Bruce
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Posts posted by Bruce
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3 minutes ago, Simply Red said:
Ephron Mason Clarke LW age 24 , 19 goals 13 assists should be high on our list IMO .
He's contracted to Coventry for a long time, surely. Don't see why they would be interested in selling to us without us paying way over the top.
Chris Willock looks to be the obvious target for us but he's struggled to play a complete season the whole of his career and he seems to have stalled as a player over the last couple of years. Could be that a change of club will re-energise him but there are warning flags. Then again, if there weren't warning flags, a Premier club might snap him up to see what happens. On the gripping hand, if Ipswich go up, I could see them taking a punt on him.
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56 minutes ago, LinoJo3 said:
Why would Ipswich be able to financially out compete us?
They have just had £100m invested. I believe that a fair amount of it is for infrastructure but next season their only limits will be P&S.
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1 hour ago, Plastic Goat said:
If we had managed four points against Rotherham and six from our disastrous start then we would be in the playoff places.
and if Leicester had practised how to shoot and Norwich hadn't had a player falsely sent off we wouldn't be.
You can't count all the points we should have won but didn't without counting all the points we did win when we shouldn't have.
We're about where we deserve right now. A little unlucky because odds are we'll end up with enough points that some seasons would be enough for us to sneak into 6th.
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11 minutes ago, Rob said:
ipswitch may face the issue of other clubs picking their squad apart whilst trying to get players in that maintain what they have done this season if they don't go up. I have a feeling plenty of the people who have done well this season may be able to get much better payouts elsewhere if the club dont offer them new deals.
I think they will have the money to hang onto their main assets: Davis, Chaplin and Broadhead. They do have a few fair important loans ending which will require a rebuild. Looks like their keeper and Morsy both have their contracts ending.
Fundamentally they have the actual money and the PSR headroom to invest. Their problem will be the same one that we and Coventry faced when you have to rebuild too much of a team. I had a quick loan at their team versus us
Hladky - contract ends June
Tuanzebe - contract ends June
Woolfenden
Burgess - contract ends June
Davis
Burgess - contract ends June
Morsy - contract ends June
Luongo
Hutchinson - Loan
Chaplin
Sarmiento - loan
Al-Hamadi
I suspect that they could re-sign most of the players whose contracts are expiring but they may also be looking to upgrade some of the positions. They will need to be careful but I think they will be able to financially outcompete us next season if they are still in the league. Their better performance than us will also mean they may be able to outcompete us for players too.
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Given that we won't have Ayling for the game after meaning no right back as Dijksteel clearly doesn't count, feels like we ought to go 3 at the back for this one. Doesn't look like Hackney will be risked as a starter. Not sure that Bangura is fit enough to be thrown straight back in so that probably implies something like.
Dieng
Ayling - RVDB - Clarke
Jones - Barlaser- Engel
Howson - O'Brien
Azaz
Latte Lath
Barlaser tended to play at the base of a 3 man midfield for Rotherham so if he does that, Howson and O'Brien can be midfield enforcers with Azaz at the tip of a 4-man midfield diamond.
Then, for Leeds, Ayling drops out unavailable and if we have a spare central defender fit (McNair or Fry) they come in. Failing that, Engel plays on the left of the three with Bangura as a wingback.
I don't think Carrick will do this.
I think we have a half-decent chance. Ipswich score and concede goals for fun at home. We score and concede for fun away, so if we try to match them we'll probably end up losing 5-2. But if we set up in the classic low block with a threat on the counter we can pose a real problem. Both teams love it when the opponent tries to attack but Ipswich will have to play on the attack due to the circumstances so we can take advantage of that.
I have no interest in us hoping to lose in order to screw over Leeds. I want us to beat Ipswich and Leeds and let them sort it out between them.
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8 minutes ago, LinoJo3 said:
the issue is with making an obviously risky pass when you don’t even need to, trying to force something to happen.
I agree that it was bad decision-making but I can see how it happened. We had clearly rehearsed it and had been under pressure for a while. Dieng would have thought he could see the pass and that maybe with Hull pressing up this was the perfect time to try it again but like any accident, it was a series of small misjudgements that led to the goal. Carrick says "be brave" Dieng decides to be brave. O'Brien isn't expecting it so isn't moving but Dieng needs to act quickly. He should have launched it but he knows it just gives the ball back to Hull so he goes for the brave route. Slightly more awareness from O'Brien or less awareness from Sarri (or less of a superb finish) and it's embarrassing but no worse.
Steffen did something almost identical last season when he passed the ball out to McNair only McNair wasn't set, got robbed and they scored.
