That really puts into perspective the job Lampards done. And Alex Neil as well to be fair.
Especially with Blues and Wrexham now in the mix
Especially with Blues and Wrexham now in the mix
and makes clear what a good job Austin and co. have done. Finding players we can afford with the further constraint of not paying the batshit wages others do. If you accept the idea that data people put fwd that wages paid correlates more than anything else to on-pitch results, it's really impressive.
I still think stability has gone a long way to compensating for what we lacking budget.
2 managers in 9 years, no massive churn of players, Lampard came in and pretty much worked with what was here.
The additions that have been made have been excellent.
Yeah, agreed. We have that on the playing side because we nailed the landing on basically every player that arrived in summer '23. Collins as the exception to the rule.
This is such a good point and something I've been thinking about recently.
Stability is so crucial but on top of that we've been lucky that not only have we had a generational manager, but we've followed it up with a replacement that's slotted right in and continued the upward trajectory.
There's not many clubs where that's happened, bar maybe Liverpool (bar Slots recent struggles).
Spending the Vik transfer money in summer 23/24 on Wright, Van Ewijk, Sakamoto and Simms was excellent business.
It’s very rare in this division to have as little player turnover in the summer as we did, which meant that we had a big headstart on other clubs who were getting new signings embedded and new tactics on board. The way we play requires great understanding between the players which was already built in.
If we had Onyeka and Esse to call upon from August instead of January…crikey.
If we had Onyeka and Esse to call upon from August instead of January…crikey.
Pitching to perspective what a great job Doug King has done to be honest. Without Doug we wouldn’t be where we are today.