I love this club and am normally at the upper end of positivity, but how on earth can you think we've recruited well?
In 2016/17 we had a first choice midfield 3 of Hogg, the best player most of us have ever seen and 1 of two very good Chelsea England u21 international loanees. We've then spent two years at the top table bringing in riches we could only ever dream of, yet we've come back down likely fielding Hogg, a talented but massively erratic Dutch kid and either an academy lad or another kid who cost £200k and has no record outside L2 - The equivalent of Jack Payne. How on earth has that happened?
We've also lost probably the most dependable left back we've had in my lifetime, and instead of replacing him we've opted to just play probably the most expensive CB in the championship there instead, thus seemingly weakening two positions. Our back up in case Kongolo gets injured (likely!) is a kid who couldn't get in a L2 team 6 months since. Its probably fair to say he's worse than Holmes-Dennis at this time, who himself was never good enough.
We've lost the championship RB of the year the last time we were here, and replaced with someone who seemingly doesn't want to be here but still is cos he's crap and there were no takers.
All we seem to have to show for the last 2 years is an overload of fast but brainless wide players and a striker who's probably an upgrade on Nahki Wells. How has this happened?
We've signed a 32 year old CB who looks like his legs have gone, deemed not good enough for a Villa side that barring a late run, have spent most of the last 3 years outside the top 6. He might be a top bloke, but so was Hudson and he was 3rd choice in 16/17. Scant evidence i know but on Mondays viewing I'd rather have had Craney, our 4th choice CB from 16/17 playing!
We got relegated, so I do not expect us to be able to field a side as good as we did in the league above. However, I did expect us to field a side better than we did in 16/17 when we had the 3rd or 4th lowest budget in the league. We probably have a bigger squad than we did in 16/17 but is the first XI better? I think its undoutedly worse. Fair enough, the parachute money covers the wage bill as its intended to do, but by the time Zanka fucks off we've brought in circa £25m in sales. I refuse to believe we cant afford to spend that. Our best player has left on the final day and we havent replaced him. And dont say Chalobah, he could be excellent but he's not a creative, tempo setting number 8.
There was an opportunity this year. Yes the melaise of last season was always going to be hard to shake off but this league is wide open, there's no Newcastle/Leicester/Wolves. I dont think we've given it a proper go, just like we never gave the premier league a proper go either. A wage bill 25% under everyone else was always only going to give Wagner no chance sooner rather than later.
