Pimlico_Villa

I don’t think wages are the issue, it’s more a case of to the outside world we are viewed as a team that scraped survival and likely will be in a similar predicament next season. All it would take would be one marquee signing to help with that, but I don’t think it is possible. Proper players just won’t want to come.

It is a shame because with the FFP relief next season this is a rare opportunity for us to benefit from our backers, but this window will be much more subdued than what everyone is hoping for, solely because we cannot attract the type of player that we need to improve. We so desperately need a proper striker and a set of wingers, but in reality we are just not going to be able to tempt the calibre of player we need to really kick on, so it is going to be marginal, more incremental progress at best.

I think his insight and access is very constrained. Can’t recall him calling anything pre-emptively or in advance of any other journalist.

It’s clear that there will be a huge delta between our price reserve and what clubs would be willing to pay based on him having one full season in the prem and not being proven at international or CL level. For the price that is being reported, teams would want a player who is more of a plug and play than one who is still approaching their prime. With Grealish specifically, there is still a lot of risk around him achieving that potential given his lifestyle, so coupled with Covid I don’t see anyone being comfortable meeting our reported £80M Ask on him. We do owe him as big of a marquee CF signing that we can, though. If we recruit well - which we should be able to do with our owners and FPP break - I suspect he could be appeased, at least for another season.

Remember having a couple of ding dongs with happy clappers on here in January that felt he’d done really well...

Sorry mate, just seen this. See screenshot below

The Times are saying today that Purslow voted for 5 subs, against Smith. If true, that is either an administrative error or he is stupid.

Don’t understand why he isn’t putting the effort in. Purslow would have told his agent that we are not forced sellers and there is a minimum price reserve, so to get his move he really needs to put in the effort and performance levels that will convince someone to pay that price for him.

That website does not constitute an independent arbitrator. The fact that we paid £22M is probably the largest factor informing that £27M valuation, with the premium driven by the fact that he has simply played half a season in the PL, so pretty arbitrary. In reality, I’m not convinced that is what someone would pay for him. The better proxies are goals scored and quality of performances, neither of which suggest that was good business at £22M.

Before that, I can see him getting really annoyed at some of the dross in the squad and get a bit petulant with them. Wouldn’t blame him.

This will rattle the happy clappers

It’ll be Suso in charge of selling those players, so think the values are way off. He won’t get those fees.

Great at winning the ball but not at playing the ball

Was that deliberate? I thought Grealish took it on himself to drop deeper to get the ball as our centre backs were just aimlessly knocking it long

I thought he’d be more up for it today, given the history.

Such is the strength of your conviction?

Please elaborate on why we would go from strength to strength?

Even if we manage to somehow stay up, we aren’t building the philosophy or style that can be maintained once we lose Grealish. We already know that Suso’s incompetence means we won’t replace or rebuild, so what’s the point in staying up? The time to invest in the squad was whilst we still had Grealish

Showed again today that, tactically, he just is not PL standard. Yes, he only had rubbish players to choose from, but constantly unimpressed him.

Think the Club have really let him down by bringing in the dross that they have. We really should have reciprocated his hard work for us by bringing in some proper players to support him. Very, very disrespectful to the lad

For this transfer strategy of buying dross to work, Smith needs to be able to coach players and make them better. He can’t.

If this man had an ounce of self respect, he’d walk. Our relegation is almost entirely driven by his incompetence. It’ll also be this clown negotiating the sale of Grealish for us. No way we’ll get market value for him. A shambolic disgrace

Ah, legitimate debate is increasingly becoming very difficult on VT. There are too many Happy Clappers with a very delicate and sensitive view of the Club. It’s easier for them just to shut down debate than tolerate it.

The other aspect to the equation when signing young players is that you have to have the coaching capacity to devote time to one on one coaching. Same with conditioning, you need to develop younger players physically. Without all of it coming together, it is not an effective recruitment strategy and is exactly where we’ve fallen short. I think we’ve identified talent, but just haven’t been able to give them the individual attention needed to develop them properly because we’ve only looked at the collective 11. Look at other teams that have younger players. They are in much superior physical condition than Targett, Trez, Wesley, etc.

It’s also about picking the right players for the right time, not just identifying players that will one day come good. That’s where Suso has cost us this season.