Andersen and Kitching

Quantity over quality............sithi.

 

This weird obsession with Shaw and Dallas is bizarre to me. They were recruited as development players providing competition for fifth choice forward. I doubt Shepherd was expected to play either, but got his chance and did okay. At no point was there a conversation along the lines of "we could sign Alfie May, or we could sign Shaw and Dallas". It is just so weird that people are so hung up on these fringe players when the deficiencies in our recruitment are fairly obvious. Cundy, McCarthy, Benson, Iseka, and Watters. Unlike Shaw and Dallas they were signed with the expectation of being in the first team. Five players in the squad at the start of September who have offered nothing. The resources squandered on those players dwarfs the expenditure on Shaw and Dallas. How much better off would we be if we'd had five extra first team players able to make a contribution? Would we have been any worse off starting Dallas ahead of Watters? The fact is though you can't just keep signing first team players on first team wages.

 

The problem is that we don’t build teams. We just recruit players.

 

Indeed, but in our case the incoming element is much higher overall than the outgoing one, and in particular for the Mads/Kitching fees which, by our standards, are high.

The entire football financing model, post Premier League, is sustainable only because of the TV money that props it up. For the smaller clubs, the desire of the Premier League teams to keep increasing proportions of this is threatening their existence. Long-term you'd hope it would bring back a sense of financial reality into how they're run, but the golden goose of promotion into the Premier League will always result in teams taking risks to chase the rewards. It's madness, and a big part of why my overall love of the game is being eradicated.

 

i would say instalments works well for us as helps us plan ahead and gives us an ongoing revenue stream. I don’t critique the board in this aspect. Money is spent on the club that doesn’t mean spending on players.

 

Totally agree. It's easy for me to comprehend this as an accountant who's been involved in running companies for over 20 years, so it's pretty much second nature to me.

It's less well understood in general, which explains the undercurrent of 'where's the money gone?' sentiment, particularly at time when frustration with the club is at a peak.

 

Absolutely. The level of financial education in this country is appalling as some with an economics background it has long since stopped surprising me.

 

I respectfully disagree.
Shep was a dev player, for sure and I have no issue with him being given a starting chance.
Dallas was signed off the back of a few conf goals, Shaw off the back off netting a few in one season in Scotland. My guess is they were optimistic punts on potentially hitting the ground running. Both were in Day 1 match day squad.
I don't have an obsession with either; I just find them baffling. If you can show me snippets of them being signed on Dev terms I will apologise gladly.
I agree wholeheartedly on other players; Benson and Watters are this season's Iseka and Oulare; the Belgian signings making me particularly angry hence my constant pondering over what the recruitment process is.

 

In regards to financial education I believe this is intentional

 

Although to be fair Anderson was mauled on here after his first season (he was pretty error prone iirc) but grew into a top player.

 

Weren't the Belgian lads signed when Conway moved positions after someone left?

 

I think this is a good point, with one caveat. It seems sometimes the players don't necessarily look like they fit into the jigsaw of assembling a team. Only issue is we don't necessarily know how many others who did possibly fit the bill didn't come, for whatever the reason, and we ended up buying less than ideal choices.

 

Perhaps. Who knows? But we have what appears to me to be a very unbalanced squad, and way too many players out on loan for a club of our size.

 

Yes, when that American fella left for Forest.
Different folk, different times, same recruitment difficulties

 

We rely on a scattered approach of gambles and end up with massively bloated squad of bang average. We need to cut the gamble signings to one or two and spend some money on experience.

 

Not an unreasonable question to ask, particularly from those without knowledge of the timing of payments in and out. Happy to see the explanation though.

 

Oli Shaw was signed in the middle of last season when we already had four forwards at the club. No way was he signed to come in and hit the ground running. Dallas maybe, we still had three definite options (Cole, Watters, Norwood) in front of him when he signed and then recruited two more. I think he was cover at best, and what we spent on him pales in comparison to the money spent on those others mentioned. Signing Andy Dallas and Oli Shaw didn't cost us the opportunity to sign someone better, signing Watters, Cundy, McCarthy etc probably did.

 

This with knobs on.
We have lots of players but only one way of playing, which means it’s difficult to change the formation during a game.
No wingers, no proper fullbacks, no big commanding centre halves and two keepers whose distribution is poor to play sweeper keeper. This causes playing a high line to be very dangerous, especially with a relatively slow back 3.

We have a big overhaul coming in the summer. We need to build a team around Connell, Phillips and Cosgrove.