Is our transfer policy too rigid?

kimtoon
Rigid Transfer Policy ?
Rigid Transfer Policy ?

It may be some hundred and three days away, but on the 8th of June 2015 our summer transfer window re-opens. I don’t know about you but I’m already thinking about who and what we need to try and progress from our present standing. While I think it’s fair to say we will pretty much all agree on what’s required, the bigger question is what does our owner think we need? My guess is he’ll spend as little as possible to keep our current status in the Premier League. For me, the prudent, cautious approach, though I know some will say **** right stingy, is better than blowing big bucks on aging and possibly ‘had their day’ players. That said there surely has to be room for two, maybe three, quality experienced players who may well be 26 and over and I do feel we are far too rigid in our transfer policy. For every cracking little player like Ayoze Perez you will most likely get 3 or 4 mediocre duds. I also think Graham Carr being hailed a scouting genius is a bit much too, yes he’s un earthed a few gems but also a couple of duds as well. We have also been linked to many players on the well built up dossier of Grahams only to find ourselves outbid by other clubs due to our owner not wanting to be part of a bidding war. What then is the point of Carr putting in so much leg work if in the end we won’t pay the asking price. Again this just serves to show our rigidity in both age and price restrictions and this must be detrimental to us ever building a team of quality good enough to truely compete on any level. It’s also policy to wipe our own noses and we obviously sell to buy now and though that makes some financial sense it only works if you replace the quality you lost straight away; leaving it until the next window just leaves you in a perilous position.I would like to see us break the constraints a little and bring in a couple of quality guys alongside youth, what do you think?

KIMTOON

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312 thoughts on “Is our transfer policy too rigid?”

  1. Sorry to hear about your mate’s lass icedog. Take him out to the pub if you can and recall the good times together.

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  2. There is also so much money in London that Spurs and **** can afford to gouge their fans in every way they can think of.

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  3. Here’s a little snippit from Johnny C. as well:
    “I’m just proud to be a Geordie. Does anyone remember that I worked with Sir Bobby? I love the Tyneside and I will do everything in my power to make us a mediocre side for Mike.”
    Beautiful Johnny C.

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  4. Eric – I think you’ve been out of the North East too long mate.

    If Spurs want to take in the Home Counties I think it’s more likely the more successful clubs would have a better pull on them supporters.

    You seriously need to do some research

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  5. Spurs have an owner who as well as being a gazillionaire who has persuaded other gazillionaires to invest in the club is a football man who has an affinity with and recognises what Spurs means to the community, and wants to take the club forward.

    Ashley is a tight wad gazillionaire who probably has no mates and is only interested in keeping all of the wedge for himself…

    Therein lies the subtle difference…

    ffs how much money does one bloke need ?

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  6. G2 cheers,we do that every week anyway only lives across the street,keep telling him it was me that made all his goals lol

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  9. Stuart: if you have been to London recently you will see that it is awash with money flowing from the City of London as well as rich foreigners. Even if you accept that Spurs are the poor relations of the big three (them, **** and Chelsea) there are still many people who support them and willing to pay stupid amounts of money to watch them.

    In Chicago there is a “soccer” bar I go to. When we play Spurs their fans outnumber NUFC fans (only me sometimes) by at least 10-1. That is partly a function of there being more ex-pats from London but that is also why Spurs have a bigger fan base to draw on because London and the surrounds are much bigger and much richer than the whole of the NE. Add in that their tradition is at least as storied as NUFC and I would suggest they are a bigger club. I wonder which club Gazza and Waddler thought were bigger?

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  11. Eric, You forget one thing though, the fact that we have been bigger than Spuds means we could be again with the right backing /investment. When we were the entertainers you saw toon tops bloody everywhere .

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  12. Kimtoon: we obviously missed a chance. I am far from a Spurs supporter, I am just saying that they have an inherent advantage over us. They will find it hard to catch Chelsea now because money is following success and money. Yokohama Tyre just announced a 40 million shirt deal. If you think back to The Entertainers we were ahead of Chelsea then as well. But we are NUFC, it couldn’t last 🙂

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  13. Kimtoon: I didn’t really want to get into it, but Stuart likes an argument and won’t really let go even if he is wrong. I sometimes like to indulge him 🙂

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  14. Have I mentioned I’m deeply concerned with the club? What happens if we win our last 12 and have to play in Europe next season? Are we ready for that?

