The talent walking out of this football club in 12 months...

...is incredible and unprecedented. Fully appreciate that the strategy has been a success with regards to our league position and has presumably paid Patrick back on some of the loans that he has put into the club over recent years, but surely we have to look at the timings of exits and say that it's nigh on impossible to churn so much talent out of the club and still expect to maintain success? I'm only including in the list players I'd consider to be championship quality, not all the other exits. There's pretty much a decent championship starting line up minus a goalkeeper in here, and I've probably forgotten someone:

Perms:

G Williams
Mawson
Hourihane
Bree
Winnall
White
Scowen
Watkins

Loans:

Fletcher
Isgrove
Kent
James
Brownhill
Armstrong

Chief Execs:

Mansford
Brown.

I know people will point to the financials but we've got to find a way to either retain talent or at worst get a more even time spread of people leaving. I'm not sure I know what the solution is, but if Patrick can't find it I struggle to see how we will continue to be successful.

 

I don't mind losing players - I should say I accept it - but I want us to be compensated accordingly. I also think we should be reinvesting the monies received rather than shoving it under the mattress.

I can't see this changing in the short to medium term.

 

To be honest, I think we messed up with contracts at the back end of last season and the start of this season. We should've tied down people earlier, and by the time January came around the damage was done and there was little we could do. Worked well with Mawson and Bree, should've got more from Winnall, Hourihane and Watkins.

Still, those players established us in the championship and gave us a great start. We've got some money for most of them and can build a new team now. We need to be more proactive with contracts in the future, so we need a new CEO asap. I wonder if Linton Brown's exit was partly due to our contracts mess.


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Fair enough, but even if we had got appropriate market value I struggle to see how you can run any business on a close to one hundred per cent annual attrition rate....

 

No, I agree. If we had a decent squad and then a couple of standout players you could cope easier with losing top men like Hourihane and Winnall, providing you have received the full market value and can reinvest a portion of that back into the squad. Problem we have is we have lost the top players for too little, not received fees for others and had to release the crap. So we've lost out in every area.

For example, wherever Scowen goes he will receive a pay rise - but did we ever receive a bid for him from another Championship club? He's the sort of player people will take but won't pay for - but we can't afford to keep him.

 

There's a fantastically simple way of retaining people. In fact, they become so easy to retain, that you cant get rid of them.

Dawson, Perkins, Wiseman, Kennedy, Mellis, Cwyka (repeat to fade)...

And yes, we did miss the opportunity at the start of the season. If we go back to when we were bottom of Division 1, I think its fair to say there weren't too many fans wanting us to bend over backwards and increase the wages of a team some were saying was the worst we'd assembled.

Since that point, despite our success, we've had extenuating circumstances that have hindered retention. A caretaker manager, a promotion (several weeks after most other clubs knew what division they were in) CEO's leaving, times 2, our owners sad news, the Tommy Wright situation.

I'm very hopeful we shouldn't see such a period of change again. I cant recall losing 2 CEO's in a season before, for example.

Of course we're starting from scratch yet again, but if we can get a CEO in situ (and it's much easier to get a poor CEO than it is a good one), a focal point for negotiations and none playing communications, I'm hopeful we can learn from missing the opportunities. that we did, and, knowing full well what division we're in and what budget we have at hand. If we fail to learn from that point, i'll be equally critical as some are.

 

What's pretty important though is that these players have got us to this level.

I know things are far from ideal, but had we not got promoted they would have gone sooner, and we could have been starting from scratch in league one with less revenue from season tickets and away supporters and no solidarity payment to come.

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Add Morsy to original list.

 

Marley suggests there's some uncertainty at Oakwell in the Chronicle without specifying what he meant. He could mean ownership given Patrick's stated desire and given the great battle he has, or perhaps Hecky's off? With the best will in the world it's going to be difficult to stay in this division next season and perhaps Hecky will think about that on the beach. . The churn of players is unbelievable and it's got to be said the radio silence from the club is worrying. .

 

Thanks, knew I'd miss someone.