From a very basic viewpoint, it is 100% bang on correct for a club with our financial standing to implement this buying young hungry players and developing them.. It ended up working like a charm to take us out of league 1 and could probably be replicated again using the same resources. Now we are in the championship, the model/strategy also needs to evolve in line with our league position and I think this is the missing piece of the jigsaw for the club. What I mean by that in order to progress to the next level which in my view would be to have a minimum of 15 'GOOD' championship quality players, the club should have upped the level at where they pick up players. So we need to start looking at sourcing players minimum level as the cream of the crop within league 1 / Relegated championship teams / even other championship teams if we can compete. Yes it's ok to still scour the lower leagues for 1 or 2 possible rough diamonds or for our u23 squad but the majority need to come from a higher level than we targeted whilst in league 1. We have made a fair chunk of money from the sale of our previous assets and although a proportion of that needs to be placed into the pot to keep the club running on stable financial terms, more emphasis should be placed on quality over quantity for the strategy to remain effective. I think maybe the club are stuck in the mindset of the successful league 1 model which is much riskier. If we could get to around 15 players of champ quality, even seeing 2 or 3 depart each season becomes much less a risk. We are probably at the hardest stage of the strategy in terms of just making the decision to push the boat out financially to our max without putting the club at risk. Without that additional financial risk we could end up stuck at the league 1 model forever. Makes sense to me lol...
There some common sense. Nothing wrong with the plan but you have to move it forward or you will go backwards. Standard stuff.
To me I think the biggest issue is wages. We will only be able to hang on to our better players, or recruit players with Championship experience if our wages are competative. Last season we had the lowest wage bill in the league - even below Burton. Its been shown that there is a much greater correlation between wages and league position than there is between transfer money spent on players. Our problem is that as soon as a player shows he is a decent championship player he can easily double his wages or more by going elsewhere. Unless we can address that issue we wont only lose 2 or 3 players a season but almost all the players we have who are good enough
Maybe I'm being pedantic with semantics but to me we don't have a strategy or plan, a procurement policy, yes, but an overall strategy encompassing clearly stated goals with plans and milestones, dealing with the risks and threats along the way for how we get there, no. The procurement policy has made us some sub-optimal but decent money, the lack of strategy/planning has lost us an entire top half Championship team in six and a half months.
Yeah agree, that was my thinking about more focus on quality over quantity in the championship to free up higher wages for the ones we do have. Where we do take a chance on the lower league rough diamonds ie below league 1 standard, we should be trying to get a couple of league 1 clubs to take them on loan for the season to give them that extra step up between the lower leagues and championship. Could ease thr wage bill slightly as well