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  15. 40 million a year shirt deal, what do we get from WONGA, 3 million? However, the Premier League is not so much a league as haves and have nots now as a league of haves and have-not-as much. We all know that this is because TV money has levelled the playing field to n extent and Fatty better watch out because his cheapskate ways could easily backfire when the likes of Hull and Stoke outspend us.

    I know I am being a bit contradictory because money doesn’t always buy success, but it usually helps and money usually begets money and always has.

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  16. Spurs have more supporters abroad because they’re currently better than us. They’re competing for more trophies, have better players, are higher in the league and therefore get more exposure abroad. In this country I still can’t accept they have a bigger fan base than us.

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  17. I will get off finances and get back to ripping Villa a new. We might even be able to put out a half decent side including Williamson (what’s the alternative). This is what I think Carvs will pick, see how it matches with Chola:

    Krul

    Janmaat Williamson Coloccini Haidara

    Abeid Sissoko

    Cabella Sammy

    Perez Cisse

    Subs:

    Woodman
    Anita
    Gouffran
    Armstrong
    Riviere
    Obertan
    Some Defender, do we have one?

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  18. Good catch-up read – at least while TDS was on. It’s pleasing to see someone arguing from a rational position for a change, and goddammit even using logic instead of make-believe.

    A couple of things struck me as I read: why is Bony used as an example but someone like Wolfswinkel isn’t? As far as I remember there was a lot of media speculation linking us to both (though, as we all know, media speculation is as good as ****).

    And, about Spurs: weren’t they selling guys for 60m and 90m and weren’t our guys sold for 20m and 30m? Seems like a big difference in funds there to rebuild a team.

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  19. Bris – Who did Spurs sell for £60m?

    As for TDS – His rationale makes no sense when you look at the history which tells a better story than anything anyone can say on here.

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  20. Yeah it was good to see Toon Darn Sarf back Brisvegas. It’s nice to see someone on here that isn’t complaining about Ashley or money, manager, players etc. Be nice to have Aussie back too.

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  23. Stuart his just got a different way of looking at things. In the summer we might have some better players and a manager that actually know’s what his doing. It’s not all doom and gloom. Santon’s no big lose and Mbiwa never got ahead of Williamson.

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  25. Stuart
    If you are using local population as a fan base then I can tell you that almost two million people live in the boroughs surrounding White Hart Lane .
    All of those people are within a thirty minute journey to WHL on public transport. That is the same journey time as a Toon fan going to SJP from Whitley Bay.

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  26. Jonas, R Taylor, S Ameobi will free up some wages for some better freebies like Ayew and Ings for example. The odd cheap surprise like Perez for example who over achieves and will only get better. A new state of the art training facilities.

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  27. Stu: thought Berbatov or Keane or Modric went for that much. On checking, seems not, though their combined amount adds another 80m or so to the Bale amount.

    Still, the point being they are far beyond Newcastle sales.

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  28. Kimtoon: Outside deals like Yokohama Tyre to Chelsea are within FFP and they see a joint commercial interest just like WONGA with us. They are arms lengths transactions. The dodgy deals are Sports Direct getting free advertising with us and even more so when Etihad paid Man City 300 million for stadium naming rights. Obviously way over the odds when it was paid and a way to circumvent FFP. I think PSG had some similar **** going on and got fined millions for it.

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  29. Sidekick

    The boroughs surrounding White Hart Lane, are they the same boroughs that surround The Emirates?

    Spurs are in the borough of Haringey. with a population of 255k.

    To isolate the city of Newcastle as being 280k and comparing it to North London’ 2m is misleading.

    Why not include Gateshead 200k, North Tyneside 200k,
    South Tyneside 150 k, albeit diluted 50% as Sunderland supporters.

    According to wiki, North London has a population of 1m.

    Bearing in my those figures don’t account for the large number of supporters in Northumberland and County Durham and places like Washington which are split.

