Instead of sacking Hecky

Can't we just sack the Plan cause while it worked in the first draft it's definitely not working now or at least suspend it for the next 4 days and give Hecky the help he obviously needs

 

I have my reservations about "the plan" and it's rigidity with regard to age and cost.

Back in the day, Crewe brought players through and sold them on at profit, but it never really improved Crewe as a club. They had a few seasons at championship level around 20 years ago, and that was it for them.

It seems a better idea the further down the pyramid you are, but at this level I think it's going to be tough. If it was such a great idea, they'd all be doing it.

If the plan means developing players and selling them on without improving results on the pitch, it'll wear very thin, very quickly.

 

That’s exactly the flaw you’ve identified. we worked the plan to perfection and spoiled it all by getting promoted!

Seriously better raw products need identifying as a starting point if they want to carry on.

 

I thought that WAS the plan, to raise the standard of recruits as we progressed. Hecky has talked of it that way too, I'm sure hes been more surprised and disappointed than anyone that it hasnt worked like that.

 

In all honesty the batch from the summer were from a lower level than the initial batch containing Houriane etc

 

Exactly that. Anyone who thought we wouldn’t be in an almighty scrap was in cloud cuckoo land. And purely personal opinion anyone who thinks a different manager would have done any better is also away with the fairies.

 

Exactly. The plan as it was conceived is NOT being followed through.

 

How do we raise the bar in quality though?

For example, do we sell Pinnock and Lindsay in order to bring the next level of midfielder or striker and pay his wages?

It's a bit like borrowing off Peter to pay Paul really, and we'd weaken one position to strengthen another.

Let's not forget, the players we will be selling will have become first team regulars and will take some replacing.

 

No the damage is already done. We should have been recruiting better players last summer, that was the plan. Conor and co were recruited when we were league 1 so the next round of recruitment should have been at a higher level than that. We failed miserably and thats why we're in this position now.

 

Correct! as someone else has pointed out in another thread, you continue to pay league one wages in the championship and thats where you will inevitably return to. Anyone who cant see this is totally naive and thats putting it politely. This has where the supposed plan had totally fallen on its arse in my eyes. We should now, with the supposed wealth of the new owners, be in the position to offer the required wages for the championship. This cannot wait until the summer as we will be back in league one. This needs to be done right now and any players we are courting, hopefully already good enough for this league, should be made fully aware in order to have a better chance of getting any loan deals over the line afore next weds which i pray, will give us enough to avoid the drop.

 

I've said it since we got promoted. The timing of the plan worked up to the point we got promoted. The 'team' we had put together was built, with a certain degree of luck and above all else judgement.

The first 4 months worked like a dream in the championship. But, and its a very big but, the 'team' had already been built. They were full of confidence, they knew each others games, they trusted the manager and each other. When it was picked apart we struggled. Starting from afresh, almost in January; We were lucky we were still left with Scowen, Watkins, Davies, Roberts, because without them we would have gone down. This year we sold them all apart from Davies. We replaced them with more League 2 players, but this time in a higher league, with no 'team' or confidence built from a successful year previously.

It was a recipe for disaster.

In my opinion, we need to analyse the reasons why and learn from it. Sometimes when you are successful you need to look at the reasons why you did so well, more than you do when you've been ****. I have a job in sales and sometimes its easy after a good week to think we are all brilliant, but its better to think 'why did that happen?' Quite a lot of the time, it can be because its luck, not because we were particularly great that week. I think that maybe the club thought it had found the answer and that all the players we had found, could be found again if we flogged them. We'd found the answer to the matrix, numbers and spreadsheets were more important than the people.

In all businesses this question is asked, infinitum. The problem is no matter what, people will and always be more important than process. Scouting will always be more important than a spreadsheet. 'Teams' will always be better than the ones who build teams on paper.

Hopefully we can marry the two, rather than believe we've cracked the enigma code. There is no point making 10m each summer on players if you are going to continue to replace them with 10 x 500k players imho and to continuously try to avoid the drop.

 

We have a L1 plan in the Championship. It will result in you being back in L1. As soon as we got promoted as Terry said we should have looked at both what worked well and why and what could have been done better.

We needed to adjust the plan as soon as Mawson was sold and look at ‘better’ targets we needed to learn the lesson of Hammill and realise that sometimes an older head can help and guide ( if you pick the right older head). Instead we stuck to the L1 plan and sold off / lost all the best players and replaced them with players from the same pot and lower than before. It was always going to fail.

In L1 we have financial muscle and are a draw to players the plAn will work because comparatively we can attract better players both permanently and on loan than the rest. In the Championship the opposite is true.

 

This was my point elsewhere but I instead get accused of being disrespectful to Mr Cryne

 

Bang.*******.On

 

Well, you can make a point about age, but we’re stuck where we are in regards to cost. Are you suggesting we start spending beyond our means?

 

Perhaps spending on quality rather than quantity might not need us to spend beyond our means.

At the moment we sign 4 when one will do.

 

Yep I would happily swap mowatt McGeehan mallan and Potts for scowen.

 

Yes....... But, isn't a similar plan working well at Brentford?

 

Sacking the plan means spending more money though. So you may as well be saying, “why don’t we spend more money”, which is easy to do when it isn’t your own.

 

If we go down we will lose around six million. In the next few days we only need to spend a fraction of that and we will be in a better position to stay up.

Wish we'd go back to having a manager that worked so well for over 100 years in picking all their own players regardless of age. Time to end the so called spreadsheet and people with zero experience of playing professional football trying to pass on players to our "head coach".