italian dave

Love Potion Number 9………The Searchers

Milan don’t. Inter do. (see the discussion on names on the Champions League thread!) And they don’t reckon on 10m - they are talking about 18m. And the way these things work that is presumably the opening shot. £s and €s seem to be treated as 1-1 in the articles for some reason. Inter have been public about their wish to strengthen midfield though. So there’s a reason for their rumoured interest.

As an alternative to the Sun…… https://footballleagueworld.co.uk/inter-milan-to-rival-spurs-west-ham-in-transfer-tussle-for-bristol-city-player/

I could, but it would be much like the Google translate if you click the button just below the post!!! Basically, Inter are interested, but value him at €18m, not our 25. (As per @Lrrrs reply I’ve just seen!) The replies to the post are interesting: mostly along the lines of never heard of him and even €18m would be too much! PS - it seems to be being touted across a number of Italian sources. Almost all off the back of the mercatoweb story…..but that’s partly because that’s seen as a reasonable source - of rumours at least!

Agree. They were big and strong, but they weren’t just used as “targets” for long hopeful punts, quite the reverse. The other thing I remember from that game, and is mentioned in the article Dave posted, is how hopeless we were at trying to play out of defence to relieve pressure. As the article says, Brentford have the set up and the ability to play short balls and neat passing movements out of trouble when they need to, and don’t rely the whole time on a punt to a target man.

Only 19.45 on mine. Its not a bank holiday, so can’t see it being 1500

I don’t think they’d see us at Soton as a real issue. Plymouth is on a bank holiday!

And that’s before Sky start messing with them……

Boring….show me those two stop options ?

And Blackburn!

Like planning consent?

Thanks Dave. Interesting. And, genuinely, my first thought, before I read your note or opened the link, was that the last time we had a real target man it was Milan Djuric! His goal at Sunderland is still one of my top memories of the past decade or so, and a real number 9s goal in the mould of John Galley!

Very different - and for much of the time in a lower league too. But relatively. We just hadn't been good at it! And even with Maynard, part of the skill is negotiating something that will satisfy the outgoing player too. But - as I've said above, I'm not trying to defend MA - just to suggest that there were reasons, early days, why SL might have though he'd made a good call.

Completely...and an unsettled squad with the risk that potential stars don't flourish. Which is why it fell apart (and why my praise through gritted teeth is very qualified!)

It almost seemed like it was done on a kind of percentage basis. We've bought from lower league/France and made money before. Therefore, buy 5 from lower league/France, and if 4 fail, but one makes a 6x more than he cost then we're in profit. And it didn't go much beyond that!

But, nevertheless, and for whatever reason, we DID sell them for a huge profit. In contrast to previous regimes where, from Goater, through Marvin Elliott to Maynard, we didn't do so at the right time or in a canny enough way. I find myself saying all this through gritted teeth because I can't stand the guy, but back at the time we thought we were doing well to get the money we did for all of them.

Thanks - bit more than I'd imagined. Presumably the lower end is for Monaco/Frieburg (I know that's a fixed amount). I don't imagine that will worry them If the £1m is Burnley then that might affect how they view it.

It’s not going to be much though, is it? In the overall scheme of things, not an amount that will make a huge difference to the decision for those three clubs?

Yes, but the point is that in the past we had good players and we failed to capitalise on them. And yes, it came unstuck towards the end (Nagy, Fam, Paterson etc). That’s why I was very careful to explicitly say “in one respect and for a while”.

Yep, agree. The strategy of buy cheap, sell high isn’t bad. It just has to be balanced with a football strategy. We had an objective - top 6. I’ve no doubt LJ had a strategy but I suspect that he felt it was repeatedly sabotaged by the financial strategy.

Yeah, I don’t argue with that. I think it’s just semantics. Clearly LJ had control over what happened on the pitch - selection, tactics and so on. But my point is that MAs financial objectives were allowed to take precedence over the ‘on the pitch’ objectives. And he is a financial man, not a football man (whatever he may wish!).

And great response Ole! I think I’d add/suggest one thing though, in an attempt to be entirely objective and fair. And that’s that - for a while and in one respect - he was quite good at it. The one thing he did well was to extract maximum value from our assets. That was something that SL had always been clear was an objective for him, and it was something we’d been pretty poor at. We had a long history of turning down generous bids for players at what turned out to be the peak of their career - we’d expect them to take us to the next level and usually they’d end up the following season getting injured and/or losing form. Or allowing players to wind down their contracts. There’s no doubt that - in purely financial terms - we couldn’t have done much better than we did with the likes of Kelly, Kodjia, Webster, Brownhill. I think that impressed SL. I think you’re dead right about him being a wannabe footballer who actually had no idea about the football side. @Davefevs talks about SL leaving him to run the football side: my view is that SL left him to run the financial side and LJ the football side, but failed to manage the balance between the two when those objectives came into conflict. Either way, a mistake. And, ultimately, I agree - I for him it’s all about him, his income, his status, his objectives, and LJ wasn’t strong enough to stand up to that (and possibly also had a more balanced view and did actually recognise the financial drivers). And the way he stitched us up with the Americans was unforgivable, and surely must have made SL see the light? Even if too late. Finally, and again trying to be completely objective, I can understand why our friends from Ipswich might be a little baffled: we must seem oddly obsessed to the outsider. Right now, the top two threads on our Bristol City football forum are about MA/Ipswich and LJ/Leeds - three years, a whole pandemic, two managers, a whole squad after both men left us!

Jumping Jack Flash……..Rolling Stones