According to his interview in The Star

Mr Blue Sky.

 

I think our Head Coach was perfectly aware of our transfer policy when he accepted the job & was perfectly comfortable with it or he would not have taken the job .

 

We seem to have a scattergun approach to signing young talent that in recent seasons is struggling to show even a 30% success rate. Surely it would be better to support the core plan with a smattering of experience (age 26-30ish), particularly down the spine of the side. It would also help the young player develop. It seems a no brainer to me but what do I know.....?

 

Definitely. But I don't think the issue was one of policy, because not every signing we've made has been an u23 / potential sell on. It was just rank bad recruitment, again during a time when Conway was acting CEO. We could easily have signed an experienced midfielder and a young, raw centre forward to play alongside Woodrow and Morris for what we spent in the summer. For example, Crooks moved to Boro for a reported fee not too dissimilar to what we've been reported as paying for Benson.

 

There is no ‘spreadsheet’ it’s a word used by technophobes who want to blame our problems on a simplistic view of technology.

What there is is a massive data store of player characteristics

It’s more database than spreadsheet, but even that underplays the fact that any answer provided from data requires the asking of the right questions. Also, it’s not simply a ‘computer says no’ situation, there are still human beings analysing the results and ‘scouting’ in other ways.

 

Yep, the data is only useful if the person retrieving and interpreting it knows what they are doing.

 

ALL data…

My pet peeve is people blaming the tech.

Exactly the same tech put together the Stendel squad and the Ismael squad as this one.

It should be obvious to everyone that both our catastrophic transfer windows were overseen by Conway.

But hopefully that should be most obvious to the rest of our ownership, who should never trust him with that task again.

 

Surely though any spreadsheet , database, analysis or however you want to phrase it when selecting potential players should research and input not just look at pass perecentage, assists, km's run etc.

But also look at things like games played per season. Injury history. Minutes per game etc etc. Something in recent times we haven't covered ourselves in glory with.

 

It will do, if you tell it to... Unfortunately we don't appear to be.

 

As per my previous, all the relevant data is there, it’s a case of asking the right questions and understanding what’s important. It’s not the fault of the tech if a flipping idiot wants to play at being CEO

 

I’ll add;
Last year I had a colleague who would come to my team for data. She would then ask us to sense check her evaluation, and every single time she’d made incorrect assumptions as to what the data meant.

And this after we had answered her first request for data with ‘just tell us what you want to know and we’ll tell you if we can’. But she was really keen to ‘do it herself’, fortunately it never got further than her desk.

 

A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet and nothing else. It's how the data is interpreted and acted upon that is the issue. As policy changes, then the data interpretation may also change.

 

Spreadsheets up with PMG. Both are said by people that haven't a flipping clue what they are talking about.

On the subject who are the best performing players this year. James Garner on a lot of aspects best performing CM. Less experienced than any Barnsley midfielder this season.

 

Mr blue sky please tell us why you had to go away for so long.

 

I swear “the spreadsheet” was used in an ironic and exaggerated sense on here at one point but it slowly became what people actually believe is picking our players/team.

 

It is though innit ?

 

It's pretty much what we said when we first heard tbf, 'well that's fkin'g charming' or something close!

 

When you think about it, it actually doesn't make much sense.

You would think logically, with players being fitter, looking after themselves better and developments in sports science etc - playing into your 30's shouldn't be as much of an issue as it was back then.