Our signings since 2020

[Deutsch Wolf]

Tangent from the Sunderland thread...I said I'd be surprised if you could consider 30%+ of our signings over the course of this decade to be a hit.

Well, you decide, because here's the full list (I'm going to exclude youth players who never played for us, but include youngsters who were signed clearly with an eye on the first team at some point):

My HITS in bold. And I'm probably being generous with some.

Leo Campana
Daniel Podence
Luke Matheson
Enzo Loiodice
Matija Sarkic
Toti Gomes
Fabio Silva
Marçal
Ki-Jana Hoever
Nelson Semedo
Vitinha
Rayan Ait-Nouri
Willian José
Yerson Mosquera
Louie Moulden
José Sa
Bendeguz Bolla
Joe Hodge
Francisco Trincao
Hwang Hee-Chan
Hayao Kawabe
Chiquinho
Leon Chiwome
Nathan Collins
Gonçalo Guedes
Matheus Nunes
Sasa Kalajdzic
Boubacar Traoré
Alfie Pond
Diego Costa
Matheus Cunha
Mario Lemina
Pablo Sarabia
Craig Dawson
Dan Bentley
Joao Gomes
Tom King
Matt Doherty
Santi Bueno
Tommy Doyle
Enso Gonzalez
Jean-Ricner Bellegarde
Matty Whittingham
Tawenda Chirewa
Fletcher Holman
Noha Lemina
Rodrigo Gomes
Pedro Lima
Bastien Meupiyou
Sam Johnstone
Jorgen Strand Larsen
Carlos Forbs
André
Emmanuel Agbadou
Nasser Djiga
Marshall Munetsi
Fer Lopez
Jhon Arias
David Moller Wolfe
Jackson Tchatchoua
Tolu Arokodare
Ladislav Krejci

So for me it's 14 out of 62 and a hit rate of 22.6%.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I would also note that I would consider one name on that list (Guedes) to genuinely be the worst signing the club has ever made, and another in Hodge is genuinely one of the worst footballers I have ever seen play for the club in 37 years of watching us.

 

[sycophantia]

I'd go along with them plus I'd add Sarabia, not often enough but he cost nowt and some of his 'hits' were genuine quality.
What might have been if injury hadn't blighted them, Sasa and potentially Bouba. Even with them it's terrible.

 

[AndyWolves]

You could maybe argue Sarabia, wasn't so much a hit but not a disaster like some of the others

 

[Lupo]

I was thinking of Sarabia too. I miss the days when we had that kind of quality on the bench - and it was only a few short months ago

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Sarabia cost us £150k every single week for two and a half years.

You could muster up a nice enough 4 minute YouTube video of his time here but that's about it, he was shocking value for money.

 

[AndyWolves]

I think Collins should be on there twice, once because he was shite with us and then a second time because he's been decent for Brentford

 

[AndyWolves]

Sarabia cost us £150k every single week for two and a half years.

You could muster up a nice enough 4 minute YouTube video of his time here but that's about it, he was shocking value for money.

It's not a hill I'd even be willing to get a scratch on

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I think Collins should be on there twice, once because he was shite with us and then a second time because he's been decent for Brentford

I'm not sure on the latter, he still looks like a walking disaster to me. He's just in a better team than he was here, where his managers (when he actually played) were Bruno Lage and Steve Davis and his partner was Max Kilman.

 

[pr0sl0]

Glad you saved me the effort of doing this after reading your post in the other thread and thinking it was worth compiling.

I think if we're counting Sarabia as just over the line of being a hit then I think Hwang probably has to be counted as one too, though I don't say that with any affection for either of them. Neither scored as much as we've needed them to, and their mid-to-bad games far outweigh their good ones.

Jury's still out on Santi Bueno for me, but again, it's scraping the barrel.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Glad you saved me the effort of doing this after reading your post in the other thread and thinking it was worth compiling.

I think if we're counting Sarabia as just over the line of being a hit then I think Hwang probably has to be counted as one too, though I don't say that with any affection for either of them. Neither scored as much as we've needed them to, and their mid-to-bad games far outweight their good ones.

I was already being generous to Sa

Who absolutely boils my piss but has at least had some good games and sometimes been a functional #1.

And yet I hope he never plays for us again, and he's always been miles worse than the guy he replaced.

 

[Mel Evo]

Tangent from the Sunderland thread...I said I'd be surprised if you could consider 30%+ of our signings over the course of this decade to be a hit.

Well, you decide, because here's the full list (I'm going to exclude youth players who never played for us, but include youngsters who were signed clearly with an eye on the first team at some point):

My HITS in bold. And I'm probably being generous with some.

