Summer 2021 Window Rating

[THOWIG]

For shifting some of the players 10/10

New signings 8/10

 

[THOWIG]

Sorloth? Edouard? Yeah maybe if this was FM18 or something but I'd much rather be playing Son, or at worst case Dane over those guys. Not to mention the wages.

I honestly didn't even want Daka.

I’m really interested to see how Cunha does.

 

[canadacelt]

8 for me,really impressed given short period of time Paratici and Nuno had.

Kane stays
Son signs new contract
Decent defensive additions (Romero,Emerson,Golini)
Improvement of existing defenders and defensive structure
Skipp and Sessegnon return
Gil looks exciting,and Sarr for next year.
Shifting a lot of deadwood and new signings refreshes the squad and creates positive energy.
Nuno.is the most important signing, I feel we have a team again instead of an over reliance on Kane, and an absence of negativity from the coach. I have a feeling he'll get Ndombele going again too.
Feel so much better about the team than at the end of last year

 

[DogsOfWar]

At the start of the window I'd have gone for six but with Skipp, Dele, Dier, and Sanchez performing excellently over the first three games the incomings weren't as extensive as I thought they'd need to be.
So a decent back up keeper, CB and RB were the main priorities which were fixed.
I'd have liked Traore but not for £50 million so I'm happy with Gil who I think may have a part to play before the end of the season.
And Sarr is a great signing but not for this season.
I loved Nuno at Wolves and thought he was a bit hard done by getting the sack for coming 13th after seeing some of his best players sold.
But he seems to have got the team working again and no longer sitting on one goal leads.
With the addition of Son getting a new contract and keeping Kane I think we're in a good place.

As a result I'm quite optimistic as I think we now have a strong starting eleven with OK depth apart from a couple of key positions and may end up surprising a few people this season.

 

[Dillspur]

4. Keeping Kane and Son signing a new contract while important doesn't make us stronger than last year. I like the look of Romero but we did lose our best CD and I think it was a mistake not getting in another. We got rid of some of the deadwood and we have a younger squad but we are lacking quality in important areas. There's question marks over a lot of the squad.

I would have been happy with 2 quality CD's and a proper partner/backup to Kane.

 

[OnTheShelf]

The positives are clear: some deadwood shifted, some decent prospects brought in, defense upgraded with risk mitigation in loan-buy options. Held onto Kane for, in all probability, another year and re-signed Sonny.

The negatives are equally clear: red zone travel issues. No creative midfielder and no back-up striker. I wonder where the goals are coming from and, heaven forbid, Harry and Sonny go down.

More importantly though is we need to consider our window in context to our top four rivals. Does anyone think we got closer to City, United or Chelsea? I certainly don’t. Not close.

If we’re going to get back into the top four, we need N’Dombele, LoCelso, Sessegnon and others to finally kick on.

 

[WhiteStripe]

I remember when Poch came in we started to shed the older players and bring through younger ones to a point where we had the youngest squad in the league. This seems to have been the window that started the process for us.

The main reason it’s not a higher ranking IMO is that whilst Kane stayed, there are no guarantees past January on that at the moment. We also failed to add a creative talent in the middle of the park, a backup/alternative striker and the excitement a player such as Traore would bring.

We have also been lucky that both Sanchez and Dier have had a 3 game brain fart hiatus and Skipp has been a marked improvement on Winks. So a good start to the reign of Fab, but still much work to be done if we want to get anywhere near where we were.

6 / 10 (C+)

 

[worcestersauce]

A couple of things prevent a direct comparison with last season, one being Toby, he left because he knew he couldn't keep up the standard so we didn't lose the top Toby Alderweireld as we were losing him anyway. The other thing was Kane, should we compare with last season or last season's squad without him because keeping him is, as it stands, the best result of the window. My point therefore is to judge any improvement from a lower base than we think.
With that in mind I'd say we haven't lost any player we really wanted to keep and have brought in some cracking talent.
We have Skipp now who I think we all agree is a bonus and Sessignon on whom I agree the jury is still out for most of us plus, ironically down to the Kane saga, other players seem to have stepped up as leaders not least Sonny.
The new players are all great talents whatever we think of their age or the fact that they aren't at their peak yet they are pretty clearly not a bunch of journeymen, if they live up to expectations they are going to be something special.
The only one I don't include in that is Emerson, not because I don't rate him but simply because I never even heard of him until last weekend and so can't make anything like an informed judgement.
All in all obviously we could always have done better so 10 is out of the question and 9 is ok if we got a creative midfielder and the other CB Nuno wanted but I still reckon we did well.
I'll give it 8.

