[News]Sandro linked with move back to Malaga

[sam of the south]

It’s easy to forget because players are either injured or have been woefully out of form but we’ve got way more senior players than ever, probably.

Eg CBs, Mori is probably on the lowest wage and I’m guessing he’s on a decent whack.

Then we’ve got Holgate who will be on more than your standard, brought through young defender.

CMs, again Besic on probably the lowest wage but he’s about 7th choice (which should be an academy player etc).

Strikers, Niasse on 50k will be the lowest of him, Tosun and Sandro.

If some of the more expensive players don’t want to stick it out or look miles off the pace it’s not as easy to just think £5m a year is ok to write off, when that could be spent on someone who either wants to be here or is more likely to adapt.

5 years ago we’d have had no choice but to give these players 18-24 months to sort it out as they’d have been first sub (at worst). Now they’re not even in the squads.

Spot on.

And the crazy thing is, we've never had this many options, and yet we've rarely looked collectively worse (apart from pre-Moyes days)

But that can't be the coaching or tactics, though, as it upsets a few on here if you suggest that.

It HAS to be that EVERY player we've brought in (bar maybe Pickford) is FAR worse than we thought they were going to be.

It's the ONLY explanation.

[sam of the south]

I always thought we were wank when moyes had too many options. There were times, few admittedly where he tried rotation and failed

When we had the bare eleven was when we were at our best

Moyes' forte was fostering and fully exploiting that backs to the wall siege mentally, as well; so when the chips were down, and we were down to the bare bones, particularly against better than average sides, we would often rise to the occasion (except for against RS, United et al)

[sam of the south]

I don’t think it’s particularly the quality of the player, because so many of them have preformed well for other sides, or other years in their careers.

Whatever plan we had and whatever system we were planning on playing, we ended up not getting the players in to play it. Giroud or Costa didn’t come off, Kolasinac didn’t come off, Koulibaliy didn’t come off, I’m sure others can name more we were deffo in for but never finalised and tellingly never found plan B’s for.

Can’t say much about Klaassen, Sandro, Keane, Sigurdsson and Rooneys individual performances, but only the latter two have staked any kind of claim to be good enough, but that may well have just been a tough situation to come into and they haven’t got it together yet.

No, I don't think it's the quality of player either, I was being ironic.

Obviously the other ones you mentioned that we were in for would've helped considerably, but I still think the way our club is run from top to bottom, from boardroom to training pitch, is pretty poor right now, and lacking any real direction, personality, or identity, and as such even a better class of player would still not lift us into the top six, not while we are in such a conflicted mess.