Laughable Chimp

Pretty sure he was indeed a regular starter for us lol. He had more minutes that season than any other attacker bar Watkins.

His stats past couple seasons are decent but are hardly setting the league on fire. We’d be gambling on him improving quite a lot which is possible considering his age but far from a certainty.

Yeah if there was VAR, that’s getting overtuned for a free kick outside the boz

Nick telling Keinan what he thinks of him.

Yeah he started hot, but seems to have really regressed since at Turkey. Trezeguet was a lot more impressive on his loan back to Turkey so can’t say this loan run is making me want Traore back.

I think there a whole of missing context in this comparison. if we wanna talk purely winning percentages, why not go for OGS?

I agree he’s not a poor manager, but his stubbornness with his principles means that there’s always going to be a limit to what he can achieve. Best case scenario is what happened with leeds, but could just as easily go immediately tits up like what happened with lille.

The funny thing is that whilst Targett started the season poorly, Gerrard coming in actually coincided with a resurgence in his form. Those early games under Gerrard where we won a lot had Targett playing well for us. This is why I never bought the nonsense about how Targett couldn’t work in Gerrard’s system and we needed Digne instead.

Tbh, after seeing the transfer shitshow that happened this summer with Man United, I think we might be severely overrating how relevant the scouting department actually are at most clubs. Imagine that, one of the biggest clubs in the world seemingly had no scouts at all. All the players they were being linked to were players who pretty much every football fan already knew of or had played under their new manager at some point in the past. To be clear, I don't think the scouts are bad at their job, I do question though how much the final decision makers actually take their opinions and analysis into account. I've seen too many ridiculous signings happen that I refuse to believe any competent scout would sign off on,

Gerrard never rated his as more than a backup. Doesn’t matter how well he plays, he would never have broken that glass ceiling under gerrard. Wherever Gerrard goes for his next job, he’s never going to succeed if he never allows a player to change his mind and play their way into the team. the fact that danks is apparently dropping Mcginn and Ramsey, stalwarts under Gerrard suggests that it was mostly him refusing to give the other players a shot and stubbornly insisting on his players

The reason why I’m suspicious of Lange actually being the driving force for our shift in transfer policy is the rumours that Gerrard was the one who nixed the Sarr signing implying It was not only Lange that wanted him, but that he had enough control by himself to push the signing forward behind Gerrard’s back. Sarr would’ve been a terrible signing. He gained a lot of hype for his performances a few seasons ago. The problem is that he hasn’t gotten better since, and if anything he’s regressed. There’s a reason Watford fans were unanimous in biting our hand off for the 30m we offered. This isn’t the Ismaila Sarr of a few years ago yet we willing to pay him big money as if he was. And this is without me even mentioning the fact that he did not fit in our team whatsoever. If you noticed, that’s been a common trend regarding a lot of the purchases we’ve made. The biggest example was Coutinho. He is clearly extremely far from the player he was at his peak and is likely to only get worse from now on. Yet we bought because? Well because his phil coutinho of course. One of the most expensive players of all time, surely there’s no way this signing would turn out bad. Who cares that we already had another player at our club that we already heavily invested in and would lose his spot. Ings and Digne aren’t far behind. Very very good players at their peak, but we bought them both whilst they were on the decline and also at the closer end of their careers. Just like with Coutinho, both their previous clubs and their fans did not mind seeing the back of them for the fees we paid. And just like with Phil, we never seemed to give much thought about how these players would fit in team. Did we really need to spend that amount of money on a backup striker? A backup left back would’ve been nice, but we clearly did not want him as a backup and it led to our previous starting left back immediately leaving, leaving us right back to where we started just with less money and a higher wage bill. I’m gonna ignore Bednarek since he was an emergency signing and on loan but what the hell was the point of signing Dendoncker? Did we just saw that he played a lot of games for Belgium and Wolves and assume he must’ve been good? He doesn’t add anything to the squad except be another body in the midfield when we already have plenty of other midfield options already. Maybe he was at one point in time, but he clearly isn’t anymore as evidenced by Wolves fans being all too happy with selling him. The common themes should be obvious at this point. These players reputations make them seem better than they actually were when we signed them. I swear I’ve seen this happen a lot, it takes quite a long time for a player’s reputation to actually catch up to how good they currently are. Think about how many outside fans seem to think John Mcginn is still one of our best players. However, the current fans are obviously more in the know about how good these players are currently. Sarr would’ve fit in so perfectly with the trend its not even funny.

