Michail Antonio

However, having two goalkeepers on the, on, on the bench, and one, uh, a gentleman just signed.

We haven't really talked about, about him actually signing in terms of Michail Antonio, but described as unfit in, in the launch pieces.

He gets a part on the bench, but nobody else does.

Now, some people have turned around and said, "Well, everybody else is crap." Well, people were saying Nabizadeh was crap, yeah, last year.

This is a very much like, yes, this aligns very much with a West Ham United player story because we've had enough of these sort of things over the years.

We've had, you know, Marco Bugas living in a caravan, Mikel Antonio, who would have come to him to be having a car crash, not one, two, near the end of his career.

Now one could have been worse.

It just feels like we've always got these sort of dramas hanging around.

I can take it.

Right.

Antonio to Watford.

Yeah, I mean, he signed a one-year contract, free transfer, of course, being an out-of-contract player.

but at least make us competitive and give us enough tools for D&E to get on with the job.

Going into the game yesterday with eight substitutes out of nine that you should have, two of them being goalkeepers and one of them being Mikel Antonio, who he was never going to play yesterday.

He's still working on his match fitness.

So then we only had five outfield options on the bench.

Because you can make the same argument about Eames not being ready.

So...

Going back to your point about depth, if you take away Walker and Backman, if you take away Antonio and Deems, we only had Cure and Guard, Vata, Navizard and Traore.

If you're not counting, if that's your criteria of are they actually fit enough and at the level, then if you're knocking out those two categories, we only had four.

So we shouldn't just be going, ah, it's all right, we'll get a free agent, we'll get someone, we'll find something, you know.

You know, you're signing Michael Antonio.

It's like... nothing against him he's had a great career and if he has if he has a couple of moments for Watford um you know during his stay at the club brilliant I hope he does I hope he can contribute but it's like there's a reason that no one else wants him he's not played football since 2024 he's had a terrible injury that he's done well to come back from and I really really hope that he can contribute and he can enjoy his time at the club and he can get something out of it like on a personal level great but it does say something about us that we're having to rely to padding out the squad with punts like this and it's like you know it's it's it's not good enough it isn't good enough and it's you know i don't unless i'm mistaken i don't think there are too many other clubs operating like this in in the in the championship like we've At one time we were famed for our recruitment and how good we were.

And yes, we still do find some diamonds and polish them up and sell them off.