This team with Marc Roberts at the back leading it and with Josh Scowen in the middle of the park would be pretty good. I’ve always accepted ‘the plan’ for what it is and that it is a sensible approach given our lack of financial clout - but having made the money we had on Stones, Mawson, Bree and Hourihane, I think the idea of not spending any of it on wages but spending money on risky transfers from league two and Scotland, when we had two proven players who would have stayed for less money than they are getting at brum and qpr respectively, was foolish. If we are going to sign and improve young and inexperienced players and move them on for profit, we are going to sign some that aren’t good enough at times, that will happen. The ones that might be good enough need to play with and learn from players who have at least some experience and quality. Selling them all at the same time might have seemed a good idea, to be fair the owner is terminally ill and wanted to leave us self sustaining, but the current path leads only to league one and drastically reduced income. The plan needs to involve rewarding at least some of our best players with a decent wage to ensure we maintain our league status.
I’m convinced that the statistical model indicates that it was the “right” time to let both go hence little or no attempt to keep them.
I was pretty much thinking along these lines this week. Scowen and Roberts would make a massive difference to this team. I said last season that losing Scowen would be no less detrimental than losing Hourihane, and I stand by that.
That’s the thing. It was clear that Hourihane had outgrown us and warranted the next level. Villa weren’t great but are a big club and bound to get out of the division at some point, Bruce is a dinosaur but like Colin he knows his game at this level. The same wasn’t true for Roberts and Scowen. We could have retained both, especially Roberts. He alone would have provided a backbone, some leadership. Scowen on top would have been great.
You are convinced because you keep repeating it to yourself. Scowen showed no interest in staying. Roberts was a mistake that the owner saw cash befire considering the team, he might have been told we had a replacement however.
I’m going primarily on what a Hecky has said about Scowen and other things I’ve been told. He might have been told? No, more like he will have been convinced the new wave would have been instant successes just because others had been before. It was a shocking decision at the time and is getting worse now.
As a matter of interest, how do you know this Pompey? I'm interested because although I don't profess to be the oracle and I don't have contacts inside the club like some on here but what I'd picked up in the circles I work in was that he wanted to stay but was made a relatively derisory offer and when he asked to negotiate it up to something akin to what Alex (third division bench-warmer) Mowatt was on, the club refused. Of the 4-5 offers made to him from other clubs Josh accepted one of the lower ones from QPR as he had set himself the priorities of regular first team football and being somewhere his family was happy.
I very much doubt we could have kept either the wages on offer to both would have blown our resources with the contracts they recieved. Scowen was rumoured to want away down south anyway and Roberts recieved a very good contract with what was forgivable prospects of Premiere league football possibly the following season with dodgy Redknapp.
If we’d offered Roberts a moderately decent payrise, perhaps in line with what Hammill was already on back in January, he’d have signed. I’m convinced.
As I’ve said, I was told that the analysis of his performance improvement indicated that now would be the best time to let him go and paying more money wouldn’t offer the best return
I agree but I was just pointing out that if we take into account what he said about moving down south then only fair to acknowledge what he said about staying for more money
