Hypothetical: Emi was willing to stay

[mrdi 373]

1 hour ago, Mason 47 said:

I don't think we would have stayed up if Emi stayed.

I understand the (perceived) reasoning behind him going. The error was not using the money to invest in something solid for the now, too much spent on potential potential. I'd argue Tzolis, Gilmour, Kabak, Normann, Williams, Sargent were all the latter, 7 'maybes' with Lees Melou + Rashica the only ones with genuine PL credentials. 

That, and the manager not being suited to the change in style. A counter hypothetical I might suggest is, would we have done better sacking Farke at the start of the summer and bringing in a coach with a track record in that style to build the squad? 

We'll never know if we'd have stayed up, for sure.

However we not only stripped the midfield of Buendia, but we also said goodbye to Vrancic, Tettey, Stipermann (and for what it was worth by that point) Leitner. And of course, the excellent Skipp went back to Spurs. I'd argue that a complete overhaul of the midfield (and the system we set up with) did more to damage our chances in hindsight than just selling Emi. Not least as so many of those additions were inadequate by comparison. 

Imagine that instead of finding a way to 'replace' Buendia, we'd worked to supplement him instead - targets may well have been different and with that, the eventual outcome. It's possible even that players like Lees Melou, Gilmour and Normann might have succeeded with Emi alongside them.

It's all hypothetical though, we'll never know. I still maintain that our business in the summer of 2021 was a huge f-up. 

Edited January 12 by mrdi

[Jim Smith 2,325]

Should not underestimate also the message it sent out, making that sale at that time.

we will never know if retaining Buendia and making 2 or 3 astute purchases rather than signing 8 or 9 players, most of whom flopped or weren’t right for us, might have been enough. I tend to think it could have been. 

[Monty13 2,239]

16 hours ago, The Great Mass Debater said:

Imagine for a moment that Emi wasnt desperate for a move. Aston Villa make their bid, but with Emi's blessing we reject it. Instead of buying Rashica and Tzolis, we put the money saved into a sweet new contract for Emi that keeps him happy.

Would keeping Emi have made a difference that season? Imagine we no longer had the money to bring in the players we did bring in. Most of whom were cr*p anyway

According to the timeline of events that’s been reported he only pushed for a move after Webbers interview telling the world we were willing to sell our best players. Imagine he hadn’t done that and instead offered him more money.

It would have made a difference IMO. Emi was the only truly PL quality player we had and he was on fire that year in the Championship. He also made Pukki so much more potent.

Would it have made the difference to keep us up? Who knows.

However I don’t believe for a second the team we got promoted with wouldn’t have done a more competitive job versus the one we ended up with. Replacing Skipp was the real challenge and selling Emi on top made building a squad far, far more difficult.

 

[Monty13 2,239]

41 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Should not underestimate also the message it sent out, making that sale at that time.

we will never know if retaining Buendia and making 2 or 3 astute purchases rather than signing 8 or 9 players, most of whom flopped or weren’t right for us, might have been enough. I tend to think it could have been. 

This is a key point. It absolutely deflated all momentum. I imagine the dressing room response wasn’t that dissimilar to the supporters.

[Google Bot 3,298]

Just now, Monty13 said:

I imagine the dressing room response wasn’t that dissimilar to the supporters.

I'm sure Pukki touched on this in that interview with Iwan end of last season, losing Emi had a big effect on him of course and ultimately caused him to fall out of love with the game through how we evolved as a team and the task that was bestowed upon him.

[Barham Blitz 654]

5 hours ago, Ulfotto said:

I get Webber is the bad guy but following the narrative that he wanted to sell Emi to fund a rebuilt is a bit far fetched.

Firstly why Emi he could have sold Todd or Aarons both you have got decent fees for at the time and we’re less important than Emi.

 Secondly did we really have to sell to buy we had shipped out Godfrey and Lewis for big money the season before.

I think it was quite well documented that he wanted to ship out Max and / or Todd but that nobody came in with any decent offers.  Max as evidenced by all sorts of "leaks" around continental interest which never materialised into anything concrete, Todd to the extent that he was shipped out to the Championship on a loan to buy which wasn't ultimately taken up.  And we were pretty convinced we'd get Skipp back right up to the change of management at Spurs.

And the public line was that Covid had put an approximately Emi-sized hole in the finances so we were £30m or so down on where we would have expected to be.

Which doesn't exempt our transfer dealings that summer from criticism by any means, but there were some mitigating factors.  Personally, if there was any chance of him staying I'd have thrown a fair bit at Emi to stay for another season - with a new contract and a release clause if necessary - and stuck with the approach that we had with a couple of hopefully judicious upgrades, but @Google Bot's assertion of Webber being convinced that he can turn rocks into diamonds on demand rings pretty true to me.

If Emi was dead set on going (which I'm not totally convinced was irrevocably the case) then as I've suggested elsewhere the eventual tactical plan wasn't entirely without merit despite much evidence to the contrary.   But we needed two more industrious wide men than Rashica and Tzolis (the failings of whom led to Sargent blundering around out of position for half a season,) better midfield recruitment than Gilmour (who to be fair had looked decent for Scotland that summer) PLM and Normann and a more appropriate centre back than the frustrated midfielder Kabak.  It would also probably have needed Sargent to play instead of Pukki up front.  

As it was, it was doomed to expensive failure almost from the outset and basically undid the previous 3 years of development in one summer.

[Ulfotto 640]

Still think it’s a stretch to say that Webber choose to sell Buendia rather than had no option to.

[mrdi 373]

18 minutes ago, Barham Blitz said:

...a more appropriate centre back than the frustrated midfielder Kabak.

