I Stand By My Comment

Why do you think it's unrealistic?

 

I also stand by my comment that you only post when we fail to win.

 

Think you will have to qualify that statement a bit more. If we have won, how long are you saying I leave it before posting?

 

Hi Conan

When you “stand by” the assertion that “We should be looking to move every one of these players on at earliest opportunity”…….....

…how does that square with your later post in the same thread saying that you’d keep some of these players?

Just wondering if you should have originally posted “We should be looking to move every one of these players on at earliest opportunity, except for 3 of them ”?

 

Doesn't need qualifying - its clear to the majority of this board.

It's a shame you fail to see it.

 

I'll rephrase that so there is no ambiguity - the only players I would have kept from last season are the ones we didn't. The rest are not up to it in the division above - which is where we want to be I assume?

Would be a bit unfair not to give the new players a chance to show what they can and can't do.

 

Course it does. Are you saying I don't post on the day of a victory or I go missing for days or weeks?

 

So, our summer should have included both the search for a new coaching staff and a complete replacement of the entire playing staff?

 

Excuse me chaps is this a 48 hr Conan bashing thread or the full match to match bashing one? Could save me some time that`s all.

 

In an ideal world.

If you want to rate these players that is your opinion. I do not.

To me they are the same players from last season. The only difference is the standard of opposition.

 

Do you not think that, if we have a season of winning regularly or at least not losing often, the players won’t improve at all over the space of the next 10/11 months? They’ll all be the exact same standard of what they were when we were in the championship last time?

 

Na, it really doesn’t.

You don’t post in the hours after we win. You do, however, appear to enjoy posting in the hours after we fail to win.

Like I said, the majority of the board are aware of that.

 

I rarely post on a Saturday evening. Regardless of the result.

 

They might be more confident. They might be a more cohesive unit. I don't think they will be better players. One or two might but I am not seeing any evidence of this so far. Do I think they will be good enough for the division above? No I don't.

 

I think we ought to concentrate on trying to get promotion & if we go up give our HC the tools to assemble the squad he requires .

 

Some posters on here (no names - you guess!) really posted some crap stuff on here last season. They are still posting crap and probably always will.
This either supports or undermines Conan’s assertions dependent on who you guess I’m referring to.

 

If people think that by replacing a full team in one window with 16 new signings all with little or no championship experience aged under 25 that the players will be performing to anywhere near the best then you know nothing about football.

No chief executive in the months before the window, a head coach who wanted out, an owner dying of cancer, a club captain with personal issues, his deputy captain wanting out & crocked for a couple of months with a knackered shoulder, our first choice keeper badly out of form, only 3 strikers, 1 of which wasn’t fit & 1 that wasn’t up to it. Isgrove, Yiadom, Hedges, Jackson, Pinnock, Cavare, Fryers, Gardner all spending several months out injured. The head coach replaced with Jose Morais.

Do I need to go on? Virtually everything you could imagine went wrong & we still only went down on the last day of the season.

I’m not saying all this squad will be a success next season if we get up but on the whole they’ll be better than they were last time I’m certain of that. They’re all 2 years closer to their peaks, they’re all used to playing with each other & I can’t imagine we’ll ever have another season with as many injuries.

A big part of football is building a team, it’s not all about individual players qualities.

 

You keep telling yourself that

 

I've no need to.

 

Counting our first team squad I have about 20 players who would be up for the chop in your ideal world. I'll cut a bit of slack and assume you'd be willing to give some of the younger players who've not had much game time a bit of a chance and take that number down to 16.

So your idea over the next 3 transfer windows is that we need to ship out 16 and bring in 16 that we know would be an improvement on what we have and have the potential to be competitive at the level above.

Why do I think that's unrealistic? For a start, shipping out players at those volumes can't be done at the click of a few buttons. You say you'd be willing to take a loss on some of the deals, well in a realistic world, where most of us reside, that's probably not how the owners will approach it. I've heard they're pretty savvy business men.

So if we're looking to sell off our squad...the best players would either go to championship teams...(none of them should do by your logic because they're not good enough)...OR to our rivals in this division.

Bet 365 have us as 4/5 favourites to be promoted from League One, so taking their margin into account, has us rated about a 50% chance of being promoted....better than any other team in the division, including Portsmouth who currently have an 8 point lead on us. Do I agree with that? Do you agree with that? Doesn't really matter, for the sake of argument it's a good impartial viewpoint based on logic, reason, stats, making money and devoid of emotion......Not sure of the Betfair price, but if you're that sure we're awful log in and print some money.

Why do I mention that?....so if we're rated impartially as the best team in the division (again irrelevant if you or I agree with this), it would suggest that selling our best players will improve our rivals in league one (using your logic that there's not a championship player in there so surely we wouldn't receive any offers from the level above...?).

Selling the average and weaker members of the squad, presents a challenge.... if they're so average or weak, who's going to be coming in for them with decent money? The players would also need to be happy with the deals. If someones sat on a decent 2 year contract here, they're not going to want to move to a weaker team for less money...so again another challenge in selling off the squad.

We've not even started on bringing in players. So you want to find players who are better than we currently have...(a squad impartially rated as one of if not THE best in the division). Where are these players? Who are these players? You want players who are an obvious improvement on what we have and be able to step up to the championship...how do you quantify that? If they're good enough to make the step up to the championship, you can be sure they're already on the radars of plenty of championship clubs.

I've not even mentioned financial fair play because tbh I don't really understand it, but if we want to buy 16 top quality players, I think we need to generate some kind of income from selling players or commercial activities.

So ermm yeh, that's a lot of words but just some of the reasons I think it's unrealistic. Much more realistic to stick with the squad, strengthen in January, personally think we need a striker (depending on what happens with Woodrow) and back up for Dougall and we'll be looking very strong. If we do go up, re-assess the squad pre season and keep steadily improving. We have a very young squad, so not sure why you're so adamant these players can't improve.