a relegated club?

Nobody expects to keep those three or Ramsdale. But we’ve currently signed 3 reserve players, and pretty shit reserve players at that. We’re already 3 games into the season. It’s a joke. 

[S-Clarke]

2 minutes ago, sfc4prem said:

I mean, more often than not relegated teams have to sell their best players, right?

 

We were always going to lose the likes of KWP, Fernandes and Dibling.

Surely it is agreed that to get in a replacement of better or equal quality would be fucking tough for a relegated club?

Not necessary, I mean it shouldn't be too hard for us to improve on Aribo at CB, BBD on the left wing or Smallbone in CM - that shouldn't be too hard. It's like we're talking as if we had a team full of PL stars, we really didn't this time - last time out we were relegated, we had a decent cohort of PL players, not so much this time though. If Sunderland can attract players like Enzo Le Fee at this level, then I'd expect us to be able to as well.

We've still got a week and a lot can change, and it needs to.

[S-Clarke]

I thought I'd summarise what SR have given us since 2022, it isn't pretty reading. It's quite scary really, more suited to Halloween viewing.

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Season 1 - Established PL club, albeit hovering at this point.

ABK - £12m. An absolute fail.

Gavin Bazunu - £14m. An absolute fail

Romeo Lavia - 8m - A success, credit them with that.

Charly - £10m - A success in my eyes, just poorly executed by management.

Sekou Mara - £10m - An absolute fail.

Joe Aribo - £6m - Not great, let's be honest. A squad filler signing for the level at that stage, not a quality enhancement.

Caleta-Car - £8m - A really poor addition at the wrong time. Fail.

Larios - £5m - Why? Pointless.

Edozie - £5m - A fail.

Orsic - £5m - I mean, wtf.

Sulemana - £21m - A total fail.

Onuachu - £18m - A total fail

Ainsley Maitland Niles - Loan - A total fail.

Mateusz Lis - Why?

Story of the mangers - Backed Ralph, sacked Ralph, appointed Jones, backed Jones, sacked Jones, appointed Selles, sacked Selles.

Story of the DoF - Brought in Shields, he stayed a couple of months and then buggered off to leave us with no one in a DoF role - supposedly Rasmus stepped into the void.

 

Season 2 (After they'd relegated us)

Shea Charles - £12m. We needed better than a kid who hadn't played pro football at any level. He's a good kid and a good prospect, but it was the wrong priority at that point.

Ross Sewart - £9m - A total failure.

Ryan Manning - Free - Decent, squad player at best really at higher levels.

Holgate - Loan - wtf?

Lumley - Free – pointless squad padding.

THB - Loan - Good pick up.

Downes - loan - for the level, good pick up.

Brooks - loan - for the level, another good pickup. Poorly used though.

Fraser - loan - good pickup at the time on a loan to help squad depth.

Story of the managers - Backed Martin, who sneaked over the line.

Story of the Dof - Hired Wilcox in the summer, he stayed until the spring and did a runner. We then went into PL planning mode without a DoF.

 

Season 3 - Back in the prem

THB - £20m obligation - fair enough, that was already agreed.

Downes - £17m - I don't think anyone argued that one at the time, but he's not been a success since.

Archer - £15m - A failure

Ramsdale - £21m - A good addition forced because Bazunu was injured.

Fernandes - £15m - A success, credit to them for this one.

Brereton-Diaz - £8m - A total fail.

Suguwara - £6m - Another total fail

Nathan Wood - £3m - A low cost signing. Hard to say if he's a success though, seemed a rather pointless addition at the time.

Ronne Edwards - £3m - Too early to say, but I think he has potential. A low cost addition. I don't think we needed both Wood and Edwards though, one would have been fine - two is just squad pointless padding.

Ryan Fraser - free - Why? We got what we needed from him the season prior, we didn't need to sign him perm.

Adam Lallana - free - fail, pointless signing in the context of what we needed.

Charlie Taylor - free - fail, pointless signing again.

Maxwell Cornet - loan - i mean....

Gronbaek - loan - another WTF

Ugochukwu - loan - he was OK, would be better with better players.

Juan - free - what's the point? He's not even here anymore.

Matsuki - free? - he may come good, but I don't see it yet.

Wellington - free - Not sure yet, didn't cost anything though.

Story of the managers - Backed Martin (naively), sacked Martin, appointed Juric, Sacked Juric, appointed Rusk, sacked Rusk.

Story of the DoF - Went into the season without a full DoF, we relied on Mark Bitcon and Martin. Spors came in during Feburary of that season.

 

Season 4 - Relegated again.

Damion Downs - £6m - No idea yet, another 'prospect' with potential.

Quarshie - £3m - No idea yet, another 'prospect' with potential.

Mads Rosorlev - £3-5m? - Looks a sensible addition for a change, hopefully works out.

George Long - Loan - Pointless squad padding which doesn't improve us at all.

Story of the managers - Still appointed, so far not truly backed it has to be said.

Story of the DoF - We still have Spors in charge, it'll be interesting to see if he sticks around a full year.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

So we've splurged around £200m + during their first 3 full seasons in charge. (being generous to take into account that total fees may not have been paid at this point for some players) Over 40 players signed - including loans, perms and frees.

Maybe 5 or 6 good player picks from the above (probably being generous)? There will always be fail rates with transfers - 100% appreciate that, but our record is just catastrophic when you look at it across several windows, you can see the same mistakes being made over and over again, with managers and the DoF's.

We've likely made most of that money back, with the big sales of Tino, JWP, Tella, Lavia, Dibling and co - but they've got lucky with that.  Had it not been for our academy they'd have been absolutely screwed and our club would be on it's knees financially.

We've spent a decent chunk of money for a club of our size, but the people making the picks are consistently making the wrong managerial and player picks.

As a fan base we have some hope, maybe somewhat misguided, that this summer will be better as there's supposedly been a change up. It will be interesting to revisit this after August and around Christmas to see where this season sits in terms of decision making.

If they've mucked it up again then I'm sorry to say there there is simply no way back for them and they have to be shown the door ASAP. I think they're lucky the fan base has been as passive as it has up to this point imo, because their management of us has been a disgrace.