YorkshireRoyal99Notts Royal I’d completely forgotten about Gibson, Semedo & Esteves…and they were here only last season! Shows how many forgettable players we’ve churned through in the past few years
Very good points made above. Essentially there is no strategy. I’d prefer there to be a sense of realisation from the club at to our current position in the footballing pyramid & a strategy of how to improve over time. As already pointed out, Drinkwater & Rahman are examples of signings that look impressive on paper but the reality is they are completely the wrong fit for a club like us, or for a relegation battle
Interesting point about the "fit" of the club, I've always had that down as a big factor to recruitment within a club.
We've never really had a great deal of success with high-profile players or players that cost large sums of money, it's always been players who can grow organically with the club and usually on decent, but not spectacular, money as well as reasonably, yet not excessively, priced. Even in recent times, players like Gunter, McCleary, Le Fondre, Gorkss, Norwood etc were all successful signings that fit the profile of the club for example.
However, the likes of Carrico and Puscas, high-profile and high value signings, have been less than successful because they just didn't seem to fit the profile of the club.
Agree with the sentiment, but Carrico is a hell of a weird choice.
Don't recall him being a big fee or big wages and his biggest problem was injury / fitness.
There are hordes of better options to illustrate the point.
Pogrebnyak, Vydra, Lita (to an extent), Ferdinand (either), Drenthe, Grabban, Martin, Aluko...