Balham
S24SU Seer
There's also a huge difference between operating on a £10m playing wage budget at League One level (including promotion bonuses) and a near £80m budget in the PL last season. It's fine for the manager to be making the decisions top to bottom at L1 level because, frankly, clubs can't afford the support structures but when we're in the Premier League he needs support.Spot on mate. And wherever he ends up next there will be a DoF and/or someone in charge of transfers - so people who are outraged that we'd force that model onto him/the club need to look around and see it's 2021 not 1981...
And as you say £60m+ on strikers and we still look best when Sharp and McGoldrick play up top. Ultimately the lack of cohesion/playing style between us and Wilder's signings are what cost him his job. Berge, McBurnie, Brewster - all good players, but none really fit the way we play/played...
The issues with the playing style annoy me too. Take Brewster and McBurnie. All the evidence suggests that both are penalty area finishers and if we were playing the sort of football which got us promoted to the top flight - ie work a chance for a striker to finish from 6-10 yards out - then they should be flourishing. As it is, we're playing 9 in our own half panicball and expecting the strikers to be challenging on the half way line more than finishing in the opposition's penalty area. You could argue it's the same with Berge. He's a £20m Paul Coutts but we're not giving him the shape which played so exactly to Coutts' strengths: passing options for the man on the ball and innovative runs designed to create overloads have been replaced by static defenders shit scared of being caught out of position.