I don't know how many goals we've scored from passing out at the back but it will be a lot more than we've conceded. Carrick also made the point that the goal Vardy scored against us came straight from a long goal kick. We launch it, they win the header, it goes to Cannon, first time pass to Vardy, Vardy runs through and scores. If we had played it short and invited Leicester on, maybe they would have over-committed and we would have scored on the break out.
The problem with the Hull goal is that it looks awful but it was really no more awful than Leicester's simple goal from the long kick. A long kick might not look risky but it absolutely is because you are losing control and at that point, anything can happen.
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10 minutes ago, macapes said:
Not even for their second goal? It was terrible distribution and gifted them a shot.
It was an almost identical pass to the one the lead to our first goal.
Dieng short kick to Clarke, Clarke returns it. Dieng advances outside the area, O'Brien starts moving towards him, Dieng to him. O'Brien with first time layoff to Clarke. Clarke considers going back to Dieng but spots Engel and passes long to him. As soon as the ball goes towards Engel, Latte Lath starts a run. Engel gets the ball and chips it first-time towards Latte Lath. Latte Lath takes a touch then finishes. Perfect passing out from the back goal. 4 touches from Clarke to back of the net.
Rosenior said after the match that he reckoned our first goal was worked out on the training ground because we expected Omur to be pushed up and Engel worked hard to get in behind him.
Hull's second goal, we try it again. Dieng short to Clarke, Clarke back to Dieng. Only this time Hull push more aggressively on to Dieng. He passes to O'Brien from the 6 yard box. O'Brien isn't expecting it quite so early and Sarri has read the pass (he was pressing O'Brien when we scored) so starts moving before O'Brien does. The pass is slightly underhit meaning that Sarri can get ahead of O'Brien and intercept it. The rest is history.
In that match we were 1-1 from playing out from the back. Playing out from the back in this way is a way of creating a counter-attack from a dead-ball situation. First time we execute it perfectly. Second time, Hull are wise to the risk and we don't quite get it right. Our second goal is also a near perfect Chuckle brothers counter-attack goal. Howson - Jones - Azaz - Jones - Azaz - goal.
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1 hour ago, TLF10 said:
Promotion to PL: I want Leicester, Leeds and Saints to go up. I do get the fairy tale around Ipswich but if any of the 3 relegated teams don't go up, i fully expect them to be even stronger next season but think Ipswich will struggle to replicate this seasons form.
I used to think that way but Ipswich have had a massive cash injection. Definite risk of them smashing the league next season if they don't go up.
Leicester look like they are in a world of trouble next season so they may be less of a threat than Ipswich.
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3 minutes ago, Humpty said:
Give Azaz a chance man. He's only been here a few months and despite being in and out of the team, he's still scoring and assisting.
I literally say "mixed results" and that it's not a position he's played much before. There's no way that means I've "written him off." Personally, I think he'll make the grade. We've all seen that rare cases like Ramsey aside, it is very hard for players to adapt to Carrick's style.
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5 minutes ago, SouthernSmoggie said:
That attacking left position is nailed as McGree's on the rare occasions when he is actually fit. We had Rogers who could do a decent job there too before he was sold, even though he preferred the central spot.
That spot was roughly where Azaz played for Plymouth and it had been Rogers best position. The problem has really been #10. Azaz has moved there with mixed results. Greenwood has been worse at #10 than out left. Rogers was getting better at #10 but it's noticeable that Villa have been playing wide left. O'Brien is also good there. Ironically we have no lack of players for the wide left forward but the player who is most used to it, Azaz, is being shoehorned into the middle. If we didn't play with a #10 I think we would be fine.
When we play Leeds, Ayling won't be available so I guess we'll be playing 3 at the back with Jones as a wingback due to a lack of right backs. I can't help thinking that reverting to 3 at the back for the rest of the season might be the way forward.
Of our new signings who have played a good amount (2,000+ minutes in the Championship) Greenwood is the only one who looks to have got worse over the season. People go over the top but for me both him and Engel are weak points. Main reason you can't say Engel has got worse is that he started so badly. (Engel is also one of those odd players whose stats seem to be better than how he looks when playing so it might by that some of his problems are caused by the formation rather than him.)
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3 minutes ago, SouthernSmoggie said:
And general consensus seems to be Coventry have bought really well and are having a decent season - we're only 2 points behind them.
Like us, they struggled for the first 1/3rd of the season to integrate so many new players.
These things are all relative. Compared to the same day last season, they are a point up so they have largely managed to keep level with where they were despite selling Gyokeres and Hamer.
