Bruce on Injuries - The Journal.


Status
Not open for further replies.
Everton, Stoke, Bolton, Fulham to start with. Don't think any of them have resorted to 5 loan signings to plug the gaps either.

Everton have a very small squad, only in midfield do they have any real depth.

Stoke, while doing well this season, have a decent sized squad full of low price battlers - the kind of players Bruce would be slaughtered for signing

Bolton - A pretty small squad again and their best Striker will be leaving at the end of the season.
 
Yet we've signed the worst player we have on loan to a permanent deal :lol:



Which is shocking given the resources we've got.

why exactly?

At the end of the day there is a finite amount of money that the club can spend. At the risk of getting into a ridiculous argument about which players have been worth their transfer fees, it seems to me that we have mostly spent well on the players we have brought in. The only real flops this season have been players who didn't exactly cost an arm and a leg to bring here.

Looking at this it seems that you only have a few options, the easiest of which is to keep players. Who would you have kept? (remember that their fees recouped helped to go towards our transfer targets)

Next you can buy more players - which requires cash.

Free transfers - any good player will want a huge wage to come.

loans - allows players to prove themselves, doesn't cost a lot. Out of all the loan players we have here, the two most debatable about whether we should/could purchase would be Muntari & Welbeck. Mensah will definitely be available, if not for the £1m reported, close to it. Onuoha hasn't done enough to warrant the sum that Man City wanted for him, and they will know that. Having said that, he would be good enough, and keeping him doesn't mean we have to spend money on someone else we can't be sure of. Not all of these loans will end up as purchases, but some will, and at least we now know what we are getting for our money. Also almost universally their transfer fees will have dropped over the year.

I don't understand the big complaint about the loans. I think it's been fine, as long as some of them stay, and I'm sure they will.

I could easily see us loaning in another striker this year, and a GK. I have no problem with that.
 
To make him feel wanted and valued? Bruce says that they thought they had 'averted the situation'. If they did give him a pay rise as suggested, they were well within their rights to expect that Bent had been mollified for at least a season. Given the snippets in the press I struggle to see how the club can pick up too much blame for the situation in which we found ourselves in January.

I'm sorry but that is piss poor management and not just from Bruce - he thinks they've averted the situation and although they are well within their rights to expect more from bent it is verging on negligence not to be more aware of the situation.

Even Quinny has admitted that he thought bent didn't look right before Jan and I refuse to believe that the football grapevine didn't have some wispers.

Maybe Bruce was too focused on the fact that he was banging his daughter.
 
I think you are being overly simplistic. You entertain your own certainties without considering the whole picture. Jones was on his way either pushed or on his own. What if Bent went, we tried to keep Jones but then decided he'd had enough and handed in a transfer request of his own.

In the summer they thought they'd done enough to keep through to the next summer at least. When he handed in his transfer request it was the end as they had an unhappy, uninterested player on their hands.

I'm playing devils advocate here.

I was happy with thebusiness we did in respect of Gyan and Jones in the summer but that was without knowing all the facts about Bent. At the time I assumed he was happy here.

However, as soon as a player starts indicating he wants away & talking about transfer requests, you need to start on your plan B. We didn't and thats my problem with it.

Everton have a very small squad, only in midfield do they have any real depth.

Stoke, while doing well this season, have a decent sized squad full of low price battlers - the kind of players Bruce would be slaughtered for signing

Bolton - A pretty small squad again and their best Striker will be leaving at the end of the season.

All have 25 man squads according to the bbc. I'm sure most clubs do.
 
I'm playing devils advocate here.

I was happy with thebusiness we did in respect of Gyan and Jones in the summer but that was without knowing all the facts about Bent. At the time I assumed he was happy here.

However, as soon as a player starts indicating he wants away & talking about transfer requests, you need to start on your plan B. We didn't and thats my problem with it.

They thought they had done enough to change his mind and it wasn't until the weeks leading up to the transfer request when it appeared that all was not well culminating in the shock transfer request.

