Alex V 4:13 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

By all means criticise the transfers if you don't agree with them. I have done so with Ayew. What I don't think holds water is generalising about all frees and loans without judging them on a case by case basis.

grasshopper 4:06 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Alex ambition has been communicated by the club by moving to a new stadium. If we are not ambitious we should have just stayed at upton park. We finished 7th last year, if we are to push up the table we need to improve our squad with better players, i dont think we have done that at all in this window. Agree we need to be careful to not go down a leeds route, but i think many fans would agree the summer transfer window has not lived up to the expectation expressed by the board. I was hoping to be pushing 5th at the beginning of the window, now i genuinely believe we will be lucky to keep in the top half of the table

Alex V 3:56 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

And if he doesn't find some form he goes back to Turkey next Summer - very low risk.

Under grasshopper's dream approach we'd be lumbered with him for 5 years.

Mart O 3:53 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

The main thing wrong with Tore is he looks fucking shit. I don't give a toss about his contract.

Alex V 3:42 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

I don't see what's wrong with loaning Tore then buying him later - we still get the player. The only difference is that if he turns out poor we can escape from the deal. That's just good decision-making - we should support it.

Almost every signing is a compromise of sorts. We can only buy players who are available to us. We've spent a lot of this Summer trying to buy players who weren't really available or feasible for us, it seems to me. The free transfers for high quality players seem like the least of our worries to me.

I would say the time in recent years we really went out and bought the manager's first choice was Carroll - how did that 'ambition' work out? We paid probably double what he was worth, condemned ourselves to a certain style of attritional football, and risked a whole Summer window on one player - it nearly saw us relegated that season.

To me that sort of 'ambition' is what we should try to avoid. Yet in deja vu style we end up paying £20m for a player who gets injured again this Summer. I think the club needs to go out of its way to avoid these errors in the future, yet you seem to take those errors as the only indicator of ambition you're prepared to accept. I think you've got it all wrong.

You want the kind of Peter Ridsdale-style ambition that would drive the club into the ground financially and quickly - poisonous imo. Our first ambition should be to avoid that sort of waste of money!

grasshopper 3:06 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Alex - some valid points mate but my biggest problem is with how we do business. A great example is tore, bilic wants to buy the player - sulley puts the deal at risk to go for a loan to save money. The only reason we went for nordveit was because he would have lower wages then song, yet song is a better player.last season we actually went for and acquired our targets like ogbonna, antonio, payet etc. This season its been the opposite, lets get this player cause he is a free or loan or cheaper then what we really want (ayew for example)

Alex V 2:48 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

grasshopper 2:35 Sun Aug 21

Well that's your assumption. Imo it's an unhelpful generalisation. Judge each incoming player on their merits, not their cost. If Nordtveit cost £20m would it be more ambitious? Ayew could have been a free last Summer or a £20m signing - it's borderline absurd to label one of those options ambitious and one unambitious.

Every club uses free transfers and loans. It's just plain common sense.

grasshopper 2:35 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Alex v the reason why i class loans and frees as unambitious is purely because if they were available to buy for a fee we would not go for them, only because they are free transfers or loans we attempt to acquire them. If we had real ambition and purpose we would look to buy players that we need and not go for frees and loans as our primary method of business.

arsegrapes 1:07 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

percyd 11:10 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?
arsegrapes

Your financial analysis overlooks the fact that the board has drawn advances against TV revenue and/or ticket sales for at least the last couple of seasons (and in the order of 100% I believe).

Yes I know I already factored this in, Sullivan said so borrowing from a Virgin Island based Company against advance revenue. This is nothing unusual as many premiership teams do it to stay ahead of the game, we have not done it and can expect to fall behind. It has worked for us last season and that is exactly my point why not once more for this inaugural season at The London Stadium our most important move for over a century?

Buster 11:41 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Forget what I said about Carroll. Final straw for me now.

percyd 11:10 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

arsegrapes

Your financial analysis overlooks the fact that the board has drawn advances against TV revenue and/or ticket sales for at least the last couple of seasons (and in the order of 100% I believe), so it is an inevitability that it will take 2-3 years of increased revenue (from TV and gate) along with staying in the prem and maybe some modest success in Europe.

Seems rather unfair to tag them as "unambitious" when they have navigated a move to the new stadium, a move which underpins much of the potential growth/success. Surely we all realise that the money paid for a player is not the only yardstick? We, along with every other medium/large club find ourselves in the midst of an economic maelstrom thanks to the TV revenues about to kick in. Virtually every "name" player being sold to Prem clubs is wildly overpriced imo. Unfortunately (?) we don't have the turnover of the Mancunian clubs - which at least protects us from some of the numerous absurd deals they've both done in their money-no-object-world. I'm happy to settle for the good stewardship that prevails right now.

dicksie3 10:51 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

WE HAVE A UEFA CATEGORY FOUR, WORLD-ACCLAIMED, ICONIC STADIUM.

WHO NEEDS TO SHOW AMBITION, SIGN PLAYERS AND HAVE A DECENT SQUAD WHEN YOU HAVE WHAT WE HAVE?!

EVEN IF WE GO DOWN; SO WHAT?!

Crassus 2:29 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

The issue is not spending but where it has been spent - they have not addressed the obvious areas of weakness and have overloaded areas of previous strength

Then to compund the unrest, it is a matter of debate that those inbound actually improve the first 11 and certainly to accomodate them, the shape and position of the existing (possibly better) players has been adjusted to hitherto collective detriment

No shock that people have the pip is it but then again, last summers window was almost perfect, so we are due a rotter

One McAvennieeeeee 1:57 Sun Aug 21
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Buster. I thought that 4 seasons ago Yeah.

Willtell 11:51 Sat Aug 20
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Free transfers cost lots of miillions of £s. I don't exactly know how much but hardly free.

They are players at the end of their contracts which, to be honest, means their clubs didn't value them enough to make a new contract offer that suited the players.

Players often think they are worth more than clubs do. Often the promise of an improved offer from a club like WH through agents means they opt for a move. If they were really top class would their clubs like Munchengladbach or Valencia not improve their offers?

For me I am still waiting to be impressed by both players although I do think DS is always happy to take a punt on a player deal that appears to be a bargain but are they?

Tomshardware 11:49 Sat Aug 20
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Hope so Mike but the truth is there is no telling whether he will make it in the Premier league. Lots of players come from other leagues and just don't perform the same.

Hermit Road 11:46 Sat Aug 20
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

I hope so.

Takashi Miike 11:35 Sat Aug 20
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Feghouli's a very good signing

Hermit Road 11:34 Sat Aug 20
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Free transfers aren't by definition unambitious. The value I'd put of Feg and Nord is whether they are better than those who already occupy positions in the first eleven. Nothing's I've seen so far suggests they are but it is early days.

Alex V 11:24 Sat Aug 20
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

grasshopper 9:22 Sat Aug 20

What would be your valuation of Nordtveit and Feghouli? You are implying that free transfers are by design unambitious, but I would argue those represent incoming players worth an awful lot of money as assets.

Are loans unambitious by nature? Depends who they are, surely? Would you argue the loan of Lanzini last season was bad business?

grasshopper 9:22 Sat Aug 20
Re: Sullivan & Gold - Where's the ambition?

Its a sad thing steve but our owners only like doing deals on free transfers and loan deals. It seems they are not confident in our scouting (especially from the managers side) and just try to minimise risk. The problem is they palm off loans as showing ambition and we are achieving all these great things, but then u realise they havent spent any real money on these players really except a small fee and wages. I think palace have had a better window then us this year

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