newyddion
Well-known member
I think that the penny had dropped that A LOT of money had been spent on overpriced forwards that were not necessarily suited playing together.Pulis felt the signings he inherited weren't balanced - we had brought in all those forwards, almost without thinking how they could fit together as a strikeforce. He felt the squad was seriously unbalanced. From what we have read, Steve Gibson later questioned what lay behind some of those buys and the prices. But I cannot really go further into that.
From my part I was excited about the appointment of Garry Monk, lots of us were. He was really highly thought of in the game at the time. But I soon found that I could not understand what he was saying at press conferences. Maybe not important except I wondered if anyone really knew what he was trying to achieve on the pitch. Did the players understand him?
So, Tony Pulis was faced with having to balance the books but also balance the team. He bought a goal scoring midfielder and goalscoring defender loved by his own fans. But had to sell assets and not the players he necessarily wanted to sell but those who were in demand and could command fees.
I guess we are now almost at the start of a new cycle. How do we plan going forward. Warnock is a manager that likes to buy players but then so did Monk. How many managers can you trust like Warnock or do you put in a system like Brentford where the coach is just that and coaches the players the club nurtures and signs? That is not a club Warnock or Pulis would be comfortable with. That was the system Karanka said he wanted, he was a European style head coach, hence why he never went to signings press conferences. But the evidence was that he didn't agree with many signings bought for him.
Anyway, at a time when we have very little money we will need to work out a strategy going forward and surely having a management dropping anchor for a couple of seasons is the only realistic way of truly getting a system and a plan bedded in.
Bamford, Assombalonga, Gestede, Braithwaite all were spoken about as being number nines.
an offer for £6m from Leeds for Gestede was turned down during Monk's tenure. Pullis didn't fancy Bamford as a striker and saw him as easy money to bring in.
Braithwaite was bombed out pretty quickly. the idea of all this happening and then paying £2m to loan in Hugill at a time where we supposedly awash with strikers does not sit comfortably with me.. then losing so much money on Aden Flint was a kick in the teeth. McNair was brought in as a midfielder which justified his price tag I think.. but Saville for £8m at the same time as criticising Monk for wasting money is a bit rich!! I think Saville is great by the way and would have been worth every penning of a £4m move at the time.
We had problems resulting from having a full time recruitment team apparently handing an open cheque book to Gary Monk.. this was not resolved under Pullis with his dreadful signings and we were still suffering the effects under Woodgate. Things have improved under Warnock, but in situations that should have been akin to shooting fish in a barrel we ended up shooting ourselves in the foot.