When love Breaks Down - Player Trading and its failures

I think this point was always coming if we spent more than a couple of years in L1 while still trying to operate a ‘trading model’. To me a trading model is fine as long as at its heart your aim is sporting success not finances above all else.

A trading model that targets sporting success will always look to develop players and sell its prize ones. It will also if offered a ridiculous fee that can be reinvested (Kitching) sell players that it had intended to keep. All that is fine.

But it must look to gradually year on year make incremental improvements in the type of players targeted and signed. So that gradually through investing some of the monies earned the whole squad becomes stronger across the board through the tiny incremental improvements.

A trading club targeting sporting success must also use data. However more crucially it must have people within the club/business who are able to interpret that data. It must be data driven not data led. You must be able to not sign the players that data leads you too as you run the risk of stacking players in certain positions who are much of a muchness in terms of ability but eat into budget. For example at the moment we have 7 centre halves discounting homegrown youngsters. 5 of these are at the same level of ability. 1 is 35 and 1 offers slightly more.

This brings us to the other stand of a trading model. Developing your own players and offering them a pathway into the first team to gain experience exposure and ultimately either a transfer fee or a first team player. Looking at our centre half position what pathway exists for James? There are 7 other players standing his way. Who was the last player we developed and sold for profit? Doesn’t have to be big money just a relatively small amount. It’s pretty hard to remember.

How does the next Carl Tiler, Adie Moses, Nicky Eaden, John Stones, Mason Holgate get their chance?

None of this is easy. Most clubs now look to conduct a form of trading model right up to the top of the pyramid. A club like Man U with all the money in the world has got data interpretation wrong for 10 years. Premier Lesgue clubs sweep up local talent on an industrial scale. The talent pool left is shallow and narrow.

We have created the worst of all possible worlds. Any talent whether that is managers or players gets sold off without any forward or succession planning. We are transient. The crowd doesn’t identify with the club or the players anymore. We have no heroes they don’t hang round long enough for us to care. We are not making gradual year on year improvements in recruitment either in players or management instead we drift backwards and get worse.

I’m not naive our problems reflect football more widely and society in general. However for a small town club like ours that will never win anything significant that loss of identity and community in the long term is terminal. Apathy will destroy us like it came close to doing before.


None of us is immune to a knee jerk reaction. I’m certainly not but it feels everything needs a very hard reset. The standard across all levels of our club isn’t good enough.

The ground is dilapidated. The atmosphere is none existent. The care paid to us as ‘customers’ feels not even an after thought of an afterthought.

The owners while putting money in and no doubt wanting the best make poor decision and poor decision and need to revisit who and how they recruit. More pertinently given their failures do they need to appoint people to make better decisions and allow them autonomy.

The head coach and coaching staff seem incapable of creating a coherent game model or communicating this to the players. The players themselves going backwards. No shape. No passion. No commitment. Little understanding of the privileged lives they lead or the importance they have in a small community town like ours.


To me. A massive clear out is needed. I understand that this is much more easily said than done. Catastrophic recruitment and contracts have left us more deadwood than an Amazon rainforest. But ideally over the next 12 months

An overall of recruitment and coaching staff. A reset are we a club that see ourselves as a play off chasing team? If so do we have the right recruitment team? Do we have the right Head Coach? Do we have the right coaching staff. Do we have the right people in charge of youth development? Who is highlighting and creating pathways into the first team?

Players - both loans need to be ended if possible. Neither add enough. At L1 level you need impactful loans. Last season McAtee and Roberts both added something a bf won us games and point. Gaga and Craig don’t currently have this in them.

Killip - week in week out not good enough if you are looking at being a top 6 team. Not even sufficient as back up.

McCarthy. Offers little needs to go as soon as possible.

MDG. Needs to go. Weak as piss in every challenge. Zero positional sense.

pines. No one can dislike Donny but my god he’s an awful player.

Lopata odd signing if someone can take him off our hands permanently then let them.

Shepherd. If he is good enough recall him and play him if not free up the space in the squad.

o’Keefe. Hard to get rid of but has had little improvement since he arrived still essentially a FGR level player.

Cosgrove. Take out if the first team squad. Offers nothing not even as an option. Pines would be better as an off the bench big lad option

Marsh make the decision to try and sell him for a small amount. Not good enough for L1. May make it in L2

Benson his body keeps letting him down and all the ability in the world can’t cut across that.

Russell. Very frustrating. Beautiful close control in some moments. The touch of a young Chris Morgan at others. Very weak in challenges and can’t tackle. If someone offered us money take it. If we keep him needs a lot of one on one coaching.

Lofthouse. Needs a thorough review of his performance with targets to be set and sold if he isn’t progressing.

review all the academy players. Highlight the ones to fastrack. Look at a head coach that is confident enough to offer a pathway. Free the ones that aren’t going to make it. Be both supportive and ruthless.


Dallas if Barrow or any one else wants him let him go.

Impossible to achieve that quickly and we have to get the coaching right. Are the ex players the right choices. Do we have a Head Coach with a proven track record or desire to bring young players on and developing talent? If not they need to go.

All feels very bleak. But the status quo can’t go on. We can go into 2025 looking at similar home form. 6 wins in a calendar year. 2 wins in 10 months. It’s just not sustainable.

