Sporting director Matt Hobbs

The Dolphin said:
The failures were pretty cheap purchases.
He had a talent an he was our greatest loss when he left - I said so at the time.
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Sakho that wasn't a cheap transfer and ended up complete failure.

Franca another one.

Both those players have cost us 50-60m.

We have over paid for many other players as well Nkietia is def one of them.
 
Penge Eagle said:
The idea that he is a genius for spotting their talent when they were players of the year at their respective clubs is for the birds.

Taking the risk - albeit a low one - would have been on Steve Parish who would have negotiated the transfer and salary.

There might have been other factors in that they wanted to stay in London or other Prem clubs were not looking for players in that particular position which helped get their signatures.

Guehi cost £18 million so it would indicate that Chelsea rated him highly and like Palace, knew he was a decent player.
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Exactly, Olise was tearing up the Championship as a teenager. Guehi had captioned England at every level and proved that he could perform at the Championship at 20 years of age, so was only going to get better. Wharton also had exploded into view and was the talk of the division.

These were all very simple scouting tasks.

Slightly harder, but not massive risks were:

Eze, clearly talented, but was inconsistent. He did however score a decent amount in his last season with QPR which would have made the decision easier.

Munoz - clearly too good for the league, but could he make the step up?

Richards, not good enough for Bayern. But did ok at Hoffenheim, at the right price worth taking a risk on.

Lacroix, 4 full seasons for Wolsburg, but could he adapt to the physicality of the prem?
 
MrRobbo said:
Exactly, Olise was tearing up the Championship as a teenager. Guehi had captioned England at every level and proved that he could perform at the Championship at 20 years of age, so was only going to get better. Wharton also had exploded into view and was the talk of the division.

These were all very simple scouting tasks.

Slightly harder, but not massive risks were:

Eze, clearly talented, but was inconsistent. He did however score a decent amount in his last season with QPR which would have made the decision easier.

Munoz - clearly too good for the league, but could he make the step up?

Richards, not good enough for Bayern. But did ok at Hoffenheim, at the right price worth taking a risk on.

Lacroix, 4 full seasons for Wolsburg, but could he adapt to the physicality of the prem?
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I don’t think we should judge a Director of Football on turning up unheralded players alone.

Yes Olise, Eze and Guehi were clearly talents but the fact is we got in for them at the right time, convinced them to join Palace and got them for what turned out to be absolute bargain fees compared to their impact, talent and future sale value. That in itself is doing a great job.
 
Penge Eagle said:
The worship of Freedman and his transfer acumen does not match up with the facts. For every Jedinak, there's a Plange and Ebiowei.

That's not to say he hasn't found any gems (Wharton) but Olise and Eze were on everyone's radar.

Look at historic transfers here: Transfers
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so why didnt the bigger clubs buy if they was on everyones radar please explain
 
grumpymort said:
Sakho that wasn't a cheap transfer and ended up complete failure.

Franca another one.

Both those players have cost us 50-60m.

We have over paid for many other players as well Nkietia is def one of them.
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how many clubs have paid big and turned out flops ask arsenal paid 70m for pepe ( big club )
 
stevo said:
Borna Sosa, Pino & Uche is a pretty fcuking s*** start at a time when we were at our most attractive for signing players.

Congrats to Macclesfield they deserved it!!

Embarrassing performance from us and I honestly don't know how much more I can take of watching Pino & Sosa.
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He had no involvement in any of those deals because he did not start work for Palace until after they were signed. I heard from someone that knows more than me that Matt Hobbs accepted the Palace DoF job back in the summer but told the club he could not start until the autumn due to some personal/family matter.
The reality is these players were signed while we had no DoF. So they were either players that the recruitment team identified, players Glasner asked for (unlikely in the case of Pino and Uche) or they were players that remained on Freedman's list after he left.
I'm not saying Matt Hobbs is a brilliant DoF. I know nothing about him but it would be unfair to blame him for flops that he had no hand in.
For the record Pino is no flop. He's young yes and upper body needs beefing up as he does get shoved off the ball easier than he should but you dont get into the Spanish national team (and score goals) if you are not a quality player.
 
