Petriix

I wouldn't personally be including any of last season's signings, and our recent additions are both injured. This is the best I could do with the currently fit players.

We had Dowell already, so he's not an improvement vs 2020. I'm not claiming that Vrancic in 2022 would be the answer, just that we haven't added anyone better as that deep-lying playmaker since he left. Likewise with Tettey, we're hoping that a currently injured loanee will finally fill the void in the squad of a reliable (if unspectacular) CDM. It's the overall strength of the squad that has diminished. I can honestly say at this point I would rather have the money still in the bank than have signed a single one of our recruits from last season. If we'd given Mumba and Martin a whole season of Premier League football rather than signing Rashica and loaning Williams we'd currently be in a better position. Worst of all we've significantly downgraded the manager and lost all continuity from our previous success. You seem have a great deal of faith (based on little evidence) that these current players are going to do well. I'll gladly be proven wrong, but I'm not seeing anything to convince me at this point. I actually think the more we persevere with Rashica, the more harm we do to the cohesion of the team as he has (so far) totally failed to learn how to link up with Pukki.

Alternatively we could pick some other players... But, yes, they get a chance to prove me wrong. I just haven't seen any evidence that they will. I'm far more interested in seeing what Sinani has to offer or whether Hernandez can stay fit.

That's not because I think Placheta and Stiepermann are (or were) any good. I just think we signed a whole bunch of dross last summer. I hope to be proven wrong, but I don't believe I will be.

Hopefully we'll be returning to the central number 10 so only 2 midfield spots for the majority of the season. That means we need at least 4 CMs in the squad, which we have. We've clearly been trying to cut down the bloated squad so it would be totally backwards to fill it up with dross again; and we really don't have enough money left to bring in anyone who would massively improve on what we already have.

Midfield is (currently) far worse. Maybe the new signings will come good but I won't hold my breath after last summer. We still haven't replaced Vrancic and Tettey with similar quality, let alone Skipp and Buendia. Even Cantwell isn't as good as 2020 Cantwell. I'm yet to see anything from Rashica or Sargent to suggest they're any better than Placheta or Stiepermann. I know people have high hopes for them at this level but there's no guarantee of success. Above all, the 2020 team had a clear philosophy with a system that they all knew intricately. They were a well oil machine, greater than the sum of its parts. The current squad is pretty much starting from square one.

Thank god! Probably technically the worst of our signings from last summer, only mitigated slightly by the low fee. Great to get him off both the wage bill and the team sheet.

This really seems to be part of a bigger picture of adapting how we operate. To me that's alarming given the previous relative success of our model which has produced a string of top level players precisely by giving game time to young players with potential; even though they aren't yet up to the standard. The Championship is the ideal place to develop prospects like Tzolis. It seems crazy to be shipping him out at this stage. However, a successful loan could be beneficial for both parties.

David Fox (IIRC) had the highest accurate cross percentage in all of Europe's top leagues. Way better than Gilmour.

You were obviously watching a different player to the one I saw. He lost every 50-50 and his work out of possession was awful.

In my opinion he's better than any of our signings from last summer. Far better than Placheta too.

I don't know about anyone else but, in celebration, I've trimmed my nether regions into the appropriate style.