We're 10 points behind where we were this time last year so we have gone backwards.
Coventry had about £15m more than us to spend and they seem to have spent it well. Assuming neither of us get promoted, then I think we will have more to spend than them this summer and ought to overtake them. But when you consider that it's less than 2 years ago that Coventry didn't even have a ground to play in, you have to say that they have done remarkably well. I'm not sure they can sustain it but that doesn't take away from what they have achieved from a very low starting point.
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1 hour ago, ScarBoro said:
My point is that I think with the losses before player transfers bring up to FFP levels, then that’s exactly where we are - we can only buy as much as we sell. Indeed, given the all the add ons/agents rake-offs/signing on fees etc we probably need to sell for more than we buy - unless we reduce wages which is the main variable in the standard operating costs. Doing that, of course, means it is difficult to attract the type of player who would command a large fee so in reality cutting wages is not easy
Yes and no. Next season we have a scenario where the profit from previous player sales is outstripping the annual "loss" from amortisation. This gives us a window where we can, if Gibson chooses, spend a significant amount on new players. If we do that and don't get promoted, then the next summer is more painful because we'll have to spend significantly less on players when we raise through sales. Then again, if we don't get promoted, Hackney, RVDB and Dieng will likely be off anyway so it's not really a gamble.
If he sticks to only allowing the club to spend what it raises through sales (minus, as you say, loan fees, legal costs, agent costs and so on) then we are still losing £10-£15m from running the club so I'm not sure it's a "sustainable" model. Odds are that it will take us longer to get promoted and therefore cost us more.
At this point, no one actually knows what Gibson's plan is. His previous MO has been to back a manager in the summer but keep some money back for the winter window to get us over the line. I could see us, as you say, spending roughly what we receive from player sales in the summer then, if we're in the top 4 in the winter, making a real push for it.
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13 minutes ago, ScarBoro said:
Going forward then £20m spend would mean £5m or £6m of amortisation each year to recover from sales in order to keep within FFP, wouldn’t it?
Yes, (possibly better in the PSR thread) but if we don't get promoted next season after a big spend this summer, at least 2 of Hackney, RVDB and Dieng will be sold. Even a fairly low selling price (say £30m combined) will see us comfortably dealing with the increased amortization.
FFP/PSR isn't a significant problem for us now that the Monk boom has worked its way off our books. I'm sure Gibson would like to keep our PSR losses under £5m a year so he doesn't have to keep converting loans to equity but I don't see a world where that exists while you're trying to get promoted.
Obviously it is possible that Gibson has declared that the only money available for player purchases and loans fees is what is realised through sales. I think if that's the case we're in the worst of both worlds. Gibson keeps losing £10-£15m a year to fund the club but we never get strong enough to get out of the division. We're already in our second longest spell outside of the top league in our history. We had 20 years outside division 1 from 1954-73. By the end of this season we will have had 14 of the last 15 seasons outside of the top division.
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1 hour ago, ScarBoro said:
I think based on previous years accounts the £10m from Gibsons pocket is needed to fund the losses just operating the club, so I wouldn’t get you hopes up to anywhere near a budget of £20m unless we sell some players. My guess would be £5m budget, plus sale of maybe McGree taking us to around £10m.
I agree Gibson is likely to fund the running costs of the club with about £15m. The last couple of years, the operating loss of the club (before transfers and ignoring player valuations) was £12-£13m and I see no reason to think that will have changed much. This season he has clearly made the entirety of the Akpom and Payero sales available to buy players. I see every reason to think he will do the same this summer with the Crooks and Rogers sales being made available to spend plus whatever else we make from sales.
I think he will be prepared to fund an extra budget for transfers over and above the money we make from sales. I reckon he would go up to about an extra £10m this summer (around £10m booked from Crooks and Rogers plus another £10m = £20m). The reason is that next season is his best window financially to do so because we'll still be counting the money from the Tav and Spence sales. The bottom line is that you do have to invest if you want to make a serious bid for promotion. We probably need 3-4 top players and they need to be championship ready(tm). I doubt there's much change out of £20m. Of course that could be just 2 major purchases and a couple of expensive loan fees.
Ultimately it all depends on Gibson. He can afford to do it and we don't run into any FFP issues if he does so. His question will be whether he feels the money will be well spent.
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I had a couple of 6 hour train journeys so listened to some of the price of football podcasts by Kevin Maguire. Learned a lot, especially about PSR punishments. In short, he says that the EPL never bothered to agree a standard set of punishments for breaking PSR limits so, when Everton appealed against their initial deduction the independent body had to invent a standard punishment for the EPL and they largely followed the EFL.
