Trigger will be pulled. It always is.

I think the lack of investment moans can be a reflection of poor investment/bizarre decision making anger TBF. Other than that, I might not use the word ‘gross’ but agree with the incompetence. I also think this is where Roy gets dragged into it.

If my best man had hired Bjork to sing at my wedding I’d be furious. If he said ‘there was nothing in the budget and she was all I could afford’ I’d be even more furious to see money spent on a load of food and decorations that weren’t necessary or needed.

There’d be little point directing blame at Bjork, although I’d still rather have anyone else singing, or expressing any shock when she starts singing Bjork songs. I’d be angry at my best man for such a c0ck up. Roy is Bjork here with the board my best man. I do love a wild analogy

Edited by Nicholas91 (21 Jan 2024 4.04pm)

It's oh so quiet all of a sudden.

Our fundamental issues are a low turnover and a tendency towards short-termism, which limits our opportunities for growth.

The chronic fear of relegation that pervades the club, even after 11 years, means that we have shirked difficult decisions which could have pushed us in either direction and are reliant on crutches.

Zaha was one and we seemingly turned down offers for him, feeling that his worth as a player was greater than what we were offered to sell him.

I'm not saying that we should have taken the £40m Arsenal bid but I feel like we priced him too high to ward off any interest. If we'd been more receptive to offers, perhaps we could have got £60m which would have given us funds to reinvest. However, we were too terrified of life without him to consider it.

Roy is another crutch. I felt a palpable sense of relief when he left the first time and knew when he returned that it would never just be for those few months. Despite our current form being as bad as Vieira's when he was sacked, you still sense the board are afraid to get rid.

When we have invested in players in recent years, generally it's gone well. We signed Franca (£15m), Henderson (£15-20m), Holding (£1m), Lerma, (Free), Doucoure (£20m), Richards (£10m), Ahamada (£10m), Johnstone (Free), Guehi (£20m), Anderson (£15m), Edoaurd (£14m), Mateta (£8m), Olise (£7m), Eze (£15m).

Overall this is outstanding business. Of course some of them have done better than others but that's a combined outlay of around £150-160m and how much are they collectively worth now? Eze, Olise and Doucoure alone are probably worth more than that between them.

What we need to do now is be brave and trust ourselves to progress despite making changes.

Roy has to go, that's clear. We need someone younger, more progressive and who is good at working with young players. Potter would be my choice but I think Cooper would be good as well.

We need to invest more in the squad which means selling. Olise will go and it's out of our hands. I think we should consider selling Guehi too, as he has a high market value, we have cover at CB and I actually think that Anderson is more important to how we play.

Any money raised HAS to be invested in the squad. The strategy of signing good young players from the Championship has done so well for us, we'd be made not to carry it on. We have to get out of this scenario where if one or two players get injured our entire season falls apart.

Lack of investment is a bit of a red herring, if you understand the FFP rules, you cant just keep throwing money at buying players. An income has to be generated to be spent and balance the books.
Our current problems date back to when we were buying older players with no resale value, so created a big negative spend. The only players I think we have received a transfer fee for in the last 10 years are AWB, Bolasie, Benteke and Sorloth, just not enough to offset more spending.
Some of our sought after players will need to be sold to invest further in the squad.