The lack of coherency in our recruitment strategy

[wrd]

I originally posted this in summer transfers but it doesn't fit there, I looked at other threads, I can't see where it fits so I've made a new thread, admins if you think there's a better place for this, by all means move it.

I made a post in the Reguilon thread about being hopeful Sessegnon gives him a run for his money next season and a poster pointed out, they'd hope so for the money we spent on him. It's made me realise that despite the fact that we have signed some players with great potential over the last couple of seasons, we as a club despite having limited money have decided to lump so much money on players who are basically vying for one position. Let me preface this by saying, all the players I'm going to mention, as a fan I'm happy we signed them because they're great players but I'm analysing this in terms of the strategy employed by a football clubs recruitment team

Our recruitment seemingly has no plan for how to set the team up and has basically snapped up talents based on potential rather than a coherent line up.

Sessegnon - 25-30 million - Being developed to play LB
Reguilon - 27 million- a LB

So that's 55-60 million spent on a single position to where you can only fit one into the team at a time. On a glance you think well that's great having 2 potentially great players fighting for one spot. It is if your first 11 doesn't have any weaknesses across it to where you can then focus on beefing up the reinforcements but that is clearly not where we are in terms of building a team at the moment.

To further highlight what poor decision making this is, We supposedly also have a left back coming through with huge talent in Cirkin, we already had Ben Davies who is a adequate back up for a left back in terms of if you need to spend your money on strengthening your first team. You only need to replace Ben once your first 11 is at it's peak and you have the resources to begin boosting the bench.

If you're looking to defend the decision, I guess you analyse it and say well Sessegnon can also play left wing but wait a minute, we already have one of our top 2 players there in