CaptainBeanfart

This is the quote from Gestede: "We used to be over 2,000 minutes for Under-23 Academy players. Last 12 months, 142 minutes." So I guess any player under 23 (possibly including?) that came through the academy.

Maybe we're talking about different things, but this is what Gestede said: "We used to be over 2,000 minutes for Under-23 Academy players. Last 12 months, 142 minutes." They want to get minutes into the academy graduates to give them resale value.

Established players like Carter and Wharton won't count towards that figure, just like Travis didn't count towards last year's. It's a target figure for giving a pathway from the academy to the first team. Why would you count players in their mid 20s?

With Tronstad, Tavares, Baradji, Forshaw, and Montgomery for two positions, I don't see us spending money on the midfield. The only obvious deficiency now is up front. I don't think we have the funds to buy a guaranteed improvement. A last minute loan perhaps when clubs get desperate to offload?

That's not a his natural side. I haven't seen a single clip of him playing on that side. He's a left winger. We've had 20 years of wingers of being inverted and people still talk like it's a fad! I suspect we'll fill this space with a young PL loan. Hopefully it's more Elliott than Cozier-Duberry.

With the exception of De Neve at 5'11" (still quite tall for a winger), all of our signings are at least 6'2", including Henriksson if he joins. I'm sure that's not a coincidence. Expecting a very physical style of play next season!

It's a squad game, teams need more than one striker. He'll likely be rotated with Pedro, with Nkunku and Jackson leaving.

Substitutes are a huge part of the game now and often planned in advance. Managers frequently refer to "starters" and "finishers". Saying we should sell Gueye because he's not a regular starter is ridiculous. He can change a game when we need a plan B, and he's also incredible at defending set pieces if we're hanging on to a lead.

In the team that avoided relegation on the final day of the season. It's not a difficult argument to make really.

How can you say results were going backwards when his last tournament result was to finish runner-up? You can make all the subjective performance criticisms you like. But, objectively, results were as good as 2018-2020.

Surely the performances of the subs shows why he was reluctant? He deserves support next season, he's not the problem here.

1-1 away to a team that finished on 90 points is not a disgrace. The damage was done in January, none of the signings helped the cause and meant we were unable to get results when injuries and poor form happened. Kargbo and Dennis were dreadful today, Woodrow barely involved. Only positive is that Ismael is obviously a competent manager. The concern is what players he has to work with in August. Huge (and frightening) summer coming up.

I'm not sure about that. Listening to Gestede, the club wants to bring players in that they can sell on for profit and stop Venkys having to put money in to plug the gaps. I think we'll use loans as a last resort because it's dead money and takes away minutes from academy grads (again probably so they get some transfer value). I think Kargbo/Gueye/Ohashi/Ribeiro type signings will be bulk of the business because they offer the most potential in resale if they get one or two right.

I'll be gutted if he leaves, he'll be hard to replace. He's got flaws but we have found it incredibly hard to recruit for the attacking midfield positions. We really need Cantwell to step up next season.

I'd definitely keep Gueye as an impact substitute. He's too limited to be a regular starter but he can change games, he's very useful in our own box too if we're under the cosh. We probably won't have the money to bring in anyone significantly better than what we've got, so it'll likely be a case of rotating Ohashi, Gueye, plus a new signing depending on who's in form. Same for the attacking midfielders behind. Thankfully we have a solid defence and central midfield to give us a consistent foundation to work from.

Will more than likely be the case for a player of his age. I imagine the case might be different for Beck and ACD. Also, "penalties" isn't really the right way to look at it. It's usually the case that the parent club will pay a greater % of the wages if the player is playing, because they get something out of that situation. If the player doesn't play then the borrower covers more of the wages.

We seemed to have one game plan last night; lump the ball forward and hope Gueye could do something. Lost count of how many times we just tossed the ball in the box because we had no other ideas. Ribeiro was the worst offender. It was obviously the game plan because Gueye made a gesture to do it faster on multiple occasions. I get the criticism of Dennis because he was awful. But it seemed like he wanted to try and do it himself because he knew that passing it to anyone else would mean it'd get thrown into the box again. On that front, I don't blame him. We've scored a number of goals this season from passing moves, so we are capable. Nothing wrong with mixing it up now and again but hoofball can't be plan A.

Worst 45 minutes I've seen by any team for a long time. No idea what the game plan is. Only Dolan has looked passable. Way too soon to be judging Ismael though, it took Eustace months to get his ideas across. But he's got this one badly wrong so far. Changes to system and personnel needed at half time.

He reminds me of Rothwell in some aspects. His technical ability is obviously far greater than his current output. We had the same frustrations with Rothwell and he played a bit-part role because of it, until eventually it clicked and he managed to find some consistency in his game. Unfortunately, we'd let his contract run down by this point! As long as Cantwell isn't on huge wages, he's worth keeping as an impact sub (or regular starter when he's in form) because if it does click at some point, there's a very good footballer there.

Rice is probably the most complete midfielder in the Premier League right now. I don't disagree with the ceiling bit, but they are not on the same level at the moment.

Nobody (except maybe Pep and a couple of other elite clubs) plays that style anymore, that's a 20-year-old tactic that has been defeated by high-pressing, high-intensity football. Bournemouth, Brentford, Brighton etc. are the best examples of where modern tactics are at. It's actually been called a 'chaos' strategy because it is almost the opposite of that tica-taca you mentioned.

Is that fair on Gestede? Recruitment is one thing we're doing quite well. It used to be that we'd just sign mates of managers but Gueye, Ohashi, Kargbo etc have been plucked from relative obscurity and seem very good value. I don't know Gestede's role in these though, I could be giving him credit for something he didn't do here.

Hedges and Weimann are too similar, one of them needs replacing. Do we have the option to make Sanderson permanent? He looks decent.

It doesn't even need to be this restricted. It could be an 18 month contract with an agreed break clause with an expiration of, say 30th June, whereby they are free to leave if they want, whilst giving us time to find a replacement. Offer a big play-off bonus and a huge promotion bonus on top of that. Someone would take it, surely? Nothing to lose, potential for something more long-term if they decide they like the job anyway, can leave if they don't.

It's possible. But they also stretched whatever tiny budget we have on short-term loans in January. Hopefully they'll see this is a rare (possibly last for a while) chance to make the play offs. It'll be hard to justify the cost of those signings if they don't get a manager to back it up.