Someone please link the GFM for me to contribute to the plane fare.
8 May 2023
2.0K
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I do find it amusing that at the start of the summer Marinakis briefed someone that he admired Brighton and wanted our transfer business to be more like theirs. And the three of the first four signings this summer are - Arsenal back-up, Manu kid and the Argentinian who scored the winning penalty in the WC final. Doesn't scream Brighton-esque to me.
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I’m not sure even Brighton would be buying some 18-year-old Ecuadorian to go straight in as their first choice goalkeeper
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Well, they obviously sold their goalkeeper this summer and seem to have replaced him with Steele, who they signed 5 years ago. But they've also signed a 21 year old from Anderlecht, who they presumably intend to blood over the course of the next season or so. Almost like they plan over multiple seasons, rather than sell, panic and buy.
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An optimistic view might be that in Laryea, Ojeda, Panzo and co we were trying to pick up some of those undiscovered or discarded gems. But they seem to have been Championship level players and we needed to adjust our level when we got promoted.
A pessimist might think that by ‘like Brighton’, the big man hasn’t thought much beyond ‘successful’.
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Aguilera might still be one of those. Danilo, maybe, was intended to be a longer term project but just forced his way straight into the team?
I guess it becomes a bit easier to plan longer term if you are relatively secure in the division. But I’m also very aware that relegation history shows lots of clubs whose recruitment plan was great, until it wasn’t (notably Southampton and Leicester from just last season).
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They aren’t all forward looking young talents mind.
They signed a 37yr James Milner who has gone straight into the first team. If we did that some folk would lose their fucking minds.
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And those warnings are important reminders that this isn't something you "fix" and then eureka it's all perfect. There is no guarantee of success, but having an overarching plan of where you are going and consistency of decision making as you travel there is helpful, because it generally gets better use from your resources and that likely increases your chances of some success. Brighton have some excellent recruitment highlights, but they also have long term investment in their infrastructure and stability in their leadership, which was recruited for its clear and proven track record. We generally prefer to spend on shinier things than infrastructure and our leadership is short term, erratic, often confused and conflicted, and not always clearly showing evidence of capability.
That said, we got up so we've had some success of our own sort. You can just get lucky if you throw enough at it.
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My point entirely.
According to the Garibaldi podcast, we’re starting to see moaning about SSC’s tactics in the Twattosphere (which simply confirms the wisdom of staying well away from Twitter / X / Elon’s Willy, or whatever it’s called this week). “Why aren’t we playing like Brighton?” seems to be the gist.
Maybe because Brighton are about 6 or 7 years ahead of us in this, and have been consistently good at it throughout. 2 years ago we were still picking Lyle Taylor & Cafu
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The bubble will burst at some point obviously, but you feel it will be the daft expectations of vocal elements of the fanbase which will help bring it about. The ironic thing is that I suspect a decent proportion of these supporters will be the very same ones currently helping to make the City Ground atmosphere as special (and important) as it is. Such is life, I guess.
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No doubt most of them will be too young to remember Charlton fans moaning that “Curbishley has taken us as far as he can”…. Eventually they got their way, and it’s been pretty much downhill ever since.
You can’t inoculate against stupid, and there’s always been a pandemic amongst football fans
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I thought it was quite a strange podcast this week. There was a lot of picking up of what appear to be pretty minority opinions and arguing why they were wrong.
The idea that SC is heading towards losing the fan base in any way is clearly nonsense and I’m not sure why they bothered discussing it.
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Yep, that was the Charlton comfortably finishing in the top half of the Premier League season after season. Still unsure what those fans thought was achievable beyond that as they were were so far ahead of par for a club of their size at the time.
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But also everyone thought Southampton were mad to sack Nigel Atkins and replace him with some Argentinian kicking around the middle of la Liga, "who doesn't even speak English!" and Brighton were crazy to sack Chris Hughton for some guy who's spent a load of time in Sweden and one season doing ok for Swansea.
And both of those worked out ok.
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We have signed a potential one for the future
the72.co.uk/2023/08/23/nottingham-forest-swoop-to-sign-league-two-prospect/