You assumed he was happy here, so did management.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
no, if bent had signed a new contract i'd have taken that as a sign that the player was settled at the club. He didn't, he requested a transfer which suggests the exact opposite.

requesting the transfer was the initial action. Bruce's 'averted' comment and the suggestion on the grapevine that he'd had/been promised a payrise would leave safc well within their rights to feel that they had secured bent for at least the season

why is there a january premium? Partly because selling your best players then fucks your season up, therefore the extra money we got in january has to be wieghed up against the damage it has done to our side. Was it worth it?

in as much as selling bent for in excess of £24m once all clauses are paid versus selling bent for a fair bit less in the summer at least demonstrates that the club will hold out for a price that suits safc. Its as much about protecting the clubs position as anything else i guess. There isn't really a good time to lose your star player though.

that final sentance is bollacks. You'd have had meltdown on here and you'd have had a few very pissed off people (as we did in january) but we'd have had the opportunity to sign a replacement which would have gone some way to appeasing everyone.

it's not bollocks at all. To an extent the tide of fan opinion had started to turn against bent (rightly or wrongly). We'd already seen a fair few on here express the opinion that he wasn't the player he was the season before and that safc were a better team with gyan and welbeck up front. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the fan opinion of the bent deal was softened greatly because of bents form and demeanour from october onwards. If we had sold bent last summer after the season he'd just had - and for a premium of perhaps as little as £2m on our purchase price. There would barely have been a single fan willing to back the club on their decision.

...
 
They thought they had done enough to change his mind and it wasn't until the weeks leading up to the transfer request when it appeared that all was not well culminating in the shock transfer request.

You assumed he was happy here, so did management.

As I said earlier, niave.
 
They thought they had done enough to change his mind and it wasn't unti the weeks leading up to the transfer request when it appeared that all was not well culminating in the shock transfer request.

You assumed he was happy here, so did management.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Walesie didn't see the lad day in day out.

I'd still like to know why, when even the chairman spotted that 'something was up with Darren' something wasn't done about it.

Unless the club is telling porkies and they knew he was unhappy and knew he was trying to engineer a move away.
 
As I said earlier, niave.

Well apart from strapping to a chair and shining a light in his eyes, how were they supposed to find out?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Walesie didn't see the lad day in day out.

I'd still like to know why, when even the chairman spotted that 'something was up with Darren' something wasn't done about it.

Unless the club is telling porkies and they knew he was unhappy and knew he was trying to engineer a move away.

In that text I posted, Bruce said a few weeks before they were wondering if there was a problem but nevertheless were shocked by the transfer request.
 

You reckon there'd have been riots then? Its complete horse shit lad. People would have been pissed off but then the club would have been able to go out and buy a couple of quality replacements and people would have been happy again, or at least they would have been when we started winning.

As for "protecting the clubs position" - that exactly what I'm talking about. Selling your leading goal scorer, mid season when you've only 1 fit striker & no chance to replace him is exactly the opposite.
 
Well apart from strapping to a chair and shining a light in his eyes, how were they supposed to find out?



In that text I posted, Bruce said a few weeks before they were wondering if there was a problem but nevertheless were shocked by the transfer request.

They are running a multi million pound business not a f***ing ket shop :lol:

I could even give them a pass if it came totally out of the blue if there hadn't been the massive hint in the summer that everything wasn't tickety boo
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Walesie didn't see the lad day in day out.

I'd still like to know why, when even the chairman spotted that 'something was up with Darren' something wasn't done about it.

Unless the club is telling porkies and they knew he was unhappy and knew he was trying to engineer a move away.

Even if that is true (and it may well be) what should the club have done? Say it was December when Bents demeanour was really clocked. That leaves 6 weeks to scout a suitable player. Could we find one that a club would let go? We were somewhat hamstrung by our inability to get in a domestic loan. Should we have set in motion the purchase of a stopgap player in anticipation of the problem? What would fan reaction have been if we'd brought in an overpriced stopgap and then Bent had stayed - leaving the stopgap on the bench or in the stands?

It was a very difficult situation and the club was open to criticism whichever decision they made. I happen to think that on balance they took the correct decision for the long term future of the club. I guess that I (and the club) will be proved right or wrong over the next 12-18 months.
 
Well apart from strapping to a chair and shining a light in his eyes, how were they supposed to find out?



In that text I posted, Bruce said a few weeks before they were wondering if there was a problem but nevertheless were shocked by the transfer request.

Like I said, have a plan b in place.

They'd been alerted to the fact he might want away, the chairman thought in December he wasn't looking happy, perhaps we could have looked a little earlier & a little harder at a contingency plan? That way we'd not have wasted time on Ricardo f***ing Fuller.
 
Even if that is true (and it may well be) what should the club have done? Say it was December when Bents demeanour was really clocked. That leaves 6 weeks to scout a suitable player. Could we find one that a club would let go? We were somewhat hamstrung by our inability to get in a domestic loan. Should we have set in motion the purchase of a stopgap player in anticipation of the problem? What would fan reaction have been if we'd brought in an overpriced stopgap and then Bent had stayed - leaving the stopgap on the bench or in the stands?

It was a very difficult situation and the club was open to criticism whichever decision they made. I happen to think that on balance they took the correct decision for the long term future of the club. I guess that I (and the club) will be proved right or wrong over the next 12-18 months.

