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Post by rickyqpr on Jul 13, 2020 6:31:40 GMT
The poor post lockdown run has emphasized just how big the rebuilding job will be in the next window – whenever that is, but possibly only 3 weeks away.
We are likely to lose Eze, Bright and Manning and could possibly get about £20m for the trio, although how much of that will be upfront, and how much can be reinvested in the squad remains to be seen.
So perhaps it is timely to review where we are regarding the various positions and get the views of the message board.
Starting with Goalkeepers
This Season
Well first up, it was quite strange given our finances that we opted for 4 senior keepers.
Colchester fans were pretty bemused that we opted to take Barnes off their hands. This seems to have been so that we could send Dieng out on loan as he was unlikely to play for QPR and he had admirers following his successful loan stint at Stevenage. Dieng duly impressed and delighted the fans at at Doncaster. Barnes on the other hand never troubled the Kit Manager.
Kelly arrived with glowing references and Lumley had deservedly earned the number one shirt from his previous season’s performances. We thought we would be ok for keepers this season.
But I cannot recall the last time that our keeper has been at fault for so many goals in one season. Lumley is taller and arguably better in the air, but soon showed that he usually has a big error in him. His confidence was shot by the time he was dropped. I like Kelly’s distribution and he is safer when we are playing out from the back. Beyond that, I have not been very impressed. He does not get down like Smithies used to and he too normally has a key error waiting to happen. As for Lumley, I recall saying that when he was winning us games that I thought he was our luckiest goalkeeper for some time – well what goes around…..
Post lockdown, Kelly was poor and I am pleased that Lumley grabbed his opportunity and looked more confident. However, I am still nervous when the ball is played back to Lumley.
Our poor goalkeeping performance this year must also call into question whether our goalkeeping coaches are earning a crust?
Next Season
Surely, we cannot afford 4 keepers. They do not even play for the Under 23s
So perhaps Barnes should be shown how to put his gloves on and set free in the wild. He may struggle at first to recognise the goalposts, but eventually, he will find the confidence to turn and face the game again.
Dieng has one year left on his contract and with Birmingham intent on making him their long-term successor to Camp, we may well cash in without him ever featuring in our first team.
It would not surprise me if Kelly headed North where his currency was high. Lumley also needs a new challenge.
So, for me, I would hold onto Dieng until the January window because if he is good enough for Birmingham, he should be good enough to be one of our two keepers. He could well turn out to be the Emperor’s new clothes, but give him a go!
I would retain either Kelly or Lumley. Which one would depend on whether or not they wanted to stay and of course if there is any interest in them. Neither have enhanced their reputations.
I would go with just 2 keepers with back up from the Under 23 keepers.
What do others think? Bow, as head of the Message Board Goalkeepers Fraternity, you will no doubt have a view!
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Post by Lonegunmen on Jul 13, 2020 8:00:57 GMT
Over the last few weeks, I've been playing Football Manager 2020 and to be honest, we're just as shit in that. Into my second season, started with a hiss and a roar only to fade away again. Ferdinand even sold Manning to Brentford behind my back!!
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Post by stylecouncillor on Jul 13, 2020 8:06:11 GMT
Got to give Dieng a go if all the reviews are to be believed in his loan spells. Goalkeepers have always been top notch here names just roll off the tongue. Even when our keepers have not been big names ie. Tony Roberts john Burridge Alex Smithies Most fans have had confidence in them. We have had a few poor back up keepers, but this is the first time I can remember when fans can't decide who is the best of a poor bunch.
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Post by Ashdown_Ranger on Jul 13, 2020 9:56:39 GMT
Even excluding those they sold for under £9m, Brentford realised £65m for just 5 players in the last 3 years or so. I just don't get how we consistently get such poor return from those we sell.
Eze, Bright and Manning should be worth £40m+ - I'd be surprised if we get more than £15m for the three during a depressed summer transfer market. Hopefully we'll at least be able to tack on sell-on clauses.
If we lose those three in the summer, we are going to find life extremely difficult next season.