On balance, over the past decade at least, our recruitment strategy has been largely successful. That doesn't mean the majority of signings have worked, just the minority of successes have been disproportionately good; a large number of low risk, high reward gambles. That's fine if you're able to endure the chance of failure and give these players with potential a chance to sink or swim. The risk with that approach is that it takes a lot of time. And, while we're finding out which players don't make the grade, we're also unsuccessful as a team. Recently we've been attempting an alternative, higher risk/higher immediate reward approach by paying bigger fees for supposedly better players. It's hard to argue at this point that this has been a success with just 3 league goals coming from ~ £25M of attackers. The try-before-you-buy route is obviously appealing because it mitigates against the largest part of the failure: if we're unsuccessful then we avoid the bluk of the transfer fee and wages. But we're seeing the limitations on a number of levels. These loan players are not necessarily committed to the fate of the club - we saw this with Normann in his attitude on the pitch. They've often suffered injuries, lost form or just fallen out of favour at their current club so they are arriving with a big question mark rather than being able to hit the ground running. This obviously leaves us on the back foot when trying to field a competitive, cohesive team - at least initially while we're waiting for things to fall into place, and last season it simply never did. Having said all that, the big positive from signing injured players of a higher ability is that, once they're fit, they can be really good. The trick is to only play them once they are genuinely fit again. If they aren't even in the squad then we've not really lost anything. As long as we don't make the same mistake as with Normann and play a half fit player in a key role. However, it is alarming that we're attempting to resolve our biggest area of deficiency (central midfield) with two injured players. Only time will tell whether this proves to be a mistake.

You've somewhat proven my point.

Some of us prefer not to delve into threads once they get over 3 pages long because they've normally descended into childish bickering by that point. A new thread about each player is reasonable. Ta.

I find it best to set expectations low, then I can be pleasantly surprised if it goes well and not too disappointed otherwise.

Why do people suddenly think Rashica will be good? I didn't see anything last season to suggest that he knows where the goal is, or where Pukki is for that matter. 10+ goals is pure fantasy. I'd be surprised if he gets more than 5.

I totally agree. This is exactly the sort of player we should be developing. He's got lots of potential and plenty of the raw ingredients to be a good player. Keeping PLM and offloading Martin is exactly why I feel the squad is going backwards. Mid-table mediocrity in the Championship beckons and we're chopping off the green shoots of hope for the future.

I think the real question is: given that we spent £100m, how can we have performed so badly and apparently have such a poor squad? It's not 'where did the money go?' but 'why did so much money go on such rubbish?'. Personally, I'd prefer it if we spent less and kept more in reserve. More low risk, higher reward signings and more chances for young players.

Except Leeds have a clear double pivot and some meaningful possession in the number 10 area, which is exactly what I was arguing for us to be doing all season.

Oh yeah, that puts things into perspective. Look at Southampton's left-back. Maybe it's just that our centre-backs are so deep and our central midfielders are so close together. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine us looking more like West Ham's shape if we get it right or maybe Palace if we insist on the 4-3-3.

I think this graphic highlights the serious flaws in our tactics last season. The fullbacks are far too high and ultimately given far too little support by the wide attacking midfielders. There's too much emphasis on a single defensive midfielder and there's no central support for the striker. We basically averaged playing a 2-5-3.

I wouldn't. Having seen the contrast between his performances for Scotland (hardly renowned for their domination of games) and Norwich, it shows how little point there is in attempting to accommodate someone who just doesn't care. He might have potential, but that's no use to us.

Haha! I must have slept through all of those signs of promise. He certainly mastered the art of jogging back slowly while the opposition break and score, not to mention the surprising ability to lose every 50-50. Perhaps the author thinks those attributes will be useful in the Championship?

Absolutely this. The lunacy (in which the whole league is complicit) is that players are paid these enormous wages purely on the hope that they can deliver the required level of performance. That implicitly makes any 'Premier League' quality signing an enormous gamble for a promoted club. I was under the impression that Norwich did things differently in that basic salaries were lower with larger performance related bonuses - particularly on promotion or avoiding relegation. However, coupled with the 50% reduction on relegation, this is widely known to be a significant deterrent in our attempts to sign players and goes some way to explain our difficulties in the transfer market. What some people refer to as 'ambition' is actually the financial insanity of committing to unaffordable (in the long term if relegated) wages as a gamble on staying up. Webber tried to do things a different way and it was a costly (but not ruinous) failure. My conjecture is that he should have recognised the futility of what he was trying to achieve and simply not played the game. If we had stuck largely with last season's squad, I can't see how things could have been worse. He talked about changing things in his interview. None of the changes this season have borne fruit.