Last summer transfer window

Brusselsfox

Brusselsfox

Roofer
Seems to me to be the root of most of what has happened this season. Schmeichel left with no replacement. Tielemans, Soyuncu and Praet thought they were leaving and then stayed with predictable results. Faes the only signing was ‘adequate’. .. but then resulted in a scramble to sign almost anyone in January. Why did it happen? Of course Rodgers has a lot of blame but there is more to the story.
 
If you remember Top alluded to balancing the books for the next 3 years in the programme notes at the beginning of the season. I reckon he thought it would be ok because whilst we wouldn’t be challenging for Europe this season, there was no way we’d be relegated. He was wrong.
As said by the commentators last night, we’ve got too many good players compared with the other 4 we’re in the fight with. Forest have too many average players , Everton are a basket case, Leeds are all huff and puff and Southampton apart from W-P are awful. So are Bournemouth. But somehow we’re in this mess. I truly believe if we get ourselves out of this then we’ll reset in the summer reasonably successfully in that we won’t be in a relegation fight with 5 games to go next season
 
LGFOX said:
If you remember Top alluded to balancing the books for the next 3 years in the programme notes at the beginning of the season. I reckon he thought it would be ok because whilst we wouldn’t be challenging for Europe this season, there was no way we’d be relegated. He was wrong.
As said by the commentators last night, we’ve got too many good players compared with the other 4 we’re in the fight with. Forest have too many average players , Everton are a basket case, Leeds are all huff and puff and Southampton apart from W-P are awful. So are Bournemouth. But somehow we’re in this mess. I truly believe if we get ourselves out of this then we’ll reset in the summer reasonably successfully in that we won’t be in a relegation fight with 5 games to go next season
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This is very likely correct. I think they looked at the finances and the changes to the FFP rules and they decided that their main objective last summer was to balance the books (ie, players would have to be sold before any other were bought) and assumed we'd be able to muddle through this season before undertaking a major rebuild this summer.

Unfortunately they miscalculated. The squad had already started to go stale and the relationship between Rodgers and the players was in decline. Rodgers wasn't wrong when he said after the Forest FA cup humiliation that we badly needed a refresh, but it was foolish of him to say so in public. This meant that when the club decided to postpone the refresh until the following summer, Rodgers was forced to continue working with players he'd publicly thrown under a bus. This could not have been good for morale or motivation. Then Rodgers made the situation even worse by refusing to play his best centre half and goalkeeper, and sticking rigidly to the same tactics when it was obvious to everybody that it wasn't working. The team's confidence collapsed and Rodgers did not have the man management skills to turn it around.

This summer will be the most important close season in our history. We have 12-15 players to recruit and we don't currently know who the manager will be. All I know is that I'm glad it's not Rodgers - and I'm equally glad that Congerton will have nothing to do with our recruitment this summer.
 
ClaphamFox said:
This is very likely correct. I think they looked at the finances and the changes to the FFP rules and they decided that their main objective last summer was to balance the books (ie, players would have to be sold before any other were bought) and assumed we'd be able to muddle through this season before undertaking a major rebuild this summer.

Unfortunately they miscalculated. The squad had already started to go stale and the relationship between Rodgers and the players was in decline. Rodgers wasn't wrong when he said after the Forest FA cup humiliation that we badly needed a refresh, but it was foolish of him to say so in public. This meant that when the club decided to postpone the refresh until the following summer, Rodgers was forced to continue working with players he'd publicly thrown under a bus. This could not have been good for morale or motivation. Then Rodgers made the situation even worse by refusing to play his best centre half and goalkeeper, and sticking rigidly to the same tactics when it was obvious to everybody that it wasn't working. The team's confidence collapsed and Rodgers did not have the man management skills to turn it around.

This summer will be the most important close season in our history. We have 12-15 players to recruit and we don't currently know who the manager will be. All I know is that I'm glad it's not Rodgers - and I'm equally glad that Congerton will have nothing to do with our recruitment this summer.
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I just wish I could be as rational as that Clapham. Whenever I think of what Rodgers has done to our club (and you have to go back further than the refresh narrative, to get the true extent of the problems) I just go all Golden Gordon out of Ripping Yarns, and start smashing up the living room, piece by piece.
 
ClaphamFox said:
This is very likely correct. I think they looked at the finances and the changes to the FFP rules and they decided that their main objective last summer was to balance the books (ie, players would have to be sold before any other were bought) and assumed we'd be able to muddle through this season before undertaking a major rebuild this summer.