As for keepers, it does seem that we have too many, quantity rather than quality. Lumley and Kelly can be great on their day, but always seem to have a mistake in them. Reports about Dieng seem very positive, so on that basis I'd give him a try. But, knowing us, we'll let him go for £100k and he'll blossom into one of the best keepers in the championship, snapped up by a mid-table Prem side for £15m 2 years down the line...
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Post by harr on Jul 13, 2020 10:30:32 GMT
Even excluding those they sold for under £9m, Brentford realised £65m for just 5 players in the last 3 years or so. I just don't get how we consistently get such poor return from those we sell. Eze, Bright and Manning should be worth £40m+ - I'd be surprised if we get more than £15m for the three during a depressed summer transfer market. Hopefully we'll at least be able to tack on sell-on clauses. If we lose those three in the summer, we are going to find life extremely difficult next season. As for keepers, it does seem that we have too many, quantity rather than quality. Lumley and Kelly can be great on their day, but always seem to have a mistake in them. Reports about Dieng seem very positive, so on that basis I'd give him a try. But, knowing us, we'll let him go for £100k and he'll blossom into one of the best keepers in the championship, snapped up by a mid-table Prem side for £15m 2 years down the line... We are finding life difficult with them not sure our prospects without. I am hoping we at least keep Manning. Remember though when we lost Freeman, he was our best player and we didn’t even miss him and made about 4 Million, so you never know sometimes you can afford to lose one or two with good replacements .
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Post by Ashdown_Ranger on Jul 13, 2020 11:41:23 GMT
Yes, completely agree what might be possible Harr - my (admittedly rather pessimistic current view)is to look at what is 'probable'.
Freeman's loss was mitigated by some seriously talented youngsters stepping up. Those are now looking likely to leave and we don't have the same quality coming through behind them.
And while we 'made' £3-4m on Freeman, I'd argue his value could/should have been significantly higher. Did no-one else come in for him, or did we sell too soon?
But over the years, we seem to get this repeatedly, selling players for well under their (apparent) value.
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Post by bowranger on Jul 13, 2020 12:01:11 GMT
Even excluding those they sold for under £9m, Brentford realised £65m for just 5 players in the last 3 years or so. I just don't get how we consistently get such poor return from those we sell. Eze, Bright and Manning should be worth £40m+ - I'd be surprised if we get more than £15m for the three during a depressed summer transfer market. Hopefully we'll at least be able to tack on sell-on clauses. If we lose those three in the summer, we are going to find life extremely difficult next season. As for keepers, it does seem that we have too many, quantity rather than quality. Lumley and Kelly can be great on their day, but always seem to have a mistake in them. Reports about Dieng seem very positive, so on that basis I'd give him a try. But, knowing us, we'll let him go for £100k and he'll blossom into one of the best keepers in the championship, snapped up by a mid-table Prem side for £15m 2 years down the line... Would say for Brentford though, that's not just a straight-up market value thing, that's about building up a reputation as a high quality selling club. Getting that kind of money for players isn't just about identifying the talent and selling it on, it's about getting a reputation for not taking silly offers and delivering high quality. We're slowly doing that, turning on a profit on the likes of Freeman etc., but we're still undoing the damage of years of clubs basically taking the mick out of us. It may not be by a huge margin, but I reckon if Manning, Bright and Eze were at Brentford, you could add a couple million onto each of them. On the keepers...it's hard. I feel like our approach to the position has almost been like spread betting - all cheap or free, all young, all could sink or swim but all likely go for a profit. Particularly with Kelly, we uncovered that 50k buy-out clause - at his age and level, it almost doesn't matter if he pushed Lumley or not, sign him up and we'll make a profit on him, all just depends how much. It's not an exact science and I'm excited by Dieng, but always worth bearing in mind that his experience to date isn't that different from Lumley. Both had long loan spells in League One, both got rave reviews from their respective fans (Lumley at Blackpool, in particular, was seen as a revelation). I think we'll wait to see how firm the interest is and whoever is most sought after goes. I agree with Ricky that we could almost certainly just have two seniors and an U23 back-up keeper next year. If Dieng is getting solid interest to play first team football at this level, I feel we'd need to promise that to him to keep him and I can't see us doing that unless one of Kelly or Lumley gets sold.