    Spurs currently have a 36k capacity stadium and claim to have a 14k waiting list. If they were that big they would have a bigger waiting list than that surely. ?

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  30. Eric@178, I was meaning the amount £40m more so than the actual deal, when compared to what we get from WRONGA .

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  31. Sidekick – Them 2m you mention are also only 30 mins from Chelsea, Arsenal, West Ham and Crystal Palace. All PL clubs.

    As Troy says, their waiting list isn’t too good is it? Under SBR when we were selling 52k every home game didn’t we have a waiting list of 20,000 or so?

    London is full of PL clubs and also clubs like Charlton, Millwall and Watford who also have large support, so Spurs have much more competition.

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  32. On Spurs – yes we can catch and match them. The population rgument is a bit of a false one- they have a much bigger ‘pool’, but also lots more competition. (Although they can also charge higher prices). The real difference since we were last approx their turnover level (in 2008, where we were a bit over 10% less revenue then them, versus nearly 40% today) is TV and commercial revenues – they have shot ahead, we have relatively stagnated. The other thing to note is that in 2008 we paid £75m in wages (crippling against our turnove) they paid £45m – in 2014 their wage bill was £96m to our £62m and today theyalmost certailny have doulbe our wage bill. We have failed commercially, but that could be put right, and we won’t invest as much of our turnover in wages as they will – this makes us uncompetitive. It may prove, long run, to be financially prudent, or it may end up sending us down,

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  33. GTE – Good post.

    The only think I don’t know is how this approach could be prudent looking at our accounts. If the TV bubble burst, we would be up **** creek more than most clubs as it’s 75% of our total income, where other clubs actually have a half decent commercial dept which makes their clubs spread their income from other activities.

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  34. STUART I remember in the KK days there was a very lge waiting list,if fact John Hall said at the time they had made a big mistake when they build up the ground it should have been a lot bigger and followed up by saying if it was double the size they could fill it,that was a quote from himself,was that a hint at the size of waiting list??

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  35. Commercial revenues are a bit of a winner takes all, though, Stu – look at Everton, the next club behind us on the ‘rich list’ and they are far more exposed to TV money than we are – and all the clubs below that even more so. Only Spurs and above have bigger commercial. We could certainlyclose that gap with more ambition and success to attract bigger sponsors etc, but you also can’t get away from the fact that Spurs much lower attendances generate 70% more matchday revenue than us – due to higher prices. As for ‘prudent’, you can already see (and these are only the ones who have said it publicly) Hull, Villa, Mackems, QPR, Swansea and WBA put in place cost-cutting operatiosn because they are carrying too much debt, having spent future revenues.This trend will only get worse, with the new TV deal, so more clubs can be expcted to, if not ‘d0 a Leeds’, then ‘do a Villa’. Its unlikely that we will. I just think that we can afford to invest more, senisbly, (like a new ceentre back would be nice), not be at any more risk and hav a real chance of finishing top-8 and have a go at cups – but they won’t do it.

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  39. Thing is what can you do to get these sort of people out of football,nowt they are just using and abusing fans to make money makes me so angry

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  40. The gits in chanrge at Southampton, Liverpool, Spurs, West Ham, Palace, WBA, Hull, Sunderland and Villa are no better, at least in terms of being in it principally to leeech off the club ane make money personally / for their business intersts,so we aint in it alone. Nit asurte about Huw Edwards at Swansea, (although he’sshafted their finances) – to me only Tony Fernandez at QPR,the guy at Stoke and the Everton owners get a good mention for putting football at least equal with finance.

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  43. Is it not the case that Ashley sold the catering and alcohol side of things generated within the ground so none of that revenue goes back into the club’s coffers?

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  44. GTE – I am not sure the owners of the clubs you mentioned are getting the free advertising and advantages that Ashley is getting. The owners at them clubs haven’t even got their companies involved at the club so I don’t know how they are in the same boat as us. All them clubs you mentioned have out spent us over the last 5 years and non have gone bust and non are in too shabby a state financially. All them owners you mentioned have one thing in common though; they all want the club to be as good as it can possibly be, and their actions show this, unlike us.

