TK sez..

It's a shame it's taken relegation for it to happen...

 

TK is spot on but there are a lot of ifs attached to the statement he made.

 

Tom Kennedy is trying to deflect criticism away from himself by implying the club will be great on the pitch next year if we keep certain players. He is hiding behind this statement by basically saying if we keep a, b and c we'll be fine with 'me' in the team but if we don't keep them then it's not my fault when things go belly up. Clever Tom. You are still crap though so please stop stealing wages and get a job in the 2nd division..

 

For fk sake you lot give it a rest
Bfc fans ......my arse.

 

About bloody time. We used to have a scouting network. That's why we used to sign so many good players. A manager doesn't have time to trawl the country looking for potential signings, what with going about the business of running the club. He'll get to some games, but you cover a hell of a lot more if you have dedicated scouts out there every day searching for players.

When your club does that you find hidden gems in non-league like Martin Bullock and Darren Sheridan. You find foreign players who are under the radar of most club like Jovo Bosancic and Arajan De Zeeuw. Did Danny Wilson happen to be in Telestar and spot a great centre half? No, a scout spotted him and recommended him to Wilson. That's how this works, players are recommended to the manager and he decides if we sign them. It's not about taking away responsibilities from the manager, it's about helping him and giving him more options. For far too long we've relied on agents touting their clients to us rather than going out and identifying our own targets.

What happens when you don't have a scouting network identifying new talent? A manager, understandably I suppose, goes with what he knows and you end up signing Wiseman, Done, Kennedy and Dagnall .

In our final game of the season QPR's opening goal was scored by Charlie Austin. It was a brilliant bit of skill. He scored a couple more to get QPR in to the play-off final. Those were is 19th and 20th goals of the season in which he's started 33 games after missing a couple of months with injury. In total he's scored 90 goals in 148 league starts. He's pretty good. 4 n half year ago he was playing for Poole Town in the Southern League. It was there that Swindon's chief scout stumbled across him. When he first saw him play, Austin scored four goals. So he went back to watch him again and he banged in a load more. He was recommended to Danny Wilson, Swindon's manager at the time, and offered a trial at the club. He was selected in a reserve game, immediately after which Wilson signed him until the end of the season. He was then slowly introduced to the first team and after a couple of months offered and signed a two and a half year contract extension. Swindon made the play-off final that season. Last summer QPR bought Austin for £4 million. What's he worth now, double that?

These players are out there, they might be stuck in some team's reserves like Clive Baker, Trevor Aylott or David Geddis, or playing non-league like Les Ferdinand, Ian Wright, Chris Waddle or our own David Currie, they might be playing at some tiny foreign team like Clint Marcelle, such players are not handed to you on a plate, you've got to find 'em. Unlike what Greg Dyke will have you believe, the good players don't all start out at the academies of the big clubs, relatively few of them actually come via that route. Premier league academy players will take plenty from the game, constantly given lucrative contracts as they make their way down the football pyramid, like Mellis and Frimpong for example, but they give next to nothing back. We've got to find the players who haven't been pampered from being kids, who don't take it all for granted and who are hungry to achieve something. I hope what we've started helps us achieve that and we can get back to identifying and signing quality players.

 

Rousing stuff.

But 100% correct.

 

Well said, sir. Great post.

 

Well put Jay!

 

Problem that I see with TK making this statement, is that he is saying we should be a top side in the lower division, on the back of him being dreadful throughout the majority of the season in which we got relegated.

I could pick a better left back from within the local Barnsley leagues.