Dick Advocaat could have been a yid?

[joey55]

So where were youngsters he was supposed to be recruiting? Apart from a spurt of signings that bought in Davies, Etherington, Doherty and Gardner...who else?

Please enlighten me...

Ricketss, Blondel, O'Hara, Kelly, Ifil, Marney and Yeates.

 

[Loque]

to be fair, a record of davies, etherington, doherty and gardner isn't bad when they were signed for relative peanuts. digger was immense for a while before losing his way, etherington should have been something special, gardner was capped by England and at one point was more highly thought of than King.

All have gone on to have relatively successful careers and have played in the EPL, which is not bad by my reckoning. Of course Pleaty is a bit of a blithering idiot on commentary but he did do well for us considering we weren't able to attract the modrics and dos santoses back then.

hopefully the new batch will be even better. Rose, Parrett, Gunter, Bale. should in theory hit greater heights!

 

[jimmy-jojo]

Ricketss, Blondel, O'Hara, Kelly, Ifil, Marney and Yeates.

How many 1st team appearances did that little lot make between them?

And I accept that Pleat perhaps didn't control 1st team transfers....but wasn't Pleat instrumental in persuading Sugar to hire GGG?

I also read that Hoddle was always complaining that he was constantly undermined by Pleat...

 

[joey55]

to be fair, a record of davies, etherington, doherty and gardner isn't bad when they were signed for relative peanuts. digger was immense for a while before losing his way, etherington should have been something special, gardner was capped by England and at one point was more highly thought of than King.

All have gone on to have relatively successful careers and have played in the EPL, which is not bad by my reckoning. Of course Pleaty is a bit of a blithering idiot on commentary but he did do well for us considering we weren't able to attract the modrics and dos santoses back then.

hopefully the new batch will be even better. Rose, Parrett, Gunter, Bale. should in theory hit greater heights!

The point is though, one of the key reasons we have the new batch is the work of Pleat. Before he was in place we rarley if ever bought young British talent. It takes years to build up a decent scouting network. For years, other than his signings we seemed to do nothing but buy expensive players who were usually well passed their prime. We were spending a fortune on wages for players who were often injured and had no sell on value. Pleat started recruiting young talent to address this issue and it's paid dividends for us. Compare the baclecne sheet for Pleat's purchases to those bought by our previous managers and his will show a nice profit and all the others will show huge losses.

 

[Loque]

The point is though, one of the key reasons we have the new batch is the work of Pleat. Before he was in place we rarley if ever bought young British talent. It takes years to build up a decent scouting network. For years, other than his signings we seemed to do nothing but buy expensive players who were usually well passed their prime. We were spending a fortune on wages for players who were often injured and had no sell on value. Pleat started recruiting young talent to address this issue and it's paid dividends for us. Compare the baclecne sheet for Pleat's purchases to those bought by our previous managers and his will show a nice profit and all the others will show huge losses.

yup. i was agreeing with you. the buy young cheap talent has been taken on by Levy and Comolli. And to an extent enhanced it by plucking the most promising, therefore maximising the chances of getting more Kings and O'Haras than Doherties.

In theory, this should pay even more dividends when they mature together. Provided the core of the (hopefully) successful team stays together we can build it up again for next generation, etc. In practise it may turn out differently of course, such as injuries, e.g. Dixon

 

[joey55]

How many 1st team appearances did that little lot make between them?

And I accept that Pleat perhaps didn't control 1st team transfers....but wasn't Pleat instrumental in persuading Sugar to hire GGG?

I also read that Hoddle was always complaining that he was constantly undermined by Pleat...

They didn't make many, but they illustrate an important change within our club. It takes time (years) and effort to get the stage where we can properly source and develop the best talent. Its a long and slow process, but it has changed us for the better and Pleat is a key individual in this. Those players cost next to nothing, we'd have easily got our money back on them. Compare that to this lot - Sherwood, Freund, Richards, Perry, Sullivan, Thatcher, Redknapp, Sheringham, Ferdinand, Armstrong, Sinton, Leonardson, Vega, Ziege, Nielson, Poyet, Tarrico and Keller. They must have cost over £40 million between them (about £100 million in todays transfer market prices) and we'd have got next to nothing for them and they'd all have been on massive wages.

 

[DC555]

So is this another great signing that Pleat DIDN'T make for the club!

 

[cheeseman]

How long ago was that? 21yrs ago??? Losing a Final to Coventry...blowing the best chance of winning the league in god knows how many years....

....God knows how many....?

Try two. We should have won the title in 84/85, when we had about four games in hand on Everton and the majority of our last 13 or 14 games were at home.

 

[ethanedwards]

How long ago was that? 21yrs ago??? Losing a Final to Coventry...blowing the best chance of winning the league in god knows how many years...and losing to the scum despite being in a very strong position over the 2 legs.

He also oversaw possiblly the worst period of our history, which we are now only recovering from...

Didn't he also sign Dean Richards, Paulo Tramezzani, Nicola Berti, Andy Sinton, Ramon Vega, Jose Dominguez etc etc etc

On balance I would say he did more bad than good...

If my memory is correct, the main reason our season went pear shaped, was the fixture congestion.We had to play a horrendous amount of games in a few weeks towards the end of the season. I actually think him and Graham Taylor are the best summarisers on the box.

 

[tRiKS]

he was 100% talking about Hiddink. change this very worng title of a thread

 

[P-Dogg]

Yeah, he was talking about Hiddink. This made me sad because IMO he's one of the best there is.

Oh well.

 

[Bonjour]

Surely Pleat will be sacked for making a racist joke? Going to Korea doesn't mean you are going just to eat noodles does it?

Pretty much.

Noodles and octopus.

 

[Kendall]

He was talking about Hiddink. Clive Tildsley had been going on about him and his record with Korea, Holland and Russia, then Pleat piped up with the fact that he and Sugar had met with him.

 

[jimmy-jojo]

They didn't make many, but they illustrate an important change within our club. It takes time (years) and effort to get the stage where we can properly source and develop the best talent. Its a long and slow process, but it has changed us for the better and Pleat is a key individual in this. Those players cost next to nothing, we'd have easily got our money back on them. Compare that to this lot - Sherwood, Freund, Richards, Perry, Sullivan, Thatcher, Redknapp, Sheringham, Ferdinand, Armstrong, Sinton, Leonardson, Vega, Ziege, Nielson, Poyet, Tarrico and Keller. They must have cost over £40 million between them (about £100 million in todays transfer market prices) and we'd have got next to nothing for them and they'd all have been on massive wages.

Here's a squad list I found for the 97/98 seaon...I believe about a year or so before Pleat came in as DoF:-

http://www.zanziball.it/en/28/1bbf.html

Players in that list included home grown players such as:-

Ian Walker, Jamie Clapham, Scumbell, Steven Carr, Luke Young, Stephen Clemence.

And here's a squad list of players from the 2003/2004 season:-

http://www.zanziball.it/en/28/6605.html

Some of the home grown players incuded (if you can call the likes Doherty, Gardner, Ricketts 'home grown'?):-

Doherty, Carr, Gardner, Ledley King, Dean Marney, Jamie Slabber, Rohan Ricketts.

By my reckoning, the list from 97/98 is a lot better, where all the guys I listed but Stephen Clemence achieved international call-ups.

You may think I 'know nothing' but I really believe our production of quality youngsters got worse under Pleat.