I just wonder

How a 24 year old striker in only his second season of professional football playing in the bottom league of French Professional football for a team in Corsica, scores only 7 goals in 2 Seasons and whose performances aren't exactly thrilling his clubs fans or their local press comes to the attention of an English club in Northern England and why the DoF at that English Club signs him. I'd like the DoF to come out in this week's Chronicle and tell the fan base what his thought process was and what on the players stats jumped out and said he's the answer to our problems. I'd also like to know if anybody at the club identified him or actually saw him play live or if this was an agent instigated move.

 

Well if you look at the existing squad you could ask the same questions. It seems to me we have quite a few panic buys in there over the past year.

Everyone is searching for answers to why we let players go in the summer and never replaced them with better (or equivalent ones).

the answer is simple , our recruitment team simple aren't very good.

 

We used to be pretty good at identifying players with potential, and signed a few too. You only have to look at the top two leagues to find plenty of ex reds - four playing last night in Bradshaw, Helik, Brittain and Hedges.

The recruitment team has probably gone the way of all the other departments recently and had staff leave for more competitive wages elsewhere. We'll be able see a couple of the ex Physios when we play Hudds.

 

Simple. Our recruitment team are poor, we’re skint and this fella is extremely cheap.

 

We don’t know what the lad’s like yet. Let’s judge him based on his performance rather than stats, the opinion of other fans and what league he played in.

Maybe his playing style will be more suited to English football. Maybe it won’t. We just don’t know so we should all reserve judgement until we’ve seen him.

Anyway, if he offers very little he’ll be a lot more effective than Cosgrove was so that’s a positive!

My criticism of the recruitment is not necessarily signing him but rather only signing him. It feels like a gamble and is throwing the lad in at the deep end which is not ideal all round.

 

If we sign players that are just good enough for league 1 then we will never be promoted. If we sign players that aren't good enough for League 1 then it won't be that long before we drop out to league 2...
All about the recruitment!!

 

He'll be a free transfer or extremely cheap. Keith Hill said he was shopping at Aldi to buy players where now waiting for scraps from food banks

 

Clubs been ran down since admin. The downward spiral picked up progression when we sacked Mark Robins. We've had decent half seasons in 2015/16 and 16/17. Then a god knows what season in 20/21. However, since then it's plummeted even more.

Time for a change or to pack up and play non league, ground sharing with Frickley.

 

I assume we’ve filtered the scouting pool with the metrics that we think are key, it’s brought up a bunch of players that are either way out of our league price wise or don’t want to come here. We’ve then gone down the list and landed at Rodrigues.

Maybe he will be a gem we pluck out of nowhere. More likely he will be in on this forum in a few years time within a thread of “players you forgot played for us”.

 

Two things I pick up from this chat.

1) I agree that it's not the fact we signed him, its the fact we only signed him.

2) The OP comment about him being a 2nd year pro. Didn't DC say recently, when we were clamouring for Sheppard to come back; "He's a 2nd year pro so I'd like him to stay out on loan where he will play more football". ?

 

The French Ligue 2 (30th) is ranked higher than our League One (53rd).

https://globalfootballrankings.com/rankings/leagues/

I don't think there is that much between them, but on paper he is dropping down a little bit to play for us.

 

I was sort of hoping we might have had some loan deal or something that might have got announced yesterday but looks like that’s not happening - it’s the whole fact we have gambled making the play offs on someone who’s barely played football, not in this country, doest speak the language judging by his interview being totally in French.

we spent a whole month saying we wanted players in better than what we had already - yet it’s clear that was never the case now really. I got that in the summer when we ended up coming out with DKD - yet this month we got nothing that looks like a tangible upgrade on anything really and it looks like we signed another Humphrys and rather than an actual striker.

Although we got rid of Sam Cosgrove so at least we don’t have to watch that anymore at least.

 

We didn't sack Mark Robins, he left for the same reasons as Duff, lack of money/ambition.

 

Yes, very contradictory comments. Shepherd looks like he’s going to make a good centre half but I’ll wager it won’t be with us if Bradford go up.

 

Not really it depends on the player.
Wayne Rooney was a second year pro as an example.

The biggest difference between Shepherd & the new lad is that Shepherd is literally new to professional football where this guy has grown up in a professional environment.

 

Fair point.

 

My punt of an explanation is that DC wants to play with a pacy forward to stretch the defence to allow the likes of Phillips & DKD to flourish by picking up the pieces and with Watters getting injured they needed to replace him.
By looking at their lists they looked for someone and he came up that was able to get and fitted what they want at next to no cost.

The only problem with this theory of course is if that was the case what happened to the forward we were looking for before Watters got injured.

 

No one had ever heard of Martin Bullock before.

Playing for Eastleigh (who are they) in non league football.

But he became Barnsley's greatest ever player.

 

Martin Bullock Barnsley's greatest ever player my arse. What in Front of Glavin Banks Redfern Hamill Hignet Hendrie McCarthy Stones etc etc never in million years.

 

And Shea