...yep, I think that’s right. It’ll help so much if Manager/DoF are ‘on the same page’ as they will want the same type.
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...yep, I think that’s right. It’ll help so much if Manager/DoF are ‘on the same page’ as they will want the same type.
Paul Rideout
Player Valuation: £40m
totally agree. I think if I was DoF and Silva suggested something to me, I’d be less likely to simply take his word for it and go with his gut feeling than if it was Ancelotti. also it’s easier to go with suggestions such as Allan orJames Rodriguez (still struggling to believe this one), which have undoubtedly been unlocked as a possibility because of the manager.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Completely agree with all that. On the academy thing: if he actually went in and cleared out the frat house of ex-players stealing a living then he'd get my support for just doing that. I don't see any evidence he's in charge of that part of the club though.
Yeah I agree with that. I said in an earlier post, I'm not criticising Brands at all, and you're right that he may be behind or at least very much on board with the change. I just don't really get why people are saying there hasn't been a change. It's really quite an obvious one I think.
I've said before, the average age thing is a bit of a red herring in some ways. Last season we could put a balanced side out of Pickford, Sidibe, Digne, Mina, Keane, Gomes, Delph, Bernard, Iwobi, Sigurdsson and Richarlison. The average age would be relatively low but only because they're all in the same age bracket. They're all full internationals and the youngest of them is 23. None of the individuals are inexperienced and neither is the collective. It makes me laugh how you get some people making out like Holgate, DCL etc are still wet behind the ear kids at 23, and question whether it's good business to sign Doucoure at 27 because he's too old. It's a small window of being the right age for some people.
There's no such thing as "classes" , sides etc., that's simply petty and childish mate. If we want real success , everyone needs to pull together and work as a team
toffeeblue9
Player Valuation: £35m
Think there's a tendency in this discussion to see things in black and white rather than any shades of grey.
Clearly Ancelotti has asked for/suggested the likes of Allan and Rodriguez - does that mean the manager is solely in charge of identifying targets? I doubt it - Worth remembering that we bought Richarlison under Silva and tried to buy Doucoure too. Brands has said all along that agreeing transfer targets has to be mutually agreed. I don't see a particularly big deviation from what's going on currently to what went before under Silva, other than the fact we appear to have relaxed the age profile a bit on these three signings. There's also a tendency to blame Brands for the signings who haven't come off and give credit to the manager for the ones that have. Under Ancelotti's reign so far, we've bought two players who were clearly identified by him, we've bought two younger players who I doubt were his suggestions (in fact we know that he had never heard of Branthwaite, by his own admission) and we are about to sign Doucoure - it's pretty difficult at this point to work out whether or not he is a Brands suggestion or an Ancelotti one, but we do know that they both need to agree on it for us to sign him.
Don't stress about it - Ancelotti and Brands have said good things about working together. If they're happy, we should be happy.
Clearly Ancelotti has asked for/suggested the likes of Allan and Rodriguez - does that mean the manager is solely in charge of identifying targets? I doubt it - Worth remembering that we bought Richarlison under Silva and tried to buy Doucoure too. Brands has said all along that agreeing transfer targets has to be mutually agreed. I don't see a particularly big deviation from what's going on currently to what went before under Silva, other than the fact we appear to have relaxed the age profile a bit on these three signings. There's also a tendency to blame Brands for the signings who haven't come off and give credit to the manager for the ones that have. Under Ancelotti's reign so far, we've bought two players who were clearly identified by him, we've bought two younger players who I doubt were his suggestions (in fact we know that he had never heard of Branthwaite, by his own admission) and we are about to sign Doucoure - it's pretty difficult at this point to work out whether or not he is a Brands suggestion or an Ancelotti one, but we do know that they both need to agree on it for us to sign him.
Don't stress about it - Ancelotti and Brands have said good things about working together. If they're happy, we should be happy.
catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Yes I agree. As I said I saw the article saying we are repeating the same mistakes as last summer and was quite surprised. It's fine saying last summer had mistakes. It's fine to say this summer could have mistakes, but they're not the same mistakes.
People seem to get a bit obsessed around age. I wrote something on the main site about older players, which essentially stated you can't just assume players who are 27/8 are not worth buying. It's slap bang in the middle of their prime.
I saw a video with a lad defending the position, who was frustrated we try to sign Doucoure at 27, but advocating repeating signings like Digne, who I believe was 25 when we signed him. I mean I can't see this idea thatm players fall off a cliff between 25-27.
The most important thing for us to do, is make sure the players we sign are good enough. I know it sounds obvious, but it gets over complicated and overlooked.
As a final aide, it's a fair point on those younger guys. Yes you can look at age, but you also have to look at games, Leon Osman making his debt as 23 to me isdifferent to the 2 aforementioned players who have 100+ games. I don't think you get massive improvements from them, what you can hope is they become a bit more consistent.
APN_EFC
Player Valuation: £25m
I think the realism here is that we have realised that there has to be a 2 - speed plan, and I hope they are following this;
Develop young talent for 2-3 years from now
Buy existing talent for immediate success, which then feeds into the young players
Zatara
Player Valuation: £100m
They arent mutually exclusive David.
I think you're over analysing all this a tad. When Brands was brought in, it's a fairly safe assumption to say he was sold the 'dream', to work for a club with a CEO with money to commit and a 'top quality' manager who could attract and mould the right players. But instead he was saddled with Koeman, and then SIlva.
Arguably then, he didn't see the dream come true until Ancelotti arrived, and since then - and I agree fully with Dave on this - the game has changed and so has Brands role, but only to what he probably expected it to be in the first place.
To look back now and try to apportion blame or performance to Brands before then seems a little churlish - it was hardly his fault that we couldn't attract even remotely the kind of player we are now attracting. He focussed on his strengths in the up-and-coming-potential market, and I'd personally give him about a 7 out of 10 to date in that area.
His job in that respect is surely to seek sales / loans / any way of recouping wages for unwanted players to help balance the books and to support the manager in his incoming player objectives. To do that, you can't just give them away. To have got any kind of interest in the last 2 seasons in Sandro, Besic, Bolasie et al on their unrealistic wages is a plus.
This kind of business is always done at the dog end of the window. Let's see what happens at the end of this one - but you can hardly persecute him for not being able to sell our dross unless at a price that you would otherwise complain about him crippling the club and stifling the manager's plans.
Simon Buttle
Player Valuation: £50m
I think you misunderstood what Dave is stating here mate, Dave (i think) is referring to the amount of ex players we seem to collect up and let hang around the club like a bad smell despite offering very little. It's that 'old boys club' thing
....just having a nose at the Watford fans forum and thought this was quite amusing. Steve Walsh has clearly given us a reputation;
Ah, my bad if so. Could he perchance be referring to the Bainses of the world then...?
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