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Post by bowranger on Jul 13, 2020 12:03:28 GMT
Yes, completely agree what might be possible Harr - my (admittedly rather pessimistic current view)is to look at what is 'probable'. Freeman's loss was mitigated by some seriously talented youngsters stepping up. Those are now looking likely to leave and we don't have the same quality coming through behind them. And while we 'made' £3-4m on Freeman, I'd argue his value could/should have been significantly higher. Did no-one else come in for him, or did we sell too soon? But over the years, we seem to get this repeatedly, selling players for well under their (apparent) value. Yeah - I think that last sentence is right and kinda touches on what I said in my initial reply. If we've had years of doing poorly in the transfer market, which we did until a few years ago, it takes a good while to build that reputation back up again, particularly when clubs knew we were bang in financial trouble and could bully us. That's changing but it'll take a while and will come from getting better and better margins - Freeman is a good example of that being a work in progress.
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Post by bowranger on Jul 13, 2020 14:41:58 GMT
Yeah - I think that last sentence is right and kinda touches on what I said in my initial reply. If we've had years of doing poorly in the transfer market, which we did until a few years ago, it takes a good while to build that reputation back up again, particularly when clubs knew we were bang in financial trouble and could bully us. That's changing but it'll take a while and will come from getting better and better margins - Freeman is a good example of that being a work in progress. I think part of issue with the apparent under selling is that we have had players who because of our weak squads at the time they have been stand out players and have been very valuable to us but not worth so much to anyone at a higher level looking to pick them up. Freeman is a good example that we rated him higher than 3 or 4 million but the only PL team interested were the new boys and has been proven he has not featured much for them. Charlie Austin was probably our worst deal in many ways but really we sold him too late, contract close to running down and prior injury stopped an earlier sale. This next window will be interesting in that we really do not know what the overall financial mess in football will do to transfer values. I expect they will crash except for the mega deals between the rich boys like Man City and therefore our hopes for Eze and BOS to bring in the cash my just be false hopes. Yeah I'd agree with that, the player quality is very much relative. For a newly flush Sheffield United, £5m is peanuts for a potential bit-part player, but it's significant wedge for us and the loss of, at the time, our most important player. The relative value thing also impacts price and context. When we were basically chucking players overboard on gigantic wages cos they didn't have relegation clauses, we'd take anything or nothing. Getting them off the books was the primary value and we were very publicly bonkers with money. We were in trouble, other clubs knew it and acted accordingly. Austin's an interesting one - again where it's all relative. £4m on paper is a steal for a player who scored 18 goals in a relegated Prem side, but we took the calculated risk of not selling him the previous Summer because his goals were seen as worth more or equivalent to the money we'd miss out on. Come January, his goals "banked", he either went for £0 in the Summer or the £4m Southampton offered. I think the hope for serious cash for Eze/BOS in particular is almost certainly dependent on a bidding war. Warburton on the podcast a while back was very straight up about how Covid will dent player value for clubs like us, because the longer the lockdown happens, the weaker position we're in financially and clubs will know it. If either of them want to go, and only one club is seriously up for it, we could get shafted. If more than one club is in, that's where we could claw back value. The other side of that coin is that while that's a crap situation for us, it's an even more crap situation further down the league pyramid - which is exactly where we'd be shopping.