Crystal_Clear said:
Sosa at 2.5m was only ever a backup, it would be better if we had a promising youngster coming through at LB, but does seem to be car.

UChe is not really a natural centre forward, he started at Getafe as a midfielder.

Pino is just about most continental player I have ever seen at Palace. He is just not suited to English football. Can Esse really be worse ?
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Than a Spanish international? Hell yeah!
 
MrRobbo said:
Exactly, Olise was tearing up the Championship as a teenager. Guehi had captioned England at every level and proved that he could perform at the Championship at 20 years of age, so was only going to get better. Wharton also had exploded into view and was the talk of the division.

These were all very simple scouting tasks.

Slightly harder, but not massive risks were:

Eze, clearly talented, but was inconsistent. He did however score a decent amount in his last season with QPR which would have made the decision easier.

Munoz - clearly too good for the league, but could he make the step up?

Richards, not good enough for Bayern. But did ok at Hoffenheim, at the right price worth taking a risk on.

Lacroix, 4 full seasons for Wolsburg, but could he adapt to the physicality of the prem?
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so did you know about them before we brought them , do you know how many match's are watched before buying , \
you have your fingers spread and then look and see if worth trying its called doing your job
 
Penge Eagle said:
The point was Freedman is not the genius people think he is at finding gems. Olise and Eze were in plain sight!

Why they didn't sign for other clubs is a separate discussion.
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I am not sure that using the case of two players DF looked at, signed for us when other clubs didn’t, at reasonable fees, who turned out to be great for us and who we then sold for c£80m profit is the strongest argument against him being a really good DOF.

I take the point they weren’t complete unknowns but the fact is DF did his job with those two and then some.
 
Penge Eagle said:
The point was Freedman is not the genius people think he is at finding gems. Olise and Eze were in plain sight!

Why they didn't sign for other clubs is a separate discussion.
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Is it? Wasn’t it DF’s job to court these players and persuade them that we were the best place for them to take their career to the next step? Which he clearly did. I don’t know anything about Hobbs but I’m looking forward to some signs he’s going a good job before I pass judgement on him
 
Penge Eagle said:
The point was Freedman is not the genius people think he is at finding gems. Olise and Eze were in plain sight!

Why they didn't sign for other clubs is a separate discussion.
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no its not it comes with the assumption they didnt scout , scouting is hit and miss and following up , arsenal didnt rate eze how much did that cost them , just pointing out that all clubs take risks on unknow and hope they progress
 
Davepalace707 said:
Is it? Wasn’t it DF’s job to court these players and persuade them that we were the best place for them to take their career to the next step? Which he clearly did. I don’t know anything about Hobbs but I’m looking forward to some signs he’s going a good job before I pass judgement on him
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Well I would say it would have some impact...
However, their agents' and families opinion, club location and financial package would be equally if not more important than Dougie's dulcet tone.

We don't know how many he failed to persuade, do we?
 
mtp1958 said:
no its not it comes with the assumption they didnt scout , scouting is hit and miss and following up , arsenal didnt rate eze how much did that cost them , just pointing out that all clubs take risks on unknow and hope they progress
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Seems like I have upset the Dougie fanboys.

He has made some good, some bad signings. That's it. Nothing special.
 
I don’t think Freedman’s gift was finding talented players as has been discussed here by several posters already most were being courted by rival prem clubs.

I think Freedman’s gift was as much his ability to sell the club and make youngsters understand palace was a good of a place to take that next step as anywhere else. This in turn meant they wanted to come to palace which made getting the deals done that much easier.

I will add it that I think Hobbs job is far harder by Ollies stance on really limiting young players playing time. We aren’t as easy to sell against a big prem club now as youngsters aren’t getting the minutes they once were, which will halt progress and mean that actually they’ll go and take the big contract elsewhere over the palace type step in the career. Hopefully all that makes sense.
 
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