The Rebuild

[The Doc]

When Sunderland have bought 7 players in knowing they need quality in their squad and spent £110m-ish in the process then Barry and Travers at this point of pre-season is undoubtedly a failure.

We could have bought 5 more players to take it to 7, 5 more players that are easier to buy, but there's a reason they're easier to buy.

It is a bit of blind faith as Brap says, but you've got to assume we want to buy players, we just aren't able to get the ones we want yet, for whatever reason.

[Lazarou II]

I think it is possible to be disappointed and also understand the reasons behind it.

[Gash]

We get 'dithering Dave' back and give him significant control on transfers then you all moan that we're not getting players in.

I'm not too concerned about how things are going but it's not like we haven't seen this umpteen times before. It was always going to take a long time to right the wrongs of the last few years but we live in an impatient, instant world where people aren't willing to give things time.

[TheRam]

Some bad faith arguments going on here.

People can be disappointed with the start to the window whilst still having patience, and understanding.

I just call it as I see it. I think you can identify players you want, who are available and be aggressive towards getting them in early.

That doesn’t seem to be happening.

We had Charlie Adam scouting for us in the championship at the end of the season ffs, as well as Baines and Alan Irvine.

Doesn’t strike me as a club with a clear plan on what to do this summer.

[AjaxAndy]

Some bad faith arguments going on here.

People can be disappointed with the start to the window whilst still having patience, and understanding.

I just call it as I see it. I think you can identify players you want, who are available and be aggressive towards getting them in early.

That doesn’t seem to be happening.

We had Charlie Adam scouting for us in the championship at the end of the season ffs, as well as Baines and Alan Irvine.

Doesn’t strike me as a club with a clear plan on what to do this summer.

It's not 'bad faith', it's just saying what's the point in being disappointed because we all know the reasons behind why we've only signed 2/3 players so far.

People using clubs like Sunderland as an example are just completely missing the point, it's a nonsensical argument. Any team can buy players if they're top of the food chain for those, but we absolutely shouldn't be trying to sign players where we are that. We want quality, so therefore it'll be a battle to get those players.

We probably don't have a great structure in place because of the changes behind the scenes but we do seem to be targeting a certain age profile and type which I find extremely encouraging. Outside of Luiz and Tete the strong links seem to be for midfielders and wingers 22 and under who have high potential and not exorbitant fees. That's a focussed and sensible plan, and exactly what we all want.

You can demand an aggressive recruitment drive but unless we want to pay the maximum in fee and wages that's not something we can do, nor is it something we should be doing. You can't simultaneously demand we actually aggressively and fast but also demand we don't over pay and balance fees and wages within a tight structure... Those two things don't go hand in hand.

Yes in an ideal world we'd have a few more in by now, but the disappointment we haven't just seems totally pointless because it wasn't ever going to be that way given our PSR wiggle room and current desirability as a club.

[TheRam]

It's not 'bad faith', it's just saying what's the point in being disappointed because we all know the reasons behind why we've only signed 2/3 players so far.

People using clubs like Sunderland as an example are just completely missing the point, it's a nonsensical argument. Any team can buy players if they're top of the food chain for those, but we absolutely shouldn't be trying to sign players where we are that. We want quality, so therefore it'll be a battle to get those players.

We probably don't have a great structure in place because of the changes behind the scenes but we do seem to be targeting a certain age profile and type which I find extremely encouraging. Outside of Luiz and Tete the strong links seem to be for midfielders and wingers 22 and under who have high potential and not exorbitant fees. That's a focussed and sensible plan, and exactly what we all want.

You can demand an aggressive recruitment drive but unless we want to pay the maximum in fee and wages that's not something we can do, nor is it something we should be doing. You can't simultaneously demand we actually aggressively and fast but also demand we don't over pay and balance fees and wages within a tight structure... Those two things don't go hand in hand.

Yes in an ideal world we'd have a few more in by now, but the disappointment we haven't just seen totally pointless because it wasn't ever going to be that way given our PSR wiggle room and current desirability as a club.

It is bad faith mate.

People taking reasonable arguments and interpreting them completely different to what was meant.

I’am patient, I understand why we haven’t been busy (as stated many times) but i think we’ve dropped the ball a bit not looking to get more faces in for the American tour.

You talk about high quality players but we couldn’t even get an average right back on a free sorted.

There’s signings to be made that improve our squad that don’t have to be expensive or high quality.

[Bluedylan1]

I think this summer was always going to be tricky, given the overhaul in recruitment and key staff and how many players we need to sign.

Unfortunately, we had to wait til the summer for people like Kinnear, Hammond, Nick Cox, James Smith and Chris Howarth to be available, so that's clearly delayed the processes behind scouting and recruitment a fair bit.

Defo hoped we would have 1 or 2 more in by now. I would guess that the club has decided to err on the side of caution with transfers upto now because it's taken a while to get all those key people in place, and Barry was an exception because that was an opportunity that popped up that we thought was too good to miss out on. Same with the bids for Delap and Tete.

If we can get the right-sided attacker and a quality centre mid in place over the next couple of weeks, I know a lot of us would feel much better about everything and the fanbase will be fine with bringing loans and squad padding players later in the window, as and when.

