Yep 100%.. but its why some on here in fact nearly all now are blaming our recruitment.. We have to sell, most of us get that but it's who we replace them with is key.. The keep bringing em in and pile em high strategie is failing.. we have far too many at best maybes.. or are just not good enough Better scouting and recruitment is vital for us to move forward .
What we are basically doing is having a scattergun approach at recruitment and hoping something comes off. The amount of players on our books at the moment is scandalous, so that needs reducing before we can start. Higher wage bill means more money having to be pumped in. Nobody is saying we shouldn't be doing it, but when your whole business model is built around it then unfortunately something has to give.
We need to sell players of course. No one is disputing that, but you also need to retain some players and managers otherwise we will never have success. We are also in a mess financially and having to cut the wage bill massively because they chose to sell key players/managers and replace them cheaply that in turn saw us relegated losing us lots of money. In the main squad this season, we have 4 players that have played 2 full seasons here or more. (Kane, Williams, Benson and Cole) and three of those are out of contract this summer. All the rest have all been here for under 2 seasons. How can we build anything long term when they cannot retain any sort of spine? We also need to reduce the wage bill etc. but have a huge amount of players on the books. I can't remember use ever having such a large bloated squad before.
A bit lazy very from Leon.He may be speaking from past events but how does he know the thinking of our club moving forward.? All clubs have to sell players on to reinvest its how the recruitment improve things from now on in my opinion.
He covers this in the comparison with Luton and Coventry, who don't do it at the expense of trying to improve league position. This was at it's peak under Conway and Lee, and it's improved slightly since then, particularly last season with loan signings such a Bobby Thomas who strengthened the team hugely for our promotion push. However, we've adopted a scattergun approach to things again this season, and having to loan out many of our new recruits is a sign of failure, as it did nothing to improve the team this year. It also requires a head coach who is able to develop and improve players. Collins proved to be incapable in that role.
We will have a spine next season. O'Keefe, Pines, Lopata, MDG, Earl, Phillips, Russell, Grant, Connell, Cosgrove and Jalo.
We know it, as supporters who pay close attention to it. It's different when a journalist puts the same thoughts into print, as there's no inherent bias attached to the assessment.
We will always have players yeah. My point is we never have anyone that stays for a while. Most of those you are talking about will make up the spine, but they are players who will be entering their second seasons with us (for the most part) bar the odd one or two who signed the season before under Duff.
I think this summer is massive as it will define whether we finish in the top two next season. Get the right head coach in and a couple of additions. No scattergun this summer.
Think it’s a bit odd really we’ve always sold players to stay afloat with the exception of Premier league and subsequent seasons when we ended up in Admin . As for not being ready for Championship, if you take that we’d never be the Championship
For sure. Get a new head coach ASAP Trim some of the fat off the squad that we have accumulated over the last few seasons A couple of decent L1 frees/loans to bolster the squad and we will be fine.
Hmm. It reads well, but again it does kinda also sound like someone has been on here for their research. Makes some very valid points, but again just fails to acknowledge the constraints we are working under, and the scale of investment the owners have to make, to keep us going. People can ignore it all they want, but it's very real. If players do well, they will push for a move. They will probably have an exit clause that makes it impossible to prevent. If a player does badly, we still have their wages to pay. I always find comparisons to other Clubs interesting. Coventry have had an absolutely torrid time off the pitch in recent years. I wouldn't trade for that in a million years. If you look at Luton, I think they were ~£9m in debt for their promotion season, with a wage bill of ~£25m. Loans left right and centre. If we went there and failed to get promoted, I dread to think what the consequences would be.
I guess we will find out this summer!! But another alternative is to seek additional investment from a wider shareholding. Many clubs are doing this today. Also if we follow this logic of league status vs $ income, we will gain 6M for getting to the championship, so there is some benefit from playing higher. Even more in the prem of course. But it doesn't have to be one or the other, both an investment / ambition model can be coupled to a generate player income model. We seem to approach only one. All our eggs in the basket that is a risk of finding and selling these players.
Hence why so many clubs are in the *****, mate. The biggest problem for me was selling on the cheap, since the start of last season, you cannot accuse Nareev doing that. Even getting players wages off when on loan, granted they've made the signings, but how many crap signings have we had previous and not been able to shift them at all? Youre spot on btw
I just hope Cosgrove, Jalo, Dallas, Shaw and Watters hit the ground running in pre-season or we can make some money back on them to sign two more strikers. That's where my comment comes from about investment. Hopefully we're starting to see some return from Cosgrove now (always rated him).
Because you don't agree with the current plan of recruitment. Buying older more experienced players, although we do need one or two, won't generate any sell on profit and that will leave us, in this division or above, scratching around for money and having to bridge the defect. And please don't quote the extra 6 or 9 million for being in the Championship. That just gets eaten up trying to compete in the Championship. So the alternative...you clearly want money magicked up from somewhere. i.e the owners' pockets.
There`s an air of superiority wafting through this thread as there is in many threads on here lately.