2020/21 Marcel Brands

[Carlito]

He should be embarrassed at the state of things after 3 full years at the club. Might be doing good stuff at academy level, I don’t know but in terms of first team transfers…

How can he attend board meetings and look anyone there in the eye when the subject of the first team squad and recruitment comes up. Free pass for the Steve Walsh fallout is long gone, we’re all looking at you now Marcel…and it ain’t a pretty sight.

I can't get over how difficult it's been for him to find a decent right-back.

Coleman had his career-threatening injury a year before Brands arrived, and he still hasn't managed to get a replacement.

Last season, there was no natural cover at left-back, right-back, right-midfield or centre forward, and this is after three years of Brands and five under the DoF model. People will throw out names like King, Kenny and Nkounkou, but if the manager isn't prepared to use them, they're trees falling in forests with no one around to hear.

The fact that his contract has been renewed is staggering. Alarm bells should have been ringing when he spent £27m on a striker who Silva had zero intention of playing, but instead he was given the authority to blow a similar amount on Iwobi the following the year.

Surely, someone at boardroom level must be able to see that this isn't working.

 

[Kever10]

He should be embarrassed at the state of things after 3 full years at the club. Might be doing good stuff at academy level, I don’t know but in terms of first team transfers…

How can he attend board meetings and look anyone there in the eye when the subject of the first team squad and recruitment comes up. Free pass for the Steve Walsh fallout is long gone, we’re all looking at you now Marcel…and it ain’t a pretty sight.

Embarrassed? It's taken 3 years to partially undo the mess that was left behind in the first place. We won't start to see the results of his tenure for another 3 years minimum, such was the state the previous idiots left us in.

His priority on arriving will have been to trim the rather large and ridiculous wage bill full of average players on superstar deals, as a result of which, we have been unable to find any takers even at a knockdown price. Which means we have had to wait most of them out.

Rooney
Martina
Williams
Stekelenburg
Klaassen
Onyekuro
Lookman
Mccarthy
Schneiderlin
Jagielka
Baines
Garbutt
Niasse
Sandro
Walcott
Bolasie
Besic
Pennington
Connolly
Baningime

That's 20 players and over £1m per week in wages alone that we have had to clear out, and thats not even including Sigurdsson and Tosun, which would add almost another £200k per week on top (I didn't include Vlasic or Gueye as they at least had some value).

On top of that, we have still had to maintain a squad to stay competetive, so while getting rid is a priority, it's not exactly a closing down sale, everything must go. We can't be left with no players.

So clearly there would have to be some players coming in. Most of these have been players with a much younger profile, on much more reasonable wages yet with much higher market value, obviously with the odd exception (Delph, Bernard).

And all of this with the turmoil of changing manager 3 times and having to support them with their own ideas and favoured lieutenants.

Its so easy to criticise without taking a fair and balanced look at the actual situation, the nuances of the market and the role, the fact that just because we are selling or want to buy that the other team doesn't have to just give us what we want for the exact deal we offer. If that was the case, it would be an incredibly simple job, and he really would have failed.

I think people need to apply some critical thinking and not just have a hissy fit because we haven't gone out breaking the rules to spend hundreds of millions and won the league in the 3 years he's been here, like it was doable in the 30 years before he arrived.

 

[Blue83]

Whatever happens, he literally can't win.

But he can win, by not signing crap on high wages and selling the current crap, he's done neither, all he's done is basically let a bunch of contracts expire and the only sale is Bernard lol He's got himself into this mess

 

[Blue83]

I think people need to apply some critical thinking and not just have a hissy fit because we haven't gone out breaking the rules to spend hundreds of millions and won the league in the 3 years he's been here, like it was doable in the 30 years before he arrived.

You're defending a bloke who sends Moise Kean on loan to PSG and brings in Josh King who doesn't even start a single game and averaged 19 minutes a game with a grand total of 3 shots (2 off target), I think you need some critical thinking

 

[Kever10]

But he can win, by not signing crap on high wages and selling the current crap, he's done neither, all he's done is basically let a bunch of contracts expire and the only sale is Bernard lol He's got himself into this mess

Again, it's not Champ Man. Just because we don't want them doesn't mean another team has to take them, or that the player has to leave. If players are happy to sit on a fat contract, that is their perogative. Which comes back to the point that he has had his hands tied by a number of deals he did not make himself.

In terms of the players signed, it's been hit and miss with the results, noone is arguing otherwise. There have been successes: Richarlison, Digne, Godfrey, Doucoure, Allan and James, all at some point or another have been our best player for a period since they joined. Mina I would also class as a relative success.

There have also been failures, specifically Delph, Bernard and Iwobi, and only Iwobi of the 3 has lost value based on the amount we signed him for. Kean was being talked about as being sold for near double what we paid only a month ago, and is still only 21, so I'm not going to say that he is an objective failure, while Gomes was considered a good deal when we signed him for the price we did, only to suffer from an incredibly unlucky injury which I think has took more of a toll than was 1st thought. Gbamin similarly has been incredibly unlucky with injuries, nothing that could have been prevented by a DOF.

The 3 signings this summer are all inexpensive gambles to flesh out a squad that is severely lacking and that fit in to our current model of working under a tighter budget as we continue to attempt to get back on an even keel.

If he had taken over in the same circumstances that Walsh did, I would be fully behind calling him a failure, but there needs to be a bit of reason applied. His hands have been tied by needing to fix the problems that came before, and his influence beyond that won't be apparent until we are back on a level setting. The problem with this is that the world of football keeps going, so it's an intricate juggling act of trying to compete and balance the books at the same time.

