We were obv open to offers for Watkins, Emi, Rogers and poss even McGinn.
Everton made a bid for the latter, and clubs don't normally go that far unless (a) they ascertain that the player may be available and (b) the player himself is open to the offer.
That's four of our key players who we've effectively confirmed we are not mad to keep on board.
So it's a bit mental to say after Sep 1 -when we haven't moved them on - that actually we love you and you are part of our long term plans. Who would honestly believe that shit.
Under Smith, Gerrard and Emery for the first half of his stint with us, a big part of our recruitment seemed to be based on improving our squad but -crucially- also keeping our better players onside with the quality of incoming arrivals.
You'd imagine we'd want to keep Douglas Luiz, Emi and Kamara onside, and TF deals were done - at least in part -with that in mind.
But when you sell Luiz and try to move on Emi, that's less of a concern.
It's also an issue that the President of Football Operations is an Emery pick. Meaning that any scheming between the higher ups doesn't afford Emery plausible deniability. The four key players we were open to moving on + the players we actually moved on were agreed by Emery. All the playing staff know this.
So he can't play the distant head coach role who just tries to make the best of the squad he's inherited.
I get your premise, but its also based on presumption on who was up for sale. If Rogers was up for sale he’d be gone, snapped up, he’s just badly out of form and has been before last season finished. Watkins, maybe in January but no indication we were prepared to sell our only first team striker. I also don’t buy McGinn was open to a move, Everton were making noises about lots of players.
I think we knew we had to sell two or three and Ramsey was one because of the money we could grt and Bailey was another because of his form for a year, with Martinez being the optional one.
I think there has been some disruption, which needs to settle, thats impacted on performance, which has in turn impacted upon results, which has affected confidence, which has impacted on performance and so on, age old football cycle.
I do think Emery is also trying to tighten up the defence which is unbalancing our attacking intent and he needs to look at this.
