All valid concerns.
I don’t get why people have to misinterpret the point some posters are trying to make.
We just want the club to be smarter with how they recruit players and this signing signals a return to mistakes of the past.
Nobody is saying our recruitment needs to be solely based around signing under 23 players for buttons.
We were sold a vision by Brands of investing the majority of our money on players 25 so we can continue to reinvest the money we spend and build a team for years to come.
It’s a solid recruitment strategy that has worked across the continent and on these shores for decades. We seem to be going against that in this window for whatever reason and that’s bound to raise some concerns.
Maybe it’s the way we need to go for the next twelve months. Get a base level back to the squad, sign players we know can slot in straight away to get us to where we need to be.
We invested heavily in three under 25 players last summer in gbamin, iwobi and kean and for various reasons we’re still waiting for them to contribute something meaningful.
In the short term that window probably set us back so to counter that we’re goings back to players for the now.
These signings need to be few and far between though. Get your engine room for the next two years for £50m, sound, but we shouldn’t deviate from investing the majority of our budget on younger players as that will always work out for a club in the long term.
All good points.
I think there’s what almost seems like a fundamentalism with regards to the age of players though.
Re previous mistakes, they were worse because we paid massive fees £28m for Bolasie at that time is about £50m now given how fees ballooned the year after. Same as Sig being £44m.
We’re not seemingly going anywhere near those relative numbers here and he seems to do what we actually need (lots of pressing etc in other half) unlike Bolasie who had never scored in his career and Sig who is a specific type of AM.
And I’d say that the reason why the majority of teams/ DoFs invest in younger players is out of economic necessity, not some idealistic trait.
If we’ve decided that we can afford some more fees that we don’t recoup then there’s nothing wrong with it.
I think that the age profile of the likely first XI is pretty mixed and would see big value in Richarlison, DCL and Holgate. Reasonable value in Digne; and potential value in Iwobi and more likely Kean.
However, all players will be worth more with a better team performance and them not looking so useless.