Kompany's Signings (Complete List)

[forzagranata]

£16.45 million quid for Aaron Ramsey!!!!
Streuth!!
Pace must be have been on the sauce to ok that one.

The estimated fees are in euros not GBP

[RVclaret]

No one knows what we precisely paid.

Did you really notice him in the two/three games we played against Boro/Norwich last year?

Just quoting the fee from the journo who reported this deal, including intricacies, from start to finish.

Against Boro away I thought he was tidy. But our focus was on promotion of course. Watched Boro a fair bit last year and he was a standout. Their fans attributed their downfall at the end partly to him being injured.

[NewClaret]

Also shows the difficulty of signing Premier league strikers for reasonable money. Even Foster cost 8 mill as a basically unheard of striker with an average goal record in Belgium.
Amdouni another 15 mil or so on top of that.
I really dont see where people think we could sign another striker who would be happy to sit on thr bench for a cheap fee that would contribute much more than what we have already. Weve spent about 25 million on strikers in the last 12 months.

Completely agree. And if you listened to Kompany after Luton, he basically said he won’t be replacing either Lyle or Amdouni.

I think we’ve done Chelsea a favour there, to aid the way for Maatsen, but also giving us cover in case of injury.

[Ric_C]

If, and it is a big if, we go down and keep most of our best players, which of these teams would you class as stronger?

Muric
Roberts
THB
Beyer
Maatsen

Cullen
Cork

Benson
Brownhill
Zaroury

Barnes


or

Trafford
Vitinho
O'Shea
Beyer
Taylor

Berge
Brownhill

Koleosho
Amdouni
Odobert

Foster

[CoolClaret]

Just quoting the fee from the journo who reported this deal, including intricacies, from start to finish.

Against Boro away I thought he was tidy. But our focus was on promotion of course. Watched Boro a fair bit last year and he was a standout. Their fans attributed their downfall at the end partly to him being injured.

I just find some major inconsistencies in posters' logic -

Quick to point to some of our players that have barely had a kick this year don't have it in them for the PL to justify VKs at times baffling decisions/signings but are also quick to point out that Ramsey (who was no more impressive than any of our lot) was one of the best young players in the Champ - allegedly.

Or that signing Tella would've been daft because 'he never hacked it in the PL' (despite desperately needing someone off the right)- as though any signings we brought in, in Summer Berge +1/2 others has hacked it.

Given the status of the squad come mid August-ish time, continuing to add Ramsey and Trésor with gaping holes elsewhere was just daft.

[CoolClaret]

Was Ramsey really a standout as well?

It was Archer and Akpom banging them at the tail end of the season - Akpom denied from the spot of course by Muric who apparantly isn't a good shot stopper according to some on here.

[RVclaret]

Was Ramsey really a standout as well?

It was Archer and Akpom banging them at the tail end of the season - Akpom denied from the spot of course by Muric who apparantly isn't a good shot stopper according to some on here.

Surely not hyping a penalty save (awful pen) which came about because of his shambolic attempt at claiming a cross (reminder of this below).

https://youtu.be/9JSZ602if8Q?si=hQuBnu62owBomwMP

[claretonthecoast1882]

Surely not hyping a penalty save (awful pen) which came about because of his shambolic attempt at claiming a cross (reminder of this below).

https://youtu.be/9JSZ602if8Q?si=hQuBnu62owBomwMP

Wonder if Trafford would have been criticised had he done that

[ClaretTony]

We paid £12m for Ramsey. A fair price for one of the Championship’s best attacking players last season, while factoring in being 19/20 years old and English. There is (thankfully) no automatic buyback upon relegation.

Are you sure on that? There is certainly a buyback option in there. The long delay in the deal being announced was him agreeing the terms on a return to Villa.

[CoolClaret]

Surely not hyping a penalty save (awful pen) which came about because of his shambolic attempt at claiming a cross (reminder of this below).

https://youtu.be/9JSZ602if8Q?si=hQuBnu62owBomwMP

Far from a 'poor pen', Christ almighty.