[Toddacelli]

There’s so many reasons why it should take some time. But also, we all knew when the window was and plans should have been in overdrive months ago.
With this in mind, it’s valid to have hoped for or even expected more by this point.
I hope we soon start seeing the fruits of what they’ve been doing since it was clear we would stay up.

[Gash]

I don't think Tete's a stick to beat the club with, he was at Fulham, we made him an offer, they made a counter offer and he decided to stay there, it's not really surprising that he would stay where he knows the place, people would moan if we ended up paying him a fortune just to come here.

There's been huge changed behind the scenes, personally I'd rather we kept Thelwell but we didn't so we've new owners, new manager, new recruitment committee or whatever they call themselves and about a dozen players left so there's a lot to sort through. We've done some decent business so far, kept Branthwaite and Gana and signed three players, I'd rather we were a bit more methodical and patient like this and it's certainly not a scatter gun approach that they're taking.

[AjaxAndy]

It is bad faith mate.

People taking reasonable arguments and interpreting them completely different to what was meant.

I’am patient, I understand why we haven’t been busy (as stated many times) but i think we’ve dropped the ball a bit not looking to get more faces in for the American tour.

You talk about high quality players but we couldn’t even get an average right back on a free sorted.

There’s signings to be made that improve our squad that don’t have to be expensive or high quality.

I'm not interpreting things differently to what was meant, Sunderland were literally used as an argument as to how we should be conducting our business.

You say we should be more aggressive... We aggressively pursued Delap, didn't get him and so got Barry instead, after much protracted negotiations to get him for less than the release fee. Something everyone was happy about and made complimentary comments about not just paying what was initially demanded and negotiating hard instead.

We clearly want Douglas Luiz and must have had some encouragement or we'd have moved on by now. That kind of deal you don't get done quickly, we won't be his first choice and we won't want to pay a high transfer fee or wages. Is it worth pursuing? Absolutely, but that also means we have to be patient.

That then has a knock on for other deals because until we know if we can get it over the line and for how much then we can't really spend elsewhere.

As for signings that improve the squad but don't have to be quality, why would we be sorting those deals first? That makes absolutely no sense. Imagine spending £20m on a couple of squad players and then realising you're £5m short of getting Douglas Luiz in and can't do the deal. That'd be absolute madness.

Get the main priorities sorted first... That's striker, CM and RW. We've done one, we seem to be going hard on another... It's always going to be a slow process because we aren't someone like Chelsea who can just spaff billions at will.

[Bluedylan1]

Ultimately we're all saying pretty similar things, with slight variations in tone.

We wanted more done by now/we understand it's tricky/there's still time to make it a really good window/we hope it's not a slow start because of late recruitment etc etc.

I'm ok with extending them a bit of patience, but I understand that others are less than happy and that's totally reasonable.

To be clear, if we don't get a quality RW and CM in, or if we end up bringing people like Harrison and Soucek in as starters, then I'll be leading the pitchfork army and absolutely slaughtering them.

[TheRam]

I'm not interpreting things differently to what was meant, Sunderland were literally used as an argument as to how we should be conducting our business.

You say we should be more aggressive... We aggressively pursued Delap, didn't get him and so got Barry instead, after much protracted negotiations to get him for less than the release fee. Something everyone was happy about and made complimentary comments about not just paying what was initially demanded and negotiating hard instead.

We clearly want Douglas Luiz and must have had some encouragement or we'd have moved on by now. That kind of deal you don't get done quickly, we won't be his first choice and we won't want to pay a high transfer fee or wages. Is it worth pursuing? Absolutely, but that also means we have to be patient.

That then has a knock on for other deals because until we know if we can get it over the line and for how much then we can't really spend elsewhere.

As for signings that improve the squad but don't have to be quality, why would we be sorting those deals first? That makes absolutely no sense. Imagine spending £20m on a couple of squad players and then realising you're £5m short of getting Douglas Luiz in and can't do the deal. That'd be absolute madness.

Get the main priorities sorted first... That's striker, CM and RW. We've done one, we seem to be going hard on another... It's always going to be a slow process because we aren't someone like Chelsea who can just spaff billions at will.

I didn’t mention sunderland myself, and I was talking about the response to the disappointment as a whole.

I’m patient, I understand, I don’t need it explained to me.

I think we could have looked at the gaps in the squad and looked at going to the U.S tour with a more rounded squad than we have at the moment.

Nobody is talking about spending £20m on squad players so I don’t know why that’s being talked about?

Borna Sosa at palace, £3m, experienced, decent player in a position where we have no back up. He would have been a good signing.

Boscagli at Brighton, on a free, covers centre half, left back and DM.

Just two examples of nice little signings that could have improved our squad with little expense.

We’ve left ourselves with an awful lot of work to do in just six weeks whilst the season starts in three weeks.

We are one injury away in a number of positions from looking really weak and disjointed.

[bigmanbob]

Have any of those teams you've mentioned completely revamped their recruitment department?

[Kerryblueboy]

Have any of those teams you've mentioned completely revamped their recruitment department?

Have any of those teams lost 10+ players to contract ends our squad is paper thin should have more done by now

[TheRam]

Have any of those teams you've mentioned completely revamped their recruitment department?

How relevant is that in relation to two pretty cheap signings?

I’m just using them as examples of players who seemed easily available and cheap who would have improved our squad.

The signings we probably should have made more of at this point.

We can’t just be going into the final weeks looking at who pops up available on loan or who’s still available on a free.