This became 3 points for any breach with extras for aggravated circumstances and reductions for mitigating circumstances. On that basis, Everton's original decision was reduced to 6. i.e. the standard 3 points plus an extra 3 points for the degree.
Forest was 3 points plus one point.
The EPL then tried to deduct Everton 5 points for this season (3 + 2 for the degree) but the body reduced that by 3 points because most of the breach happened prior to this season* and they fessed up quickly, hence the final value of 2.
You can argue that the punishments don't fit the crime but at least there is now a scale based on precedent. For most teams in the lower half of the Prem, a 2-3 point deduction will make fairly little difference. Teams like Wolves who sold a lot of players to hit the limits are likely to feel aggrieved because they would probably have been better off getting points deducted and disrupting their team less but at that point they didn't know how many points they were likely to be docked for a breach.
*You can probably argue that PSR is prone to creating double jeopardy where you get punished multiple times for the same crime.
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I see Ayling has 4 assists in 15 games for us which is equivalent to Giles over a whole season. Those 4 assists have also coincided with our unbeaten run. It very much looks like Ayling took half a dozen games to get up to speed and adapt to our system. Since then he has arguably been one of our most consistent players. I don't know if he could keep it up for a whole season next season but if Carrick thinks he can it's starting to look like a 2 year contract for him would allow us to concentrate elsewhere or maybe bring in a development project who would have time to actually develop. I do think managers overrate the importance of experience but it is important and it would give us an experienced spine of Dieng, Smith, Ayling, Lenihan, Fry, Clarke, [Howson]. If we also signed O'Brien then we have plenty of top quality championship experience. I had been thinking that we should keep Smith or Ayling but not both however Ayling's form over the last 4-6 weeks makes me think that maybe we can just treat that position as looked after for another season.
My theory is that we will have a transfer budget of around £20m in the summer plus whatever money comes in from sales. That's £10m or so from Rogers and Crooks and £10m from Gibson's wallet. That's still not a lot compared to parachute clubs and we don't want to have to stretch it too far. If we want to shop in the quality section of the market in the summer, that's 3 players max so using Ayling as a sticking plaster at right back for a season has merit. Between him and Smith we ought to be able to see out the season.
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3 hours ago, Rob said:
I think they will just take what is coming to them and appeal it to reduce it
Agreed, when you're that far in the hole there's no point in trying to get out. They could have been deducted 12 points this season and still be 15 points ahead of us.
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42 minutes ago, LinoJo3 said:
I think Hackney will be sold and possibly we already have O’Brien down as his replacement.
I don't think so. I think some clubs will test us with low offers especially as Wharton seems to be doing well at Palace. However, a lot of the lower end clubs are going to be watching P&S very carefully and I don't see any club being willing and able to offer £20m+. I don't think we'll sell him for less than that and I see no reason to think that Hackney will push that hard. Maybe in January if the season isn't going anywhere but I'm about 80/20 that we'll hang onto Hackney and RVDB this summer.
I can see Mcgree and maybe Forss (if he is looking to leave) going but no more key players than that.
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Leicester are in deep, deep trouble. (archive link: https://archive.is/r4cd2)
A loss of £90m last season despite the sales of Fofana and Maddison. That's absolutely nuts. Looking at Swiss Ramble (https://swissramble.substack.com/p/leicester-city-finances-202122) Leicester made losses of
2022: £92m
2021: £32m
Although 2021 is a special case due to covid, they are looking at a 3-year loss of around £210m against a P&S limit of £105m. Take off something like £35m in credits but they have absolutely blown the doors off it. That's going to be a 6 point deduction but it sounds like it won't be levied this season.
This season is going to be even worse. They have an allowance of £13m plus probably around £8m in credits but they are going to be losing a lot more than £21m even with player sales before the end of June. They're also about to see the contracts end of quite a few key players. Their P&S allowance for 22-24 is £83m plus credits but they lost £170m in 2022-23 alone with possibly another £50m to account for this season.
It's possible they won't even try and have a fire sale of players because they won't get close to the limits anyway. I suspect they may just try to ride it out or the owners threaten to drive the club to the wall if the Premier league applies the rules.
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20 minutes ago, LinoJo3 said:
O’Brien is the only one of them I’d want back. RB we need a permanent option there, no more stop gaps and tired loanees, Greenwood doesn’t offer enough in the final 3rd for a promotion chasing team
Agreed in part.
