That Was the Season that Was - Part 1
Getting withdrawal symptoms? Stephen takes us back to last season with his month by month recap, starting at the beginning with June to August. Happily it would get better from there!
This should be an easy thing to write, reviewing the best season I have had in terms of success as a football fan. Yet actually large parts of this season were either nowhere near what I wanted, or were challenging to put in perspective. This article will start that review and where better to start than the end of the previous season?
June 2024
I can’t believe it! Denied Europe at the last with a Manchester United win in the FA Cup final. Ten Hag has been useless and yet has managed once more to win a trophy with that squad and keep them in the top half. People keep saying this could be good for us, a chance for Eddie to work with the players and manage injuries and rotation a lot better. This may be the case but we actually wanted some European football just for the money it brings, and now Villa have nicked our spot at the top table, despite us beating them 8-2 on aggregate this season.
Further good news comes in the form of warnings about PSR and how much money we might need to bring in just to be compliant. God, I love spreadsheets! The modern football fan has so much to worry about that didn’t exist before, but after the sapping trip to Australia where the under twenty kids and Mark Gillespie took an eight nil beating, we now had to accept some would be moving on.
Minteh looked like the man to be our Almirón replacement, until one year after signing, he was off to the south coast and had made a sizeable profit for the club, in the region of about twenty-six million. The sale of the Geordie Maradona was harder to take, and the news that we were bringing back a Greek keeper as a sweetener. Surely that would mean we didn’t need any more keepers.
Frankly at this point it wasn’t a surprise that Amanda Staveley and co were ‘bought out’ as the PSR calamity at the end of the season happened on their watch and their time for moving the club forward was over. The problem was what was to come.
July 2024
Ah, Adidas headquarters and a chance to discuss the coming season. A bit of nostalgia with the old 1995 Sir Les and Ginola shirts coming out - the news that we were getting a significant hype in the deal was a bonus. What was not was hearing that the club had decided to arrange a new sporting director (Paul Mitchell) without checking in with the manager. Now to be honest, most clubs wouldn’t do this, but Howe’s power base had been so strong and now it was gone. Southgate was gone from England, the rumours were starting about Eddie, and we were all worried this might mean his departure.
No matter. There was the football to restart and probably some players to come in. All would be well wouldn’t it? The matches bit went well. A warm up against a local team and then a behind closed doors defeat to Burnley. A nice two nil away win at Hull – I took me kids for their first away day, they loved it – followed by a flight to Japan to play some matches and launch a third kit.
Lloyd Kelly arrived on a free, Lewis Hall was made permanent, and then we added to the goalkeeping ranks with John Ruddy. More keepers than fingers. This meant that the club had sent out about forty eight million, but there was no improvement to the first team. To put that in amortization/PSR chat, that’s nine million a year for five years, with no wages added on top, for one player we won’t pick and another who was already here.
August 2024
The SELA weekender was a storming success. Well, the Friday was as Sean Longstaff destroyed Girona almost on his own. William Osula was added from Sheffield United. Everyone presumed he was rubbish because he had never scored for them.
Ryan Fraser was flogged to Southampton, who turned up on the opening day and nearly beat us. We looked shattered, but it was around this time that it broke that Gordon and Isak had nearly departed for PSR reasons. There was a state of panic, yet the team quietly went about their business. They weren’t playing well but they were getting results. The papers had us linked with Bobby Clark and Joe Gomez, Trevoh Chalobah and Disasi at Chelsea. None would arrive.
The saga of this month really was the inability to sign Marc Guéhi. The whole month seemed to be spent on it. Only insiders really know what went on there, but at no point did the club seem to pivot to other targets until it was too late. The lack of speed was costly, we would have to hope we could get to January with what we had.
A dire draw at Bournemouth (we haven’t beaten them since Eddie was their manager) was not the boost everyone needed. However, a certain Italian was now free to play and did so at the City Ground in the Carabao Cup. A Longstaff penalty kick saw us through, but if we didn’t have a new signing, we quickly saw we had a midfielder who could lift this group to another level.
Stephen Ord @smord84
Really enjoyed that Stephen, I'd forgotten how bad it was at times.
You describe it well Stephen. It was all a bit draining and with some pretty uninspiring performances. I'm struggling a bit to remember it and was very surprised by the lack of transfer activity. Things had to get better . . .