His attempts at those marauding, rugby-style runs from the back with the ball *were* quite amusing, though. 

[The Bunny 314]

5 minutes ago, Ulfotto said:

Still think it’s a stretch to say that Webber choose to sell Buendia rather than had no option to.

He was under contract, so to say it was a choice is a statement of fact.

Of course, disgruntled players can protest such decisions, and this happens (e.g Harry Kane skipping training when trying to push through a move to Man City), but this is almost always temporary. In the longer term, it’s not in the interests of a player to sulk, be docked wages and ultimately make themselves less attractive to potential bidders.

So let’s be clear: the club made the decision to sell Emi because they weighed the upside (money) against the downside and decided it was worthwhile. It’s impossible to predict exactly what would have happened if they’d elected to keep him, but the evidence suggests they got that decision catastrophically wrong.

[repman 635]

5 hours ago, hogesar said:

I'm pretty sure with Villa interested and Emi already wanting to leave before the Championship season started, he was pretty desperate to go.

I don't know about Emi for certain but I do know that some of the other young players in the team at that time were willing to talk about new deals (this is both before the championship season and after it). The problem was that they felt like they should be one of the highest earners in the squad. The club was pretty strict on not upsetting the hierarchy or wage structure. 

Whether Emi would've stayed or not we don't know but there was also never any chance of him being offered a deal even close to what he got from Villa.

[Helsinki canary 242]

20 hours ago, AJ said:

The squad was still probably not good enough to stay up but Emi would have given us a fighting chance, especially if we'd have invested in keeping him, signing Skipp and bringing in a couple more PL quality/ready players maybe even on loan would have given us a much better chance than the garbage Webber came up with

I agree with this, Emi alone wouldnt of kept us up but if we had also retained Skipp and probably got one more decent striker I reckon we could of survived 

[Sufyellow 222]

3 hours ago, Monty13 said:

This is a key point. It absolutely deflated all momentum. I imagine the dressing room response wasn’t that dissimilar to the supporters.

It was the final nail in the coffin, we had reached the ceiling of how far the plan could get us , getting to the prem and selling one of your only prem players,  knowing we can't afford to get proper replacements in . That's why our fans are wanting change, because as it is , there's no point in promotion accept money.  

[Sufyellow 222]

2 hours ago, mrdi said:

His attempts at those marauding, rugby-style runs from the back with the ball *were* quite amusing, though. 

Yep one of those got farke the sack, well if you chuck in krul diving over the tame shot afterwards.  

[mrdi 373]

33 minutes ago, Sufyellow said:

Yep one of those got farke the sack, well if you chuck in krul diving over the tame shot afterwards.  

Haha, just imagine:
 

Webber: “Hi Daniel, I’ve signed Ozan Kabak for you, he’s great at making these incredible runs with the ball from defence, he’s like the Jonah Lomu of football”

Also Webber: “Hi Daniel, Ozan Kabak’s wreckless runs out from the back are ridiculous and are costing us, who does he think he is - Jonah Lomu?!? Anyway, it’s becoming intolerable, you’re fired” 

Edited January 12 by mrdi

[Old Shuck 185]

In my hazy crazy fantasy world that summer, I had Emi signing a new contract, Skipp signing for another year on loan & our signing Janik Vestergaard from Leicester.

 

[percy varco 199]

And

Maddison

Godfrey

Ashton

Bruce

Murphy (Newcastle one)

Skipp

Sutton

and the rest

if and ands and all that. 
better to look forward even though it is a bit grim at the moment

[hogesar 9,711]

5 hours ago, Jim Smith said:

Should not underestimate also the message it sent out, making that sale at that time.

we will never know if retaining Buendia and making 2 or 3 astute purchases rather than signing 8 or 9 players, most of whom flopped or weren’t right for us, might have been enough. I tend to think it could have been. 

Yet we have people on here saying 3 of that back 4 aren't even championship standard! Yet 18 months ago they were supposedly going to keep us up with a midfield including likely at least 2 of Rupp, McLean, Sorensen. With Idah as Pukki backup.

[Christoph Stiepermann 1,138]

Would have made a difference but you don't compete in the modern PL unless you can defend, counter attack quickly and are really good at set pieces. We would have scored more goals, got more points, maybe kept Farke and saved ourselves a lot of money but I don't think it would have been enough to keep us up. 

I think keeping Buendia and only making a few signings like say Gibson, Dimi and Sargent for fees and Normann, and Kabak on loan (around 30m with loan fees and wages?, our spend minus the Buendia money) would have gotten us closer to or around 30 points but I still don't see that team surviving. The opening run of fixtures we had was horrendous, so I think the points tally around the time of the Brentford game would have been similar, but we would have looked a better side so we'd have probably kept Farke and the season would have turned out very similar to our 19/20 season but without the downturn when covid happened. 

[Sufyellow 222]

37 minutes ago, hogesar said:

Yet we have people on here saying 3 of that back 4 aren't even championship standard! Yet 18 months ago they were supposedly going to keep us up with a midfield including likely at least 2 of Rupp, McLean, Sorensen. With Idah as Pukki backup.

I think most have said he wouldn't have kept us up , and skipp has been mentioned alot , our defence was always going to get destroyed without a cdm. Watching our fullbacks attack without a cdm just left us way to open.  

[Monty13 2,239]

4 hours ago, Ulfotto said:

Still think it’s a stretch to say that Webber choose to sell Buendia rather than had no option to.

There’s always a choice. 

He made the interview saying we wanted to sell.

I’m sure he’d rather it have been Max or Todd, but the clubs with money rightly deduced Emi was the only one worth our price tag.

Edited January 12 by Monty13