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  45. And this notion that spending future income is bad for business is in direct conflict to what the majority of the businesses in the world do and even the biggest companies in the world do it. They all borrow money, on current and future contracts to invest in their business to make their business better and better capable of competing in the their specific area and being better than their competitors. For some reason some on here think it’s the devil’s work.

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  46. I’ll never get the image of Stardust fixing the Sports Direct Arena signs on the outside of SJP.

    He later told me it was his proudest moment 😯

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  47. I don’t know about all of that, Stu – there’s no doubt in my mind that Ashley’s regime isn’t optimising either martch day or commercial revenues, but also that not paying debt interest makes up for some (not all) of that. Ideally we’d be rid of the debt and grow revenues. If you look at the losses made by most of the clubs I mention, the wages to turnover ratios from 2014 and the fact that several have put in place cost-cutting measures, the finances aren’t often that great. Finally on the football – sure, most of those owners want their clubs to do as well as they can because it seems to make good business sense, but only Spurs have pulled it off on the pitch, largely through big players sales and even then teir fans are livid with Levy. This season, Saints and West Ham are succeeding, but we’ll see how they manage next. Owners at Swansea, Hull, mackems, Villa simply pulled or are currently pullng the plug on investment…

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  48. Well I certainly haven’t seen any pulling of investments in Swansea, Hull or Mackems. They have all spent more than us in the last few years.

    Only at Villa has there been a real pulling back, but that was after M O’N left and look at them now. Plus, Lerner has converted most of that debt into equity as shown in their recent accounts which showed a loss of £3.8m which is way down on previous years.

    But the facts are we are all told how well NUFC are doing financially yet we act like we are paupers.

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  51. Stu – mackems Chie Exec has been given a cost-cutting remit, Hull announced in Jan that they couldn’tbuy players and had to move to balance the books, Swansea’s chairman said when they sold Bony that the sale would help the club’s “sustainability” and made it clear that it wasn’t going to be spent on new players. That’s the point – they’ve spent the money and now had to rein in, in a boom-bust fashion. terrified, the first two, like Villa, of relegation – IF they stay up (I know Swansea will) they may well go on another future revenue / debt-fuelled spree, in most cases (as it has always been) to no avail. I want to pick my argument with the regime – invest smart, yeah, but just invest a bit more, genuinely reinvest the ;profits to make the team more competitive, not at best to tread water. The argument that others are spending big so that’s the only way to complete is proven nonsense.

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  52. GTE – I agree with you. I’m not arsed about competing with Spurs or any other club, I just want NUFC to be the best it can be. Hire the best possible people for the jobs, buy the best possible players that money will allow, invest in the best facilities possible to develop young players and then see where we stand.

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  54. Stuart@200 – that’s the nearest explanation I’ve come across for Ashley’s strategy. Pity the local journo’s are too much in his pockets to tell us this.
    “I love football’ my ****.

    What’s your plan to get rid of him my friend?

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  55. I think you’re missing the point, GTE. The clubs that you seem to think are ‘reigning it in’ are still investing more than us. I also don’t recall anywhere them clubs stating what you stated. I remember Steve Bruce saying money is available if they wanted to bring someone in. Also sorry, which mid table club would turn down £30m for a striker you bought for £12m? I really don’t think Swansea would have been in trouble if they hadn’t have sold Bony.

    You make me laugh though. You say they’ve spent the money and now have to reign it in, even though the biggest TV deal in history has just been signed! Doesn’t quite add up.

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  56. Much as I’d love to compete with Spurs, Sharpy (still rankle about ‘loadsamoney’ gibes and them burning fivers in the away end in the 80s), I just want us to be as competiive as finances realisticaly allow. Lots of clubs have always thrown short term money around, and very nearly all of them have failed dismally. That will continue. There is, howeger, a floor of investment you need to compete, a level that is well within our reach whle washing our face, and we haven’t seen that investment. Wuldn’t take too much – a couple of the right purples and a couple like Perez or Haidara. Oh, and a clear out at CB. Maybe there’s a grand summer plan, eh?