I don’t care either way for him appointing Gerrard. It was a bad appointment fair enough but its not like he just hires a random bloke off the street and gave him the job. It didn’t pan out, it happens. What I’m more concerned about are our financials and that’s pretty much my main concern with regards to whether he can do his job. I’ve been banging the drum for a while now that our financials aren’t as rosey as it seems. There was a graph going around showing how much money we had lost over the past decade and many used it as ammo to lambast our past owners. But if you looked closely, half of the losses we accrued came under the new owners despite them only owning us for a couple of years at that point. Purslow had covid to use as excuses but the losses seemed acceptable provided we continue to improve. Well we’ve stopped improving and the past 12 months we’ve likely increased our expenses significantly. So what now? We can’t continue to rely on our owners pumping in money to try and keep us afloat. they’re supposedly savvy businessmen, if there’s no return on the massive investment they’ve made so far, they could easily turn off that tap. We could end up right back where we were at the end of the Randy Lerner era.

Even adjusting for sub appearances, that rating is pretty terrible. Wasn’t that much better last season either. I think its safe to say he’s not good enough for the MLS

Whilst he technically was a Gerrard signing, he was always brought in to be a backup, nothing more. It didn’t matter how well he played and how badly our starters did, he was never going to be picked first. You could see similar things happening with a lot of different players. I know each manager tend to have their favorites but Gerrard was a bit ridiculous with it. Its like he never considered the actual performances the players put in, once he thought a player was worse than another, he never changed his mind. I also suspect that Gerrard chose his players whether to purchase or in the team selection almost entirely based on their reputation. Hence why the shift in focus to big name or more experienced players with extensive international pedigree. Poor old callum chambers who got let go on a free by his old club was never going to be looked fondly by gerrard

I think the captaincy should be given back to Mings, the manager would immediately earn a lot of good will that way. Of course this depends on whether this would bother Mcginn, but I get the feeling it won’t and he’d be happy to return the armband back. Speculation of course

Looking back, I think this will probably become our worst signing of the bunch. We purchased an injury prone and on the decline player and gave him massive wages and a long term contract without ever really signifivantly improving the position. He’s gonna be impossible to shift for the next 3 years I can’t even be that mad at gerrard for this considering many of our fans thought and some still do think this was a very good signing. They’re making the very same mistake Gerrard did. Thinking just because a player is a “big name” they’re a sure fire improvement over what we have

Ings has never really been that great except for like one season with Southampton where he was truly exceptional. Even his last year with Southampton wasn’t that good according to Southampton fans themselves. It’s possible we just purchased a player who had one exceptional purple patch and has been getting further and further away from his peak ever since. This is the risk you take when you purchase an older player who was once great but hasn’t been in good form. There’s a good chance they’re already on the decline and will never get back to how great they once were and then we’re stuck with a player on large wages. Coutinho and Digne are like that too.

It would be funny if he was actually the driving force behind our shift in transfer policy

Said it when we signed him and I'll say it again. There was no point in signing him, he's just another body at best. My biggest criticism of Gerrard is how he seemingly wanted to replace almost everyone from the squad he inherited with bigger and more expensive names. I believe Dendoncker was supposed to be the Nakamba replacement. Coutinho was supposed to replace Buendia. Digne was supposed to replace Targett. I truly think had Carlos remained fit, Gerrard intended him to replace Mings. Kamara was supposed to replace Luiz. I get as an incoming manager you want to get your own guys in and not all of these signings were bad, but its clear to me that he never seemed to rate a large portion of the squad he inherited which led to him purchasing expensive replacements that aren't that much better than the players he already had.

Of course this is mostly me speculating, but I think what happened with Freddie is nothing more than just case of a Gerrard never considering him an option and when he refused to dropped his wages to find another club, he ends up completely frozen out. I mean, there's already a group of players who've played more important roles at the club prior to Gerrard being dumped out at the first opportunity than Guilbert. Targett, Traore, El Ghazi, Trezeguet were all part of the previous regime and are now all gone in one way shape or form and you can't tell me they are much worse than our current more expensive, big name options. They all decided to leave once the writing was on the wall but Guilbert refused to and this is the result.

Forget Traore, he's a worse version of Trezeguet and I wholeheartedly mean that. I don't know what's happened to his pace, if he even had that, but without it he's shown to have absolutely nothing else to his game. Can't pass, can't dribble, no guile or trickery. There are times when I thought the same for Trez but for all his faults, he was always running his socks off and had a knack at being in the right place at the right time to score goals. Bailey however, has nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Regardless of Gerrard, I'm absolutely disgusted with the performance of some of our players today. We lost every 50/50, every duel. Our passing whether it was from our attack or from our keeper was horrendous. Then there's that red card. They've just stopped caring from the first minute of the game. And that I can't abide.

Ngl, I'm looking forward to how this forum will react if we win this game and end up in the top 10

Looking forward to seeing tactically inept Gerrard outfox Potter.

Sounds like he's suggesting a training issue. I can see it. Kid's a hot prospect and has been treated as such everywhere he's went, suddenly he's struggling at a relegation battling side. I can see him losing motivation and not putting in the effort in training and it getting worse once he was dropped completely Or it could just be a meaningless PR answer from the Huddersfield coach.