 

[allpaths]

Gave it a cheeky 8 outta 10. With the idea gil and sarr go on to become big time players.

We got back to acting like a club reflecting our stature in the game. Going after exciting young players that if all goes well will have us back punching above our weight.

We were still left short, but I put that more on the sins of transfer seasons gone by.

 

[Zaphod]

7/10. We were never going to fill all of the holes in one window. If we had concentrated up top we’d all be moaning that we’d neglected the defence.

Chelsea screwed us over by moving for Lukaku which meant Martinez was off the table. I’d rather the club wait and get the right man than clog up the squad with tomorrow’s deadwood.

Paratici was bought in to build a squad, that’s not going to happen over a few weeks in a COVID affected summer. I don’t really buy into the whole ‘deals we’re lined up and Fabio had his ballpoint in hand to write the cheque before Levy swept into the room like Dracula with his cloak billowing behind him with and an evil ’mwah ha ha’ laugh and snatching the pen from his hand’ idea.

I suspect that clubs financial problems were exaggerated and not quite as many were desperate to sell their stars to us as we’d hoped.

A solid start, let’s hope our new team is lining up opportunities and deals for the winter window.

 

[Hakkz]

No one there stands out (barring Vinnicius) as someone that would be notably better than either Son (as Centre Forward) or Scarlett (as backup)..........in fact, I'd rather play Son up front (as we have done previously) than any of those!

The problem with that is that Son is playing every single game if he is the backup striker. He will have to play PL, cups and korean internationals which is just going to risk injury even more, or just a burnout. Stupidity.

 

[Trix]

The problem with that is that Son is playing every single game if he is the backup striker. He will have to play PL, cups and korean internationals which is just going to risk injury even more, or just a burnout. Stupidity.

Why does he have to play every game? There is no reason he can't be rested when Kane is fit and playing, or at least only be a bench option. We have enough numbers to rest him in some of the lesser games.

 

[Hakkz]

Why does he have to play every game? There is no reason he can't be rested when Kane is fit and playing, or at least only be a bench option. We have enough numbers to rest him in some of the lesser games.

Because if Kane has a bad day then we aren't much of a threat. The lesser games yes, but as soon as the games start to matter in the cups then he will be in the starting eleven. He might not need to be, but I'm sure NES will put him there.

 

[Trix]

Because if Kane has a bad day then we aren't much of a threat. The lesser games yes, but as soon as the games start to matter in the cups then he will be in the starting eleven. He might not need to be, but I'm sure NES will put him there.

Isn't that the same as any player though? The best players at every club for their position will always play in the bigger games. Don't get me wrong I think we needed to either bring in a striker or WF, however I doubt very much whoever we would have brought in would have played in front of Harry or Sonny in any big games. Imo which ever player we brought in would literally have been back up and not rotation, because of how good those two are. Managers just aren't going to drop them for critical games and that's the same for all clubs.

 

[Hakkz]

Isn't that the same as any player though? The best players at every club for their position will always play in the bigger games. Don't get me wrong I think we needed to either bring in a striker or WF, however I doubt very much whoever we would have brought in would have played in front of Harry or Sonny in any big games. Imo which ever player we brought in would literally have been back up and not rotation, because of how good those two are. Managers just aren't going to drop them for critical games and that's the same for all clubs.

The problem is when you have a starting player to be the backup for another starting player, without having a sufficient backup for the first player. Sure Son can cover for Kane, but can someone properly cover for Son? That's maybe the biggest doubt. When Son has one of his bad patches, we look very toothless.