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  58. I’m saying, Hull and mackems specifically have accepted that they had to retrench – in case they miss oit on that TV deal. I then said they may well start spending again if they stay up. Please, read all the way through the posts before using charged phrases like ‘missng the point’,or ‘you make me laugh’. You might upset people 😀 😀 😀

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  59. My eyes usually glaze over before getting to the end of some posts on here. Not yours though as recently theve been ok. 😀

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  60. If we want to free up some wages, we have to get rid at least of Gouffran, Anita, Willo, maybe Tioté and obviously Sissoko, so letting Sammy go for finanials reasons would really a stupid move, him and Aarons are two players we have so sign on long term deals, then Id not be against keeping Jonas and Raylor as veteran backups, they still are influancial at some point, and then bring 2-3 players to improve the team. For Villa, Id go for 442, this is a must win game:

    —————Krul————-
    -Janmaat-Willo–Colo–Haidara-
    -Sissoko-Raylor-Abeid–Aarons-
    ———-Sammy-Cissé———

    With Gk, Satka, Anita, Jonas, Obertan, Ayoze, Ferreyra.

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  61. In my opinion, Lascelles is the type of CB, athletic, got pace, not bad with his feet, feel he could play with any of Coloccini, S.Taylor and Dummett, maybe even Good and Satka, pre season will be key, but we should of sign him for this season.

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  62. Stuart

    Don’t worry, those disappointed with De Boer staying at Ajax will now dream Garde will be the new saviour.

    Carver only needs 8 more points to get his new contract.

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  63. Cholo: I think Taylor and Jonas have one foot out the door. They would be mad to resign Taylor – he is 30 years old and has been out for 1 year each on both knees. A pay-as-you-play deal would be OK but no way would his agent accept that. Totally agree on Sammy, they would be mad not to retain him. People quite often outgrow their asthma and there is still time for him to add a bit of weight which would add to his presence.

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  64. Chol

    Why shouldn’t we sign up Sissoko long term? Surely the idea is to keep your best players. It’s not like he’s on mega money compared to the equivalent at other clubs.

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  65. Troysta: you act like anybody on here expected de Boer. You are putting up an argument where none exists. I saw him interviewed on a middle east break in early january where he virtually ruled out a move. His dream move is Barcelona but now Enrique is doing OK he signed a new deal.

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  66. Psychs

    You haven’t been concentrating on the blog if you think some didn’t fancy him as a realistic replacement.

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  67. Troysta: what sort of contract will Carvs get? A one year rolling deal? Remember Robson was on that sort of deal and I am not sure if that was his choice or if the previous fat man Chairman had such little faith. The fact he was sacked so early in a season suggests the latter. Do you know the answer, I would be interested to know?

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  68. Troysta @216: they did? I skip a few days sometimes so you could be right. I am sure the argument went that he could awaken a sleeping giant although I think de Boer has bigger ambitions as I stated above.

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  69. Troysta: if Carvs gets the job I bet the Fatty will reduce his pay. After all he is currently Assistant Manager and isn’t Head Coach below Assistant Manager?

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  70. Psychs

    A few of us ruled out De Boer amd the like almost immediately because of our belief Ashley has no ambition amd therefore any manager with a reputation and in demand would not come near us.

    Regarding Carver. Basing it on Pards, he’ll be offered the lowest paid contracr in premier league and he will be so grateful to sign it.

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  71. This is why I’m unusually zen about Carver’s deeply mediocre record in his games so far – if he keeps turning home wins into draws, including tomorrow, we still won’t go down (just a few more points lads, just a few more) but he might yet not get that contract.

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  72. Eric if you missed some on here gunning for FDB then you must have been away for a few weeks as I started getting sick of reading about him coming in at the end of the season

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  73. Troy – You do ask silly questions… Signing Sissoko on long term contract!!! 😯 Have you noticed that very, very few of our best players that we have bought have ever signed an improved contract. Why do you think that is? My money is on the fact that Ashley doesn’t want to commit to higher salaries for a player when he knows he has no intention of building a team and keeping these players.

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  75. Big D: I was in Thailand for 3 weeks and didn’t really check the internet much. I will take your word for it though that there were people saying de Boer was a possibility since you are blog master or whatever it is called.

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