Behave man- in your previous posts you've already said that us fans could tell something was up in October - I find it hard to believe we were the only one's.
 
Gyan was Bruce’s plan B for Bent anyway, hence why they never trained together ;).

As Montana has so kindly pointed out we are skint and need to sell before we buy unless Short fancies more of his money to being wasted.
 
why exactly?

At the end of the day there is a finite amount of money that the club can spend. At the risk of getting into a ridiculous argument about which players have been worth their transfer fees, it seems to me that we have mostly spent well on the players we have brought in. The only real flops this season have been players who didn't exactly cost an arm and a leg to bring here.

Looking at this it seems that you only have a few options, the easiest of which is to keep players. Who would you have kept? (remember that their fees recouped helped to go towards our transfer targets)

Next you can buy more players - which requires cash.

Free transfers - any good player will want a huge wage to come.

loans - allows players to prove themselves, doesn't cost a lot. Out of all the loan players we have here, the two most debatable about whether we should/could purchase would be Muntari & Welbeck. Mensah will definitely be available, if not for the £1m reported, close to it. Onuoha hasn't done enough to warrant the sum that Man City wanted for him, and they will know that. Having said that, he would be good enough, and keeping him doesn't mean we have to spend money on someone else we can't be sure of. Not all of these loans will end up as purchases, but some will, and at least we now know what we are getting for our money. Also almost universally their transfer fees will have dropped over the year.

I don't understand the big complaint about the loans. I think it's been fine, as long as some of them stay, and I'm sure they will.

I could easily see us loaning in another striker this year, and a GK. I have no problem with that.
If any other manager ( especially one who didnt support NUFC as a bairn ) had brought in the loans bruce has, the usual bleaters would say nowt.
They look for every possible reason to have a go. Pathetic the lot of them.
these wankers are in essence saying we'd prefer a smaller squad to choose from rather than bring loans in, because that is what the financial constraints we operate under amount to.
Our injuries have only compounded the situation.
Of course that both Meyler and campbell's knees have given way is bruces' fault.
Defoe stamping on gordon is bruce's fault.
Turner colliding with a goal post is Bruce's fault.
Gyan & Welbeck pulling hammies is Bruce's fault.
Without the loans we'd have been royally fecked, but no we shouldnt have them.
hey keep waghorn, a dismal failure at CCC level, it's better than a loan.
Who needs Onuoha we;ve got the master circus act defender Noz, he's no good but he's not on loan.
People bleat about Muntari but he instrumental in our wins against Wigan and Bolton.
But hey no we should have kept daryl murphy or leadbitter.
 
Even if that is true (and it may well be) what should the club have done? Say it was December when Bents demeanour was really clocked. That leaves 6 weeks to scout a suitable player. Could we find one that a club would let go? We were somewhat hamstrung by our inability to get in a domestic loan. Should we have set in motion the purchase of a stopgap player in anticipation of the problem? What would fan reaction have been if we'd brought in an overpriced stopgap and then Bent had stayed - leaving the stopgap on the bench or in the stands?

It was a very difficult situation and the club was open to criticism whichever decision they made. I happen to think that on balance they took the correct decision for the long term future of the club. I guess that I (and the club) will be proved right or wrong over the next 12-18 months.

Now we're back to the point of our over use of the loan system. Perhaps if we'd have signed a decent right back in the first place instead of wasting time and money on Angeleri, we'd not have needed to get Onuoha on loan, freeing up a space. ;)

Also, Campbell was out with a serious injury leaving us 1 down already, we knew from August we needed another body up front.
 
You reckon there'd have been riots then? Its complete horse shit lad. People would have been pissed off but then the club would have been able to go out and buy a couple of quality replacements and people would have been happy again, or at least they would have been when we started winning.

As for "protecting the clubs position" - that exactly what I'm talking about. Selling your leading goal scorer, mid season when you've only 1 fit striker & no chance to replace him is exactly the opposite.

Bent had just had a season where he was SAFC to all intents and purposes. He'd scored half of our goals. I'm amazed that you can't see the difference in fan perception between selling Bent after the best season of his career and selling him after his position as our main man had been usurped in many fans eyes.
 
Like I said, have a plan b in place.

They'd been alerted to the fact he might want away, the chairman thought in December he wasn't looking happy, perhaps we could have looked a little earlier & a little harder at a contingency plan? That way we'd not have wasted time on Ricardo f***ing Fuller.

The problem with January is the inflated fees, how do you have a contingency for Bent leaving? Did Newcastle have one for Carroll? Do Manchester United have one for Rooney? I think you are asking too much.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top