Unfortunately they miscalculated. The squad had already started to go stale and the relationship between Rodgers and the players was in decline. Rodgers wasn't wrong when he said after the Forest FA cup humiliation that we badly needed a refresh, but it was foolish of him to say so in public. This meant that when the club decided to postpone the refresh until the following summer, Rodgers was forced to continue working with players he'd publicly thrown under a bus. This could not have been good for morale or motivation. Then Rodgers made the situation even worse by refusing to play his best centre half and goalkeeper, and sticking rigidly to the same tactics when it was obvious to everybody that it wasn't working. The team's confidence collapsed and Rodgers did not have the man management skills to turn it around.

This summer will be the most important close season in our history. We have 12-15 players to recruit and we don't currently know who the manager will be. All I know is that I'm glad it's not Rodgers - and I'm equally glad that Congerton will have nothing to do with our recruitment this summer.
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Excellent summary, Clapham.

The decline probably set in in the summer of 2021 with a totally messed up transfer window, and things went from bad to worse from there. Top was both too preoccupied (King Power/Covid-19, FFP) and not experienced enough to see the iceberg (Rogers/Congerton/squad) coming, the other people in the club dawdled, too, and here we are, two years later, staring relegation in the face with a squad facing a major overhaul. Relegation can still be avoided but there are massive challenges after that as well!
 
ClaphamFox said:
I think they looked at the finances and the changes to the FFP rules
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Who needs changes to the rules? Even if you remove elements relating to Youth Football, Women's Football and depreciation from the total, a loss of £92m in 2021/22 tells you we must be right on the bubble (at best) for the existing PL rules. The fact that we have now formally extended our accounting period to 30th June (instead of 31st May & bringing it inline with the usual contract end dates) suggests they'll be doing some work on the numbers to hit compliance.
 
Still in my mind wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off accepting a relatively low bid from Arsenal for Tielemans early last summer and also letting Soyuncu go to Madrid (which I think he has always wanted to). Of course no one likes to think they are losing assets underpriced .. but it would have unfrozen the whole thing. My reading is that we tried to hold out for more .. Arsenal said ‘well f*** you then’. And we were .. well ….. f***ed.
 
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Brusselsfox said:
Seems to me to be the root of most of what has happened this season. Schmeichel left with no replacement. Tielemans, Soyuncu and Praet thought they were leaving and then stayed with predictable results. Faes the only signing was ‘adequate’. .. but then resulted in a scramble to sign almost anyone in January. Why did it happen? Of course Rodgers has a lot of blame but there is more to the story.
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Summer 2021 was the problem and left us in a poor position in summer 2022.
 
Brusselsfox said:
Seems to me to be the root of most of what has happened this season. Schmeichel left with no replacement. Tielemans, Soyuncu and Praet thought they were leaving and then stayed with predictable results. Faes the only signing was ‘adequate’. .. but then resulted in a scramble to sign almost anyone in January. Why did it happen? Of course Rodgers has a lot of blame but there is more to the story.
Click to expand...
Don’t underestimate the destabilising influence of Fofana sulks either .
Led to uncertainty which quickly translated to panic in the defence exacerbated by Ward’s incompetence
 
LGFOX said:
If you remember Top alluded to balancing the books for the next 3 years in the programme notes at the beginning of the season. I reckon he thought it would be ok because whilst we wouldn’t be challenging for Europe this season, there was no way we’d be relegated. He was wrong.
As said by the commentators last night, we’ve got too many good players compared with the other 4 we’re in the fight with. Forest have too many average players , Everton are a basket case, Leeds are all huff and puff and Southampton apart from W-P are awful. So are Bournemouth. But somehow we’re in this mess. I truly believe if we get ourselves out of this then we’ll reset in the summer reasonably successfully in that we won’t be in a relegation fight with 5 games to go next season
Click to expand...

We may have a handful of good players,but we are woefully short in other areas. As many predicted, the keeper was woeful, we had no right winger for a chunk of the season and a terrible , injury prone back line.

It was a dreadful decision to leave things as was
 
Fleckney Fox said:
We may have a handful of good players,but we are woefully short in other areas. As many predicted, the keeper was woeful, we had no right winger for a chunk of the season and a terrible , injury prone back line.

It was a dreadful decision to leave things as was
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Do we have a right winger now?
 
Ive said on here many times, "This squad is good enough for a mid table finish." The fact that they haven't performed sufficiently to have achieved that is 100% down the Rodgers, irrespective of when he started to lose the plot and the confidence of the players. We should be comfortable at this time. Its his fault we're not.
 
buz_not_buzz said:
Who needs changes to the rules? Even if you remove elements relating to Youth Football, Women's Football and depreciation from the total, a loss of £92m in 2021/22 tells you we must be right on the bubble (at best) for the existing PL rules. The fact that we have now formally extended our accounting period to 30th June (instead of 31st May & bringing it inline with the usual contract end dates) suggests they'll be doing some work on the numbers to hit compliance.
Click to expand...
A friend of East Midland clubs moving down the M1.

Top pictured with amortisation, scarf aloft.
 
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