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Post by rickyqpr on Jul 13, 2020 14:53:46 GMT
Even excluding those they sold for under £9m, Brentford realised £65m for just 5 players in the last 3 years or so. I just don't get how we consistently get such poor return from those we sell. Eze, Bright and Manning should be worth £40m+ - I'd be surprised if we get more than £15m for the three during a depressed summer transfer market. Hopefully we'll at least be able to tack on sell-on clauses. If we lose those three in the summer, we are going to find life extremely difficult next season. As for keepers, it does seem that we have too many, quantity rather than quality. Lumley and Kelly can be great on their day, but always seem to have a mistake in them. Reports about Dieng seem very positive, so on that basis I'd give him a try. But, knowing us, we'll let him go for £100k and he'll blossom into one of the best keepers in the championship, snapped up by a mid-table Prem side for £15m 2 years down the line... Would say for Brentford though, that's not just a straight-up market value thing, that's about building up a reputation as a high quality selling club. Getting that kind of money for players isn't just about identifying the talent and selling it on, it's about getting a reputation for not taking silly offers and delivering high quality. We're slowly doing that, turning on a profit on the likes of Freeman etc., but we're still undoing the damage of years of clubs basically taking the mick out of us. It may not be by a huge margin, but I reckon if Manning, Bright and Eze were at Brentford, you could add a couple million onto each of them. On the keepers...it's hard. I feel like our approach to the position has almost been like spread betting - all cheap or free, all young, all could sink or swim but all likely go for a profit. Particularly with Kelly, we uncovered that 50k buy-out clause - at his age and level, it almost doesn't matter if he pushed Lumley or not, sign him up and we'll make a profit on him, all just depends how much. It's not an exact science and I'm excited by Dieng, but always worth bearing in mind that his experience to date isn't that different from Lumley. Both had long loan spells in League One, both got rave reviews from their respective fans (Lumley at Blackpool, in particular, was seen as a revelation). I think we'll wait to see how firm the interest is and whoever is most sought after goes. I agree with Ricky that we could almost certainly just have two seniors and an U23 back-up keeper next year. If Dieng is getting solid interest to play first team football at this level, I feel we'd need to promise that to him to keep him and I can't see us doing that unless one of Kelly or Lumley gets sold. The other point about Dieng is that he seems a good shotstopper, quite commanding etc. but I have no idea if he can pass the ball 'the new requirement'. If he is unable to play out from the back, then I doubt Warburton will want him.
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Post by stylecouncillor on Jul 13, 2020 16:26:06 GMT
The distribution of all our keepers is a little suspect. This probably has as much to do with nobody competent enough to pass it to. This playing out from the back is nonsense. We simply can not afford the luxury defender with great ball distribution, I do sometimes wonder how players make it in the modern game, most look frightened to have the ball. There also seems to be players frightened to take on another player its all just receive get rid as quickly as you can mostly going backwards.
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Post by rickyqpr on Jul 14, 2020 10:49:36 GMT
The distribution of all our keepers is a little suspect. This probably has as much to do with nobody competent enough to pass it to. This playing out from the back is nonsense. We simply can not afford the luxury defender with great ball distribution, I do sometimes wonder how players make it in the modern game, most look frightened to have the ball. There also seems to be players frightened to take on another player its all just receive get rid as quickly as you can mostly going backwards. Playing out from the back is what started Lumley's downfall. Some keepers just can't do it, but it is now a major requirement it seems.
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Post by Marc on Jul 14, 2020 12:38:49 GMT
The distribution of all our keepers is a little suspect. This probably has as much to do with nobody competent enough to pass it to. This playing out from the back is nonsense. We simply can not afford the luxury defender with great ball distribution, I do sometimes wonder how players make it in the modern game, most look frightened to have the ball. There also seems to be players frightened to take on another player its all just receive get rid as quickly as you can mostly going backwards. Playing out from the back is what started Lumley's downfall. Some keepers just can't do it, but it is now a major requirement it seems. Interestingly, playing out from the back (with Lumley in goal) let to one of the best goals off the season.
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Post by rickyqpr on Jul 15, 2020 8:18:14 GMT
Lumley has looked better at distribution post lockdown with the goal keeping coach furloughed.....................
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Post by rickyqpr on Jul 16, 2020 14:55:42 GMT
Perhaps we could try to update this thread as and when new transfer stories emerge.
In the meantime......
Goalkeepers we have been linked with of Late
Joe Hart (Burnley) ……unbelievable story though
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Post by blatantfowl on Jul 18, 2020 20:36:19 GMT
Despite his steady decline I doubt we could afford Joe Hart’s wages even if he still has some ability
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