We must have a root and branch review and take action. As supporters I feel we are at a breaking point more in terms of apathy than anger. But apathy is worse at least anger shows care.

Anyhoo enough waffling on.

Onwards and upwards.

 

Good assessment of the situation at present and the player assessments are spot on. My usual addition to this type of post is to cut the coaching squad down and merge any executive posts that can be cut back. Then appoint a Manager and let him manage the team, I still feel a Duff style appointment of someone who wants to build something (Danny Wilson style) is the way, above all don't interfere, support with less signings of better quality to keep costs the same. If you build it they will come, flatbreads or no flatbreads..

 

What a brilliant post.

You mention about the head coach and coaching staff incapable of creating a game model, can I ask, is it that the game model has been created for them ? This was within the DOF remit and he spoke about creating a single game model to be used throughout the club, this is part of the wider issue for me and combined with the other factors of how we operate gives us an issue in recruiting head coaches to work under these requirements.

 

With Benson we should just pay him off at this point and free up the Physio’s time to focus on the rest of the squad.

our record of spending decent money and getting little back is insane. No wonder we rarely lay out much cash for players anymore.

 

Agree with that too. We are too top heavy in terms of off field execs and coaches. Needs a thorough VFM review and if we merge posts let than have responsibility and ownership of decision making.

 

Imho...a first class apprehsal of where we are at as a club. Good work , with decent analysis and solutions.
The current model of sticking plasters to amend large problems will not suffice any longer.
Recruitment is an absolute disaster area, in the main and needs addressing.
Very good read.

 

You know....I keep thinking was the DkD and Humphries signings to get by until Christmas, with the knowledge the have a striker lined up and a new system of playing....one that would play said transfers in, to a system that makes them and our system far more effective?
Then again its probably pannick signings and not doing our homework properly due to poor recruitment!

 

Brilliant post. Bobby H. mentioned a while ago that we let young players go too early, think it was in reference to Jordan Clark ending up in the Premier league. It took him years after leaving us, how long do we keep and pay them? We sold Tom Wooster and a U11? to Man Utd don't know how much we got. The 15 Yr old centre back may be next. I have seen the U21's and none are anywhere near ready for the first team except Jalo when fully fit.

 

Are they not ready because they are not getting the opportunity to be in and around the first team or not ready because they will never be ready? We need stronger decision making. If they are good enough they are old enough. If they are not good enough then they never will be.

 

I ask the question of whether those running the academy are good enough myself. Bobby Hassell has not really been a success to me, the fact of being an ex-player seems to give some employees too much leeway for me. I would include Delaney in that because he failed with young players too as far as I can see. Our club needs a thorough review from top to bottom.

 

Hard agree on that. Some ex player s make brilliant coaches. Some don’t. If your remit is to develop first team players. And I’m not talking world beaters but say a jobbing L1 centre half or full back then we are woeful. Needs looking at.

 

Not often we agree on much, JV, but that is spot on. It would be nice if the club hierarchy would address your points, but instead all that seems to emerge are tales of woe about how hard it is, and how much money the Board are chipping in. It's pointless chipping in anything if there isn't the clear aim and ambition you suggest.

 

We're not even good at player trading though are we? We let kane,Cole, j Williams and cadden all run contracts down and leave for free when all are better than what we have. Weakening the squad.

 

I'm scared stiff of paying Benson off, or even selling him, as we just know he will smash it for his next club and make them millions.

But it ain't happening with us.

What to do?

 

That’s the danger of hanging round in L1 too long. Knowing wherher to stick or twist but even within that Cadden seems an obvious mistake unless of course he wanted to go back to Scotland for personal reasons

 

Didn't he have a donkey that everyone admired???

 

Exactly what I am saying, we not producing anything

 

The club needs a proper strategic review. The concern I have is that I’m not sure what strategies they’ve deployed to be able to measure, and I absolutely wouldn’t trust anyone at the club to undertake such a critical piece of work.

Ironically, I think near term issues are particularly manifest from Parekhs attempts to pretend we aren’t a trading club and letting our assets leave for nothing meaning he has to dig deep to replace them or we try at low cost.

Our pool of assets as it stands are pretty nominal. Any transformation is going to take a lot of money or a decent amount of time. And that’s if we make very few mistakes which isn’t likely given the last few years.

Though we all want to go up, It’s perhaps more important that we get a platform to progress. That means big questions and honest answers, however unpalatable.

 

I think you’re being a bit kind to a few players there!

re Lofthouse - he’s suffering from the same problem players like Neil Cooper and Matty Appleby had, in that he’s quite good in several positions, so he makes an ideal sub and nobody sees as much value in him as other players. Lofthouse seems to be in a different position every game, and often 2-3 positions within a game (although, to be fair, yesterday I’d have given him a go in goal). Unless Lofthouse gets a run in his favoured position (which I think is right back, the one he never seems to play in), his Reds career is never going to take off.

 

I think there’s a player in Lofthouse but as you say his adaptability is his blocker. He probably needs an honest conversation and say this is my position will I get a run of games in it if I show in training etc. and if he doesn’t he needs for his career to go.