Happy and content with the window to be honest.
Did more than I thought we would to be honest. I would have been happy with a striker and two wingers. I was hoping but not particularly confident of getting quality like Beto and Harrison, Danjuma looks good - but he looks rusty to me and hopefully improves. We knew where we short, up front and in wide forward areas - we've improved that.
Flipping:
Mapauy - Beto
Iwobi - Harrison
Simms - Chemitit
Townsend - Danjuma
Vinagre - Young
Is decent incremental improvement and balances the squad, thats what i asked for.
Some of the outs were outstanding, millstones around the clubs neck are gone from a financial and playing point of view. Loosing Mina and Iwobi alone made/saved the £46 million alone. Losing the likes of Davies, Coady, Maupay adnd Townsend, Gbamin, Holgate who contributed or impacted very little really cuts costs - we often talk about our 90% wage to turnover ratio or our annual losses of 100 mill + that lmit it so much - well some of the main deadwood cuprits have been shifted. Lastly you need to look at the utilastion of the academy as a resource and its assets in creating revenue - this is a model the likes of City and Chelsea use to absolutes beast other lcubs financially but more importantly comply with FFP- for the first time under any DOF here we have utilizable and raised significant revenue on developing academy products - its a clear strategy and one that should be acknowledged and validated. Simms, Cannon, Niells, Sammuals Smith, Price all brought in fees - in the window before Quirk and Broadhead did. When you accumulate its a significant amount of badly needed money.
Lets be honest, Thelwell has competing needs, he needs to cut costs, bring down our losses, comply with profit and sustainability get rid of dead wood and improve the team - all with no money. In that context hes balanced all of that and done very well - on each of those things i think hes done very very well.
Lastly i want to mention the limits hes working under. The club is in trouble, make no mistake - the first worrying sign of heading toward administration is cashflow problems. We have cashflow problems - heres what happening - up to this point, we could make 100+ million losses every year and Moshiri or Usmanov were happy to write a black cheque to cover them, thats how we kept the light on - ive said it for years we are dependent on Moshriri. This year the money tap has been turned off. There is a reason NSNOW targeted Kenwright as opposed to Moshiri - they know the club cant fund itself without Moshiri - that why i always said he was the lightening rod for Moshiri and NSNOW were colluding with Moshiri. Its become evident in this window - that Moshiri wont be funding any more of our losses and the club will have to raise fund to become self sufficient - that why NSNOW and the acolytes have gone after Moshiri this week in a new departure for them. Its become clear as the window has gone on, hes selling the club and any deals he sanctioned would be on the never, never - get now - pay later after hes sold up and not be here when the cash call falls due. The club is essentially a skip fire.
That is what has happened in the window and its not Thelwell not wanting to recruit players or incompetency its literally the club needs money to be able to pay the electricity bill and not go into administration. So hes working in the most severe limits and adversity in the league.
When you weigh it all up, hes done well in my opinion and i see the skill, logic, coherence and forboddance to make it all happen.
Its a lot more complex then - why didn't he sign a winger, Centre half, full backs or attacking midfielder, its funny people think he didn't want to - who doesn't want more resources in their job to do it optimally.
