Not Actually that Crucial a Summer as of August 2023...beginning to now think everything isnt fine!

Apart from the frequent trebles and 11 titles out of 12 and countless cups

 

The new Swedish CB is on his way for a medical, more will come. No fear!! we will skelp the treble again this season.

 

It's encouraging we're getting a new CB in so quickly but we're still no farther forward given that we just lost one. We need at least one player on the left you've got to think. Especially at LW. Given that Rodgers has played Maeda as striker and publicly decried MJ as * useless, you've got to think he's eyeing up a player there as well.

 

One down.

 

It's always great to win trebles and doubles but we really need to have a good European run and at present the team is miles away even for Europa League and the board need to back the manager with a few quality players in the coming weeks.

 

It may all be speculation but if the rumoured interest in Hatate and Abada does come to fruition and they push for a move this is exactly the scenario I hoped we would avoid.

We have had positions that needed addressed regardless of who came in and who left. If we were selling any first team players the fee we would bring in was always going to be as big if not considerably bigger than we would spend on his replacement.

Therefore, the excuse of how we spend our budget shouldn’t be used. We knew Hart and Mooy were going to be finished in the next year anyway and we would not get a fee for them so would have had to budget for replacements. We knew Bernabei wasn’t working at left back so should have been looking at options to move him on even if it was only on loan and we would likely need to spend money their beyond what we get for him.

So my point is for a Goalkeeper and a left back we certainly knew it was likely we would be looking for new signings, there really isn’t an excuse for not having at least one of those sorted and being down the line with the other if not sorted.

I fear we have left ourselves too much to do now come the end of the window and Are being overly patient with targets who have multiple options and are likely to go elsewhere leaving us scrambling as our other options near the top of our lists will have moved elsewhere. Then we end up with the 2023 version of Mulumbu coming in.

On the chat of spending large amounts of money on infrastructure that sort of stuff needs to be looked at strategically and funding options considered to minimise the impact on our playing budget which should be the key aspect of any football club.

It really feels like we have taken Ange out our transfer model who was an old school style manager that liked to be involved in everything and the urgency has fallen out that part of our operation.

 

Starfelt has gone and two CB's are in for a combined £7 million. That gives us some extra depth. I have a feeling Kobiyashi will be loaned back to Japan. With the Swede coming in we have made 6 signings so far:

Nawrocki
Holm
Tilio
Yang
Gustaf
Kwon

Plus we have made Iwata permanent. Lost Jota and Stafelt. 3 weeks to go in the window. So far it has been pretty decent with hopefully a few big signings closer to the window closing. Really holding out hope for KT on loan last minute.

 

It may sound ungrateful, but domestic cups are a bonus and nothing more.

The current squad may well be good enough to win a treble, but it isn’t good enough to take us forward in Europe, in which we haven’t won a knockout tie in two decades.

 

Got to strongly disagree with you there we have two positions that's being crying out for replacements in goalkeeper and left back and we have sold our best winger in Jota and have not replaced him and apart from the centre half where we have spent a bit of decent money on and the others are really prospects.
We could lose hatate in the coming days or week and he will need replaced and the club have really left themselves little time to get a few quality players for Europe.
I hope I'm wrong but I can only see maybe 3 signings coming in that's far short for what I'm expecting especially the money the club has pulled in .

 

Jota leaving caught us cold. The Saudi's have been doing this with other clubs too and they have been left trying to find replacements. We have 3 weeks left in the window plenty of time and as we well know things can hot up substantially in the week before the window shuts.

 

Agree with everything you're saying.

I feel like we've been in that position with Brendan before. Everyone and their dog knew that our defense would struggle in the CL qualifiers in Brendan's last season here and we went and got knocked out by * AEK with Barkas between the sticks. Benko was brought in as a loan on the last day of the window, two weeks too late and £25m CL money down the drain.

Luckily for us and BR we're straight in the group stages this time around, but we still need quality players bedded in for the upcoming campain. Quality players that actually don't look like deer in the headlights when hearing the CL hymn. Jota was that kind of player and we need one or two who either is of equal quality right now or can develop into something similar this season.

Needless to say, but keeping Abada/Hatate/CCV is crucial for our success domestic and continental.

 

Most teams attack our left side. Although only a friendly, Wolves exposed Taylor and the left badly. After Gus, LB is top of the list closely followed by GK.

Build a solid foundation, be hard to beat, and our attacking qualities will flow naturally.

 

Last season in the CL the majority of the opponents targeted our right hand side and Juranovic.

 

Obviously depends on the draw but I feel we need more than a GK & LB “if we are serious about Europe”. CM, LW required also. I’d throw RW in to the mix but Yang may be good enough, just don’t know yet. I like Abada but he’s not good enough to start in the CL (yet) imo.

 

Yeah I agree, Abada for example was one of those players last year who for me was a rabbit in the headlights at CL level, had a few chances and missed them. He is a year older and looks focused from preseason this year. Time will tell and tomorrow could be a good place to start by putting in a match winning performance up at Pittodrie.

Two other points see if Hatate, CCV and Abada all stay this summer the chances are they are all gone by at the latest the end of the next summer window. It’s the nature of this being aggressive in the transfer market model we keep hearing about. They will have all been here for 3 seasons (Hatate 2.5) and won’t stay any longer so we need to be making sure the positions that are weaker now are strong so it’s not having to buy a full new team.

I am beginning to wonder if Ange sold them the aggressive transfer policy but hadn’t finished teaching them and they are missing the bit where you upgrade with quality when getting big fees in.

Lastly I am glad we don’t have even the one playoff qualifier for CL Groups as I am not convinced we are in the best shape to navigate them the now if we actually had too.

 

Said on bbc we are looking for a right back, winger and a striker before champions league….. how true that is I don’t know I think left back would be more priority but perhaps rodgers sees right back as a weaker position with ralston there having not been able to assess AJ yet…. Hatate strongly linked away aswell which means we would need an immediate replacement

 

New GK coming in surely?

Sent from my SM-A505FN using Tapatalk