 

[Kever10]

You're defending a bloke who sends Moise Kean on loan to PSG and brings in Josh King who doesn't even start a single game and averaged 19 minutes a game with a grand total of 3 shots (2 off target), I think you need some critical thinking

Yeah, he sent Moise Kean on loan because Ancelotti didn't fancy him and it appeared to be a way of making a tidy £20m profit in 2 years.

As for King, again, I can't tell you why he wasn't selected, but it made sense at the time to bring in a backup with PL experience for next to nothing on a short term deal. Brands doesn't pick the team afterall.

 

[ArtetaMoney]

Yeah, he sent Moise Kean on loan because Ancelotti didn't fancy him and it appeared to be a way of making a tidy £20m profit in 2 years.

As for King, again, I can't tell you why he wasn't selected, but it made sense at the time to bring in a backup with PL experience for next to nothing on a short term deal. Brands doesn't pick the team afterall.

It took him all of the January transfer window to sign King (who we were strongly linked with in the previous window). We were desperately short of striking options and while he was negotiating that deal we fell down the league.

He’s also not signed a right back in 3 years, despite being in his 7th transfer window.

Not quite sure how you’re defending him, when it’s so obvious how poor he’s been at recruiting.

 

[NilSatisOptimum]

The prosecution would like to call Alex Iwobi to the stand.

For once their football will do the talking.

 

[Bluestar]

You're defending a bloke who sends Moise Kean on loan to PSG and brings in Josh King who doesn't even start a single game and averaged 19 minutes a game with a grand total of 3 shots (2 off target), I think you need some critical thinking

That one was on Carlo the Magnificent.

We had a side that could barely attack and he didn’t use him. It was just plain terrible management.

 

[Bluestar]

It took him all of the January transfer window to sign King (who we were strongly linked with in the previous window). We were desperately short of striking options and while he was negotiating that deal we fell down the league.

He’s also not signed a right back in 3 years, despite being in his 7th transfer window.

Not quite sure how you’re defending him, when it’s so obvious how poor he’s been at recruiting.

King wasn’t a bad deal. Short term cover.
Carlo was foolish to not use him when our attacking options were so poor. King is also a very good example of why the Winter window is terrible for business, so scratch three of your windows.

Next, need to have some context with the right back situation. Our squad has been running on fumes with holes all over it. Other positions have consistently been more desperate than RB and the profligate spending from the previous regimes had finally caught up.

We could have signed s RB, but at the expense of a CM. It is no doubt a calculation that has been discussed with the managers repeatedly.

 

[oglop44]

He’s also not signed a right back in 3 years, despite being in his 7th transfer window.

Sidibe?

 

[Bluestar]

He's failed here. There's no getting away from that.

He's overseen a catastrophe.

If the DoF doesn’t pick the manager then the model doesn’t work.

They are supposed to set the style of play and consistently buy players that suit the style. It is not happening here and Indont think he has the stature to over Ride managers like Ancelotti or Benitez. He did with Silva.

The model is broken.

 

[sarath]

If the DoF doesn’t pick the manager then the model doesn’t work.

They are supposed to set the style of play and consistently buy players that suit the style. It is not happening here and Indont think he has the stature to over Ride managers like Ancelotti or Benitez. He did with Silva.

The model is broken.

Exactly this. The guy cannot win, if it's a good transfer, it's probably the manager (Allan, Rodriguez) but if not it's probably Brands.

For a DOF model to fully work, he needs to be given full power plus choice on the manager.

We don't know how many of these transfers were signed by the manager, or interfered by Farhad wanting a big name (i.e Zaha)

Personally I think he's done a hell of a job, and without him we'd have no consistency between the weekly carousel of managers we go through. We cannot for one go through a Walsh/Koeman window again that almost killed us and is a massive part of his job to undo.

I will always be grateful that he managed to bring Digne and Godfrey into the club too

 

[BigDuncTributeBand]

I can't get over how difficult it's been for him to find a decent right-back.

Coleman had his career-threatening injury a year before Brands arrived, and he still hasn't managed to get a replacement.

Last season, there was no natural cover at left-back, right-back, right-midfield or centre forward, and this is after three years of Brands and five under the DoF model. People will throw out names like King, Kenny and Nkounkou, but if the manager isn't prepared to use them, they're trees falling in forests with no one around to hear.

The fact that his contract has been renewed is staggering. Alarm bells should have been ringing when he spent £27m on a striker who Silva had zero intention of playing, but instead he was given the authority to blow a similar amount on Iwobi the following the year.

Surely, someone at boardroom level must be able to see that this isn't working.

Totally, right back and right midfield - we’ve been so lopsided for years, all our attacks go down the left. We were looking for a right winger since silva’s first season. We’ve seen Walcott, Sidibe, Coleman, Iwobi all try to fill the void on the right over the last few 2/3 years. Wild.

 

[Martin Alvito]

As for King, again, I can't tell you why he wasn't selected, but it made sense at the time to bring in a backup with PL experience for next to nothing on a short term deal. Brands doesn't pick the team afterall.

We were literally coming off a game with no striker when King was signed. Ancelotti somehow ground that one out, and knew he couldn't do that again.

So Ancelotti told Brands to get a striker. Brands said we couldn't afford one. Ancelotti told him that we needed at least a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency one. Brands signed King. Ancelotti then packed his bags after that incident and the robbery.

I don't have to have been there to infer that's most likely how those things went down.