This also typifies the wider point about how some posters have no issue with criticising those who have genuinely contributed in a Claret shirt that are now unfavoured, while those who are favoured, despite being expensive and achieving little, remain exempt from scrutiny.

Strange.

[RVclaret]

Are you sure on that? There is certainly a buyback option in there. The long delay in the deal being announced was him agreeing the terms on a return to Villa.

That is a buyback amount but it is only valid after 2 years.

[ChorltonCharlie]

I find it really odd reading threads like this. The two constants are lack of quality and lack of physicality. The latter is interesting as it depends what people really mean. Strength is a tough one to guage, though more experienced players tend to be better at using what weight/strength they do have. We have a reasonably pacey team though, and whilst we aren't a team of giants we're not an outlier in terms of lack of height. In fact regular starters signed in the summer with the exception of Koleosho are all 6 footers. Do people mean we're not aggressive?

The quality one gets me though. I think we signed decent footballers. But we had a budget for a bottom end of the Premier League team, not one competing for Europe. For me the route cause of this disastrous season is a lack of adaption from last seasons tactics to systems that could work against better players. The current bunch whether they were here last season or signed in the summer have been hung out to dry by VK's naive and arrogant tactics. I don't have a problem with people backing VK and trusting that he will learn from this season, but I think the lions share of the blame has to go to him and how he's set us up. Not players who will look bad when set up so openly against equal or superior players. I think there's a lot of managers out there who'd have made a much better fist of this season with this group of players.

You would hope that behind the scenes there's a review of why we signed so many players. Unfortunately with the sheer amount of signings, a significant number were going to have to tick the box of poor signing. Someone tried to group the players earlier in the thread. I'd look at it differently. Last year was in general a success, with Churlinov and Bastien being the big question marks. I'd even caveat Churlinov with the stockpiling of wingers issue. This season is "jury's still out", and that goes for the successes of last season as well. Because of the long contracts, and age profiles, we'll probably only truly know the failures in another year or two. Some may go in the summer for what we paid or more, but I still think people are being naive on that one. Unless we're back in fire sale territory, the club will want substantial profit on the likes of Foster, Berge and Odobert and arguably none have done enough to have other teams bidding at a substantial profit. For those that want out, I think we'll be in a Weghorst scenario; unlikely to be PL suitors and foreign teams only looking for season long loan deals. For the ones that stay there's plenty of plausible redemption arcs out there.

[forzagranata]

"Last year was in general a success, with Churlinov and Bastien being the big question marks."

Unless McNally, Egan-Riley and Twine were signed with the intention of loaning them out - they have to be counted as question marks too. Dervişoğlu had no impact. Added to Churlinov (injury) and Bastien, that's six players who made little contribution and are now either loaned out or nowhere to be seen.

[Big Vinny K]

"Last year was in general a success, with Churlinov and Bastien being the big question marks."

Unless McNally, Egan-Riley and Twine were signed with the intention of loaning them out - they have to be counted as question marks too. Dervişoğlu had no impact. Added to Churlinov (injury) and Bastien, that's six players who made little contribution and are now either loaned out or nowhere to be seen.

They all made contributions - some to a lesser degree than others.
Dervisoglu was brought in on loan as striker cover and was part of a very strong bench a number of times.
We have to name 20 players every week - 9 of them are on the bench and every week at least 4 of them aren’t going to kick a ball.
One of the reasons we battered most teams in the second half in particular was the strength of our bench.

We had to replace a massive part of the squad with all the departures when we went down. We spent far less on the new players than we brought in from the sales.

How under that scenario can you expect every signing to be a success when half of them don’t get picked every week.

If the likes of McNally and Twine are playing every week for decent championship teams as they are now then given they both came from division one then that is a success anyway. Not every signing was with the Premier League in mind - how could they be for the relative pittance we paid for most of them ? The wages these lads were on were a fraction of what we were paying the players in the team that got relegated.

