Lambert in or out? Poll reset with majority 'in', 7th May

[Risso]

According to the transfer league site its £25.7 m including sylla.
Not sure thats totally accurate but certainly closer to 25m than the 20m tops that you suggest.

And it wasn't anywhere near enough.

It might have been had it been spent more intelligently. 

[eastie]

According to the transfer league site its £25.7 m including sylla.
Not sure thats totally accurate but certainly closer to 25m than the 20m tops that you suggest.

And it wasn't anywhere near enough.

It was a lot more than the majority of premier clubs spent .

[Mister E]

According to the transfer league site its £25.7 m including sylla.
Not sure thats totally accurate but certainly closer to 25m than the 20m tops that you suggest.

Mea culpa - apologies to you, Greg (and thanks, eastie).

[Ads]

According to the transfer league site its £25.7 m including sylla.
Not sure thats totally accurate but certainly closer to 25m than the 20m tops that you suggest.

And it wasn't anywhere near enough.

It was a lot more than the majority of premier clubs spent .

Had the majority of Premier League clubs just finished in the bottom six, with 7 wins and 38 points?

[Mister E]

According to the transfer league site its £25.7 m including sylla.
Not sure thats totally accurate but certainly closer to 25m than the 20m tops that you suggest.

And it wasn't anywhere near enough.

It might have been had it been spent more intelligently. 

Purchased:
Yacouba Sylla        £2,112,000 **
Christian Benteke  £7,744,000
Ashley Westwood  £2,200,000
Jason Bowery      £554,400    **
Joe Bennett       £2,772,000 **
Ron Vlaar               £3,344,000
Matthew Lowton      £3,300,000
Karim El Ahmadi       £2,460,000 **
Brett Holman       Free T
Simon Dawkins       Loan
Brad Guzan      N/A
                     £24,486,400

If he'd invested the monies asterisked (£7.9m) more effectively, what could we have got? 1 DMF plus a LB or a CB?
Could have made all the difference.
The problem is that at the time, Lambert must have thought that KEA and Bennett were capable of making the step up to the EPL (rather than being squad or development players). The Sylla transfer I don't understand at all, given the timing / needs of hte team.

As we know from MON's era, managers rarely get a 100% transfer success, and - as has been said  elsewhere - he must have thought that he'd get more from the experienced players he inherited.
I think it is these latter players that have let us down, not PL's transfers (perhaps KEA excepted).

[eastie]

According to the transfer league site its £25.7 m including sylla.
Not sure thats totally accurate but certainly closer to 25m than the 20m tops that you suggest.

And it wasn't anywhere near enough.

It was a lot more than the majority of premier clubs spent .

Had the majority of Premier League clubs just finished in the bottom six, with 7 wins and 38 points?

So you take a team that finished 16th , spend 25m and are now 18th? Where is the success in that?

Lambert is tactically inept, his formations, selections lack of motivational skills worry me far more than his transfer buying- a manager looking totally out of his comfort zone and depth.

[Mister E]

Lambert is tactically inept ...

although that was the very capability for which he was lauded when he joined; his astuteness in changing tactics mid-game, to adapt to the conditions / opposition.

It's weird, because I agree that he has shown tactical / selection weakness.

[eastie]

Lambert is tactically inept ...

although that was the very capability for which he was lauded when he joined; his astuteness in changing tactics mid-game, to adapt to the conditions / opposition.

It's weird, because I agree that he has shown tactical / selection weakness.

Its happened with other managers when moving to a bigger club, i just think the club is too big for him unfortunately in a similar way to when mike walker left norwich for goodison.

[Clampy]

He's been shown up tactically on a few occasions, the Bradford 2nd leg being one of them. I still think there's a good manager in Lambert though. Whether that is with us remains to be seen but i hope so.

[Risso]

He's been shown up tactically on a few occasions, the Bradford 2nd leg being one of them. I still think there's a good manager in Lambert though. Whether that is with us remains to be seen but i hope so.

I think as Eastie says, the club has proved to be too big for him, and he has got the approach all wrong since he's been here.

[Drummond]

According to the transfer league site its £25.7 m including sylla.
Not sure thats totally accurate but certainly closer to 25m than the 20m tops that you suggest.

And it wasn't anywhere near enough.

It might have been had it been spent more intelligently. 

Purchased:
Yacouba Sylla        £2,112,000 **
Christian Benteke  £7,744,000
Ashley Westwood  £2,200,000
Jason Bowery      £554,400    **
Joe Bennett       £2,772,000 **
Ron Vlaar               £3,344,000
Matthew Lowton      £3,300,000
Karim El Ahmadi       £2,460,000 **
Brett Holman       Free T
Simon Dawkins       Loan
Brad Guzan      N/A
                     £24,486,400

If he'd invested the monies asterisked (£7.9m) more effectively, what could we have got? 1 DMF plus a LB or a CB?
Could have made all the difference.
The problem is that at the time, Lambert must have thought that KEA and Bennett were capable of making the step up to the EPL (rather than being squad or development players). The Sylla transfer I don't understand at all, given the timing / needs of hte team.

As we know from MON's era, managers rarely get a 100% transfer success, and - as has been said  elsewhere - he must have thought that he'd get more from the experienced players he inherited.
I think it is these latter players that have let us down, not PL's transfers (perhaps KEA excepted).

Flippin eck, we've no idea yet about how Sylla will do, Bennett is an U19,U20 and U21 player for England, Bowery cost virtually nothing. El Ahmadi has been disappointing granted but other than that those signings aren't that bad.

When you factor in low wages too, it's not bad value.

[Concrete John]

End of the day, if you spend 25m on a team that finished 16th under most supporter's idea of the worse possible manager then finishing higher or indeed 16th shouldn't be out of the question. Its not like Lerner asset stripped the squad in the summer and made it noticably worse - he let Ivanhoe, collins and cuellar go, presumably with lambchop's full consent.

That squad also had Petrov and Dunne for the majority of the previous season, plus Hutton and Warnock.  I know it was Lambert's decision to not play the latter two, but when you judge the spend as you have it needs to be factored in. 

So in reality, the squad that finished 16th and had £25m spent on it had lost 7 international players.

[Concrete John]

If he'd invested the monies asterisked (£7.9m) more effectively, what could we have got? 1 DMF plus a LB or a CB?
Could have made all the difference.

I think the thing to ask is if we had spent that £7.9m on the 2/3 players you mention, what woud we have got for it if looking for PL experience?

[pedro25]

But when he inherited a pool of central midfielders of Bannan, Herd, Delph and Ireland and I dont understand why he spent £7 mill on 3 potentially good players (KEA, Sylla and Westwood), that money should have been spent on one experienced player who knew the League.  We are now left with a large pool of 7/8 central midfielders and yet still lack exactly what we lacked 12 months ago, a decent replacement for Stan, which we can't afford as the squad is clogged up with KEA, Sylla, Bowery etc.

[Ads]

According to the transfer league site its £25.7 m including sylla.
Not sure thats totally accurate but certainly closer to 25m than the 20m tops that you suggest.

And it wasn't anywhere near enough.

It was a lot more than the majority of premier clubs spent .

Had the majority of Premier League clubs just finished in the bottom six, with 7 wins and 38 points?

So you take a team that finished 16th , spend 25m and are now 18th? Where is the success in that?

Lambert is tactically inept, his formations, selections lack of motivational skills worry me far more than his transfer buying- a manager looking totally out of his comfort zone and depth.

What has any of that got to do with the original point?

Our squad was poor last season, it needed a lot of work or a lot of gems to be unearthed. The proper funding was not given, so we're struggling again.