 

[Trix]

The problem is when you have a starting player to be the backup for another starting player, without having a sufficient backup for the first player. Sure Son can cover for Kane, but can someone properly cover for Son? That's maybe the biggest doubt. When Son has one of his bad patches, we look very toothless.

Isn't this why we bought Gil? Like I said I think we still needed to bring in another, but if I'm correct in my assumption you are saying we needed to bring in a proven threat and the problem with that is that they are only ever coming to be back up, Simply put when fit Son is going to play and the same with Kane. I think the bigger issue is that there aren't enough goals from other area's. Maybe that's an over reliance within the team on Kane and Son. Hopefully though it's a tactical and/or confidence issue that Nuno will sort out. More goals from midfield and full backs would certainly help and mean less is required in terms of goals from whoever replaces Son.

 

[Hakkz]

Isn't this why we bought Gil? Like I said I think we still needed to bring in another, but if I'm correct in my assumption you are saying we needed to bring in a proven threat and the problem with that is that y are only ever coming to be back up, because when fit Son is going to play same with Kane. I think the bigger issue is that there aren't enough goals from other area's. Maybe that's an over reliance within the team on Kane and Son. Hopefully though it's a tactical/confidence issue that Nuno will sort out. More goals from midfield and full backs would certainly help and mean less is required in terms of goals from whoever replaces Son.

What you can do is add another goal threat to the right to replace Bale. I would surprised if Gil scores more than 3 goals in the league this season. He might set up a few however. There is clearly an over reliance on Kane and Son (and I don't trust Kane to put in 100% anymore). We seem very reliant on counter-attacking still and that is where Son shines, without him I can see us being put under siege without much of a threat going the other way against better teams.
As you said, we need a bigger goal spread too, if you remove Kane's and Son's goals from last season then Ndombele with 3 goals was the best one that is still left in the team. Moura/Bergwijn/Alli/Gil/Lo Celso need to get up to 3-5 goals each but I can't see that happening magically.

 

[Trix]

What you can do is add another goal threat to the right to replace Bale. I would surprised if Gil scores more than 3 goals in the league this season. He might set up a few however. There is clearly an over reliance on Kane and Son (and I don't trust Kane to put in 100% anymore). We seem very reliant on counter-attacking still and that is where Son shines, without him I can see us being put under siege without much of a threat going the other way against better teams.
As you said, we need a bigger goal spread too, if you remove Kane's and Son's goals from last season then Ndombele with 3 goals was the best one that is still left in the team. Moura/Bergwijn/Alli/Gil/Lo Celso need to get up to 3-5 goals each but I can't see that happening magically.

I can see Dele getting close to double figures once things settle. He's started making those runs again the last couple of games and it's only a matter of time before he gets on the end of them. You are right though that Moura and Bergwijn need more though to cement a spot. Will be interesting to see just how he lines up the forward players once the switch to 3 at the back happens(and it is going to happen).

will it be 3-4-3, 3-5-2 or 3-4-1-2, 3-4-2-1

If it's 3-4-3 I don't see how Dele fits.
If it's 3-5-2 or 3-4-1-2 then Begwijn seems surplus.


personally I'd like to see 3-4-2-1 with Dele/Gil/Moura/Son sitting behind a CF.

 

[absolute bobbins]

8 based on the scale, progress was clearly made but we could have done more.

A striker to challenge or usurp Kane and a creative midfielder would have made it much better.

 

[Hakkz]

I can see Dele getting close to double figures once things settle. He's started making those runs again the last couple of games and it's only a matter of time before he gets on the end of them. You are right though that Moura and Bergwijn need more though to cement a spot. Will be interesting to see just how he lines up the forward players once the switch to 3 at the back happens(and it is going to happen).

will it be 3-4-3, 3-5-2 or 3-4-1-2, 3-4-2-1

If it's 3-4-3 I don't see how Dele fits.
If it's 3-5-2 or 3-4-1-2 then Begwijn seems surplus.


personally I'd like to see 3-4-2-1 with Dele/Gil/Moura/Son sitting behind a CF.

You could try to force Dele in rightsided in a front three. I would prefer to have a more direct threat on the right if we are going to have them be forwards and not wingers. I think we have players to play 3-4-3 but I'm worried about the goals.