Leo Campana
Daniel Podence
Luke Matheson
Enzo Loiodice
Matija Sarkic
Toti Gomes
Fabio Silva
Marçal
Ki-Jana Hoever
Nelson Semedo
Vitinha
Rayan Ait-Nouri
Willian José
Yerson Mosquera
Louie Moulden
José Sa
Bendeguz Bolla
Joe Hodge
Francisco Trincao
Hwang Hee-Chan
Hayao Kawabe
Chiquinho
Leon Chiwome
Nathan Collins
Gonçalo Guedes
Matheus Nunes
Sasa Kalajdzic
Boubacar Traoré
Alfie Pond
Diego Costa
Matheus Cunha
Mario Lemina
Pablo Sarabia
Craig Dawson
Dan Bentley
Joao Gomes
Tom King
Matt Doherty
Santi Bueno
Tommy Doyle
Enso Gonzalez
Jean-Ricner Bellegarde
Matty Whittingham
Tawenda Chirewa
Fletcher Holman
Noha Lemina
Rodrigo Gomes
Pedro Lima
Bastien Meupiyou
Sam Johnstone
Jorgen Strand Larsen
Carlos Forbs
André
Emmanuel Agbadou
Nasser Djiga
Marshall Munetsi
Fer Lopez
Jhon Arias
David Moller Wolfe
Jackson Tchatchoua
Tolu Arokodare
Ladislav Krejci

So for me it's 14 out of 62 and a hit rate of 22.6%.

Good post, but a bit early to be assessing Djiga.

 

[Wilf Wolf]

Glad you saved me the effort of doing this after reading your post in the other thread and thinking it was worth compiling.

I think if we're counting Sarabia as just over the line of being a hit then I think Hwang probably has to be counted as one too, though I don't say that with any affection for either of them. Neither scored as much as we've needed them to, and their mid-to-bad games far outweigh their good ones.

Jury's still out on Santi Bueno for me, but again, it's scraping the barrel.

I’ll give you Santi Bueno but Hwang has been dreadful aside from a very short spell.

 

[pr0sl0]

I’ll give you Santi Bueno but Hwang has been dreadful aside from a very short spell.

As I say, not a fan of Hwang at all, but he did have that purple patch.

Sarabia was just kind of consistently a 1-in-3, 1-in-4 kind of player in terms of good performances. Add all those together and their cumulative impacts end up pretty similar, IMO.

 

[EnglishBob]

Good research there and your criteria for being a hit is necessarily generous. Basically "not entirely shit" is enough .

I wonder how that hit rate of 22% compares to clubs of a similar stature (thinking Brentford, Bournemouth, Brighton etc. here). Pretty poorly, I would imagine.

Say what you want about Jorge Mendes but at least first time around he got us some decent players, even when mired in the Championship (we won't mention Zenga).

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Some other "highlights" from the list:

Fabio Silva for £35m. Now given we actually somehow got most of that back in the end, it looks better than it once did. But still. He was awful, scored 4 goals for us (one of which was a penalty and one which hit him and went in), he was a diabolical character and we sold Diogo Jota to fund that.

Oh and as part of that deal, we immediately handed Liverpool £9m of what they paid for Jota for Ki-Jana Hoever. Who has started 11 league games for us in 5 years.

Yes, we were desperate when we signed Diego Costa. But he played like a 50 year old, genuinely. And he was on £100k+ a week. Scored one goal, which hit him and went in.

£5m on Bastien Meupiyou who never played for us then we let go for free in less than a year.

Double that on Nasser Djiga who has started one league game for us, looks out of his depth in the worst Rangers team for 40+ years and will probably never play for us again.

£24m on Tolu Arokodare who apparently we have no intention of playing alongside Strand Larsen, who we refused to sell. So may I ask what exactly the plan was there, I'm not sure we can afford to spend that on a sub?

£10m on Jackson Tchatchoua who didn't start yesterday. Kept out of the team by soon to be 34 year old Matt Doherty, who has never been a competent right back as long as he's had a hole in his arse.

Re-signing Matt Doherty. On a three year deal. And he's still playing.

I could go on.

 

[EnglishBob]

I could go on.

 

[Leyton Wolf]

As good as Mosquera has looked at times I don't think he's played enough to be a hit. And I'd say Toti is a hit only because he cost peanuts. The fact he has played as much as he has over the last few years is mostly to do with us repeatedly failing to strengthen at CB.

 

[Wilf Wolf]

View attachment 15010

£10m on Wolfe and two players already at the club have started in his position since he did.

 

[Leyton Wolf]

Weird that the good ones have come in clusters as well. Almost as if veering from one strategy to another window to window doesn't work?!?