[Newcastleclaret93]

If, and it is a big if, we go down and keep most of our best players, which of these teams would you class as stronger?

Muric
Roberts
THB
Beyer
Maatsen

Cullen
Cork

Benson
Brownhill
Zaroury

Barnes


or

Trafford
Vitinho
O'Shea
Beyer
Taylor

Berge
Brownhill

Koleosho
Amdouni
Odobert

Foster

That’s the point we aren’t going to keep them players so your comparing apples to pears

[ChorltonCharlie]

"Last year was in general a success, with Churlinov and Bastien being the big question marks."

Unless McNally, Egan-Riley and Twine were signed with the intention of loaning them out - they have to be counted as question marks too. Dervişoğlu had no impact. Added to Churlinov (injury) and Bastien, that's six players who made little contribution and are now either loaned out or nowhere to be seen.

Fair point. I was thinking of ones who immediately sprang to mind as joining, being given a bit of a chance and fading into the background. McNally, Egan-Riley both seemed to be used as squad players very early on before being loaned out for development. Twine was unlucky with injury and by the time he returned we were flying and then JBG nailed the role that VK used Twine in towards the end of the season. In some ways though reinforces my point. Even in a good team, there'll be signings who aren't a success. Most squads operate on a nucleus of 14-16 regulars, and the rest contribute little.

[JohnMac]

Not cheap building an entire new squad

Equivalent of signing 4 new players in the case of the top few clubs

[claretspice]

We have a reasonably pacey team though, and whilst we aren't a team of giants we're not an outlier in terms of lack of height. In fact regular starters signed in the summer with the exception of Koleosho are all 6 footers. Do people mean we're not aggressive?

The quality one gets me though. I think we signed decent footballers. But we had a budget for a bottom end of the Premier League team, not one competing for Europe. For me the route cause of this disastrous season is a lack of adaption from last seasons tactics to systems that could work against better players.

I would slightly change the emphasise of this. I agree that the extent of our emphasis on playing out from deep in the first quarter of the season was a mistake and naive, but there is precedent for that style of play being reasonably effective for a team stepping up to the top flight. However in many respects I think the greater influence on our promotion (or at least in us establishing our credentials and getting momentum rolling for us before we truly "clicked" was the quality of our press. If you rewind to the first day of last season, away at Huddersfield, we overwhelmed them partly by playing good football, but in large part with the intensity with which we swarmed to win the ball back. I thought that whilst it became less obvious as we became more and more dominant in possession, it remained a big feature of some of the clutch games we won in the run-in, e.g. at Middlesbrough and at Norwich. It is obvious that you can only press well if your front 5 or 6 all have the aggression and intensity to make it work. That was generally the case last season - off the regular starters only Benson (who started less frequently) didn't press well. Even Zaroury got with the programme (even if he was occasionally a bit naive defensively).

I think it is a feature of the teams we've set up with this season that it does not press well. The most obvious change is the absence of Tella, who pressed superbly from the inside right role, but it's not the only change. Early season we played Berge high and he is not a dynamic presser in that position. It is clearly not Amdouni or Tresor's strength, and Koleosho whilst willing was only intermittently effective at it (there was some analysis of Spurs' opener at Burnley which showed this). Recently, the tactical set up has acknowledged this but at the start of the season we were trying to press and getting caught out doing it and ending up under pressure as a result (which placed pressure on our possession play).

Had we placed a greater emphasis on the importance of pressing from the front, my guess is that the rest of the tactical plan might have worked out OK. I still think that the players we've signed are likely to hold their value and I think that as individuals it's a bit too easy to dismiss the potential for us to make a profit (e.g. I am surprised there is a common view that Odabert might not realise a very substantial profit if sold on relegation, and I think the likes of Trafford are underestimated in that regard). But the corollary of my earlier post is that whilst these were good players, they weren't equipped to delivery the game plan VK wanted to play.

[ecc]

When you're winning fans don't say too much about some signings not working out. However, when you're losing every single decision is fair game for criyicism.