I'm on the fence with Greenwood. 23 starts with 5 goals and 3 assists is decent for a first real season for a player but he's had a long stretch of looking useless and it's unclear what his best position is. I think it might be the left-sided attacking role. If McGree stays then Greenwood is maybe an ok back-up. Neither of them are the standard of a Diallo or Ramsey, which is what I think we need if we're serious about promotion but we have seen it can take a long time for players to adapt to what Carrick wants.
I think our biggest need up front is a #10. (To be honest, I think we need to play a formation that doesn't require a #10 but that's not going to happen.) Azaz may make the grade but I think we need a Gaston Ramirez standard of player in there with Azaz as a back-up. If re-signing Greenwood on loan frees up funds for a big buy or prestige loan then that might make sense.
At right back we probably need Ayling or Smith and a young talent we can develop.
I'm not convinced that O'Brien can play alongside Hackney in a midfield two. I think they're too similar to each other. Ironically, I think he may be best as a left-side attacking midfielder with the flexibility to play other positions in a crunch. If Forest stay up then I could see us loaning him again.
I think Greenwood is a potential piece of the jigsaw rather than a player we build around. The left-side attacking role could end up being 2 from:
McGree, O'Brien, Greenwood, Premier league wonderkid on loan, Championship pro (e.g. Willock).
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I've been against the likes of playing Greenwood because it seems like it prevents us from building a team with players who will be here next season. Occurs to me though that if Leeds are promoted and Greenwood's wages go up he may be back here next season on loan. Leeds won't want him and no one is going to be willing to pay him his Premier league wages. Greenwood's certainly not going to move for a wage cut. At that point Leeds' only option is to stick him back out on loan again.
From our point of view, anything which enables us to minimise the rebuild in the summer is a good thing. Yesterday, it felt like he was channeling a way to play that was a lot like Tav. He's always shown good stamina and he likes to get stuck in albeit often stupidly. He has a Premier league class set-piece delivery and a decent shot. He's not that creative but if he can focus on being a hard running attacking midfielder,get his head up while carrying the ball and get better at his interplay with team-mates he can be a real handful at this level.
Similarly O'Brien. I don't think he can do the defensive role in the middle but he can do the Hackney role and also play further forward. It does take a long time to get back to speed after essentially missing a season then being out with an injury for the best part of 3 months. Forest are going to be having a fire sale regardless of whether they stay up or not. It's hard to justify paying more than £2-3m on what he's shown. If Forest stay up, odds are he goes back out loan. If they go down, his wage is probably cut for relegation so we are more likely to be able to do a deal.
Ironically, if we sign Ayling on a short-term deal to cover the risk of Smith not regaining his levels, we could end up keeping 3 of our 4 loanees this season.
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3 minutes ago, Neverbefore said:
Only realised that ayling got another assist for Jones's goal. 4 in this run of 6 games unbeaten. He's been solid at the back too. Really important and I really think we should be considering signing him.
I think it depends on what happens with Smith. Not sure we want both but It is clear that Ayling is a big presence in the team. His celebration with Latte Lath for the own goal was bonkers. Credit to Ayling, he could have phoned in his performances after joining us but he hasn't. You also want that kind of over the top character on the pitch to drive the others on.
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3 minutes ago, Neverbefore said:
Yeah I just don't understand when people's first reaction is to be negative and down on what we've done when we're in such a good run of form. We're not getting promoted, everyone has come to terms with that so just enjoy the fact that we're doing well consistently right now.
I have issues with Carrick's refusal to use the academy in any meaningful way but you can't argue with 17 points from the last 21. Since we got a massive stroke of luck against Norwich we have conceded just 1 goal in 600+ minutes of football and not lost. We might never look convincing but football is a results business(tm) and it's hard to do much better than that.
In theory, if Leeds beat Hull by 2 goals, we'll overtake them and we still have to play them which means we could end the season ahead of them. Do that and there's the faintest chance of sneaking into 6th place up for grabs. Given everything that has happened this season, that would be a creditable end to the season. It won't happen but at least we're still keeping up the pace and hoping that enough teams slip up.
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2 minutes ago, TeaCider24 said:
Dijksteel putting absolutely zero effort in.
He's definitely off in the summer.
Got to wonder what on earth the point of putting him on is when we have Willis. I'm coming to the conclusion that Carrick won't play an academy player under any circumstances. See also Hoppe and Muniz.
The Transfer Window
in Boro Forum
Posted
That is literally the whole point of playing out. You play out under pressure to break the pressure and generate an attack. If you only play out from the back when you're not under pressure you are not playing out from the back.