The Summer/Autumn transfers thread 2020 aka TURN DOWN FOR WHAT(more)

[RiversideRed 1,216]

Will we sign anyone in August?

[2plus2 290]

3 minutes ago, RiversideRed said:

Will we sign anyone in August?

 

[diggerlad07 3,694]

20 minutes ago, RealSlimSladeyy said:

give us more itk updates and there'll be more transfer related discussion!

Monday is the day 👍

[Smogzilla 7,484]

3 minutes ago, diggerlad07 said:

Monday is the day 👍

For a signing or for an update?

Not that I'm desperate or anything 

[scottpilgrim 28]

Youre having a laugh if you think Bauser works weekends(non matchdays) or bank holidays

[Blanco 4,917]

7 minutes ago, scottpilgrim said:

Youre having a laugh if you think Bauser works weekends(non matchdays) or bank holidays

Maybe you have it the wrong way around?

Maybe they are the only days he works 🤠

[Changing Times 12,343]

2 hours ago, diggerlad07 said:

Just a thought for the admins, but to improve the forum when the discussions comes off track regarding what the thread is about then why don't you start a poll for members to use as alternative?Hopefully this may side track members constantly coming off thread.

There is nothing worse of reading endless amounts of pages of *** that has got nothing to do with transfers rumours. 

Maybe if you stopped chasing off your rival ITK posters then there would be more rumours to talk about? 🤭

 

[Changing Times 12,343]

2 hours ago, wilsoncgp said:

What can we say though, this was only within 6 months of the window where we signed Gestede on a massive contract and spent stupid money on Guedioura. The only bit of business that January that could have come good was Bamford and we got shot of him in 18 months time.

That summer we also apparently made that £6.5m offer for Fletcher which West Ham were flabbergasted by and snapped our hands off, we spent £15m on Assombalonga, £9m on Braithwaite and stupid bumper contracts for both, £3m on Shotton who was also apparently on daft wages but couldn't get into Monk's team. We were bang in the middle of making some absolutely terrible deals and not thinking about any of the consequences.

The fact this club has no long term thought process is nothing particularly new. This decision was from a time we were giving players anything they wanted. We were a cash cow waiting to be smashed open and I've no doubt that we've actually damaged our reputation by going from that extreme to the other. The idea that we can't sign players because we don't have money to spend is only gonna be driven home because we were making a bloody good reputation of spending just a few years ago.

I agree mate, I'm just flabbergasted that we'd negotiate a deal like that.  The Downing contract clause that Humpty mentioned I could understand a bit more because he was coming off a good season in the Premier League, and was taking a significant drop in salary, so his agent would of course negotiate other things in his favour.  Howson was no more than a good Championship level midfielder coming towards the end of his career, he wanted to leave Norwich, and nobody else was in the running for him.  We were in the strong negotiating position but we've still given away something like that, to someone who would be 32 at the time it came to pass.  If it worked out well and we were in the Premier League then we'd almost certainly be moving on from him by that point and if it hadn't worked out then we wouldn't want his salary on the books.  There's no possible way I can think of that this deal made even the slightest bit of sense from our point of view and yet we have done it anyway.

[DurhamRed 2,047]

6 minutes ago, Changing Times said:

I agree mate, I'm just flabbergasted that we'd negotiate a deal like that.  The Downing contract clause that Humpty mentioned I could understand a bit more because he was coming off a good season in the Premier League, and was taking a significant drop in salary, so his agent would of course negotiate other things in his favour.  Howson was no more than a good Championship level midfielder coming towards the end of his career, he wanted to leave Norwich, and nobody else was in the running for him.  We were in the strong negotiating position but we've still given away something like that, to someone who would be 32 at the time it came to pass.  If it worked out well and we were in the Premier League then we'd almost certainly be moving on from him by that point and if it hadn't worked out then we wouldn't want his salary on the books.  There's no possible way I can think of that this deal made even the slightest bit of sense from our point of view and yet we have done it anyway.

Ah now you see all this requires forward thinking. But at the time the club were in fantasy land gonna smash the league we have so much money let's spend spend spend it all it doesn't matter the cost we will be back in the Premier League in no time easy peasy. Now reality has hit hard 

[Neverbefore 10,940]

9 minutes ago, Changing Times said:

I agree mate, I'm just flabbergasted that we'd negotiate a deal like that.  The Downing contract clause that Humpty mentioned I could understand a bit more because he was coming off a good season in the Premier League, and was taking a significant drop in salary, so his agent would of course negotiate other things in his favour.  Howson was no more than a good Championship level midfielder coming towards the end of his career, he wanted to leave Norwich, and nobody else was in the running for him.  We were in the strong negotiating position but we've still given away something like that, to someone who would be 32 at the time it came to pass.  If it worked out well and we were in the Premier League then we'd almost certainly be moving on from him by that point and if it hadn't worked out then we wouldn't want his salary on the books.  There's no possible way I can think of that this deal made even the slightest bit of sense from our point of view and yet we have done it anyway.

I think your appraisal of howson is a bit harsh there. He was 29 (literally just turned it a month or two before he signed too), so in his prime and should have really had another 2 or 3 years too. He was coming off a good season in the championship and had spent 3 out of his 5 previous seasons in the premier league (playing most of the games for his club). He was captain for both Leeds and Norwich. Norwich desperately wanted to keep him but he wanted to move north. 

Just because he has been thoroughly average for us doesn't mean that we can dismiss him as  a good Championship midfielder coming toward the end of his career. Though i do agree that giving the player the power to enact a clause in his contract without the input of the club after 3 years is ridiculous. 

[macapes 1,919]

I'd guess that he wanted a 4 year contract and we wanted a 3, so we negotiated a 3 + 1 year extension, that he could trigger so long as he was meeting certain performance standards - probably number of games/minutes played in the third year season. 

i.e, if we replaced him in the squad in that final year, used him solely as a sub, as was possible given his age, he wouldn't have met the target and the extension wouldn't have mattered.

Given we ended up relying on him to fill in at RB, he undoubtedly hit whatever that number was.

[wilsoncgp 9,283]

1 hour ago, Changing Times said:

I agree mate, I'm just flabbergasted that we'd negotiate a deal like that.  The Downing contract clause that Humpty mentioned I could understand a bit more because he was coming off a good season in the Premier League, and was taking a significant drop in salary, so his agent would of course negotiate other things in his favour.  Howson was no more than a good Championship level midfielder coming towards the end of his career, he wanted to leave Norwich, and nobody else was in the running for him.  We were in the strong negotiating position but we've still given away something like that, to someone who would be 32 at the time it came to pass.  If it worked out well and we were in the Premier League then we'd almost certainly be moving on from him by that point and if it hadn't worked out then we wouldn't want his salary on the books.  There's no possible way I can think of that this deal made even the slightest bit of sense from our point of view and yet we have done it anyway.

I think this is the key point and why we just handed players anything they were after during that window. We didn't think it would matter in a year's time, never mind 3 years. It's absolutely maddening.

[Changing Times 12,343]

52 minutes ago, Neverbefore said:

I think your appraisal of howson is a bit harsh there. He was 29 (literally just turned it a month or two before he signed too), so in his prime and should have really had another 2 or 3 years too. He was coming off a good season in the championship and had spent 3 out of his 5 previous seasons in the premier league (playing most of the games for his club). He was captain for both Leeds and Norwich. Norwich desperately wanted to keep him but he wanted to move north. 

Just because he has been thoroughly average for us doesn't mean that we can dismiss him as  a good Championship midfielder coming toward the end of his career. Though i do agree that giving the player the power to enact a clause in his contract without the input of the club after 3 years is ridiculous. 

My appraisal here was my appraisal at the time mate.  I said exactly that about him on the transfer thread back then.  Playing in the Premier League for a couple of seasons doesn't make you a Premier League calibre player in my opinion.  Nothing I saw from him before he signed for us, or since, suggests he's any more than a good Championship player and 29 isn't prime for a box to box type of midfielder as he theoretically is supposed to be.  We got him at the back end of his career and by the looks of it negotiated a great contract for him.

[LinoJo3 3,191]

43 minutes ago, DurhamRed said:

Ah now you see all this requires forward thinking. But at the time the club were in fantasy land gonna smash the league we have so much money let's spend spend spend it all it doesn't matter the cost we will be back in the Premier League in no time easy peasy. Now reality has hit hard 

Typical of us to throw all the money at the players and sod the people actually buying and managing them. Leeds’ new owners got it bang on and invested heavily into the management side of the club before the playing side. 
 

This isn’t a dig at the club for not getting bielsa, however im sure we could have done much better than monk had we used a fraction of the wage budget we allocated for players.

It honestly boils my *** how we are constantly being told by the gazette that we can’t afford manager X because he wants a big backroom staff. Or we couldn’t afford to get Kenyon in full time because he wanted too much money. Then we go and blow a fortune on some totally average player (Guedioura, gestede, Fletcher, Saville, Shotton, Flint) that could have easily covered a manager/ceos demands.

Yes you can say ‘ah but the manager might be poor and we have to sack them’. Fair enough, but is that any different than being stuck with expensive players for 4 years? Look at Britt, by the time he leaves he will have cost us at least £20m, has he done more than bamford would have done? No. Gestede also has probably cost us around £15m all in. What *** manager could we have got for that money!?

[SmogDane 4,055]

Trying to stay positive.. 

A small squad at this point, might make us more attractive for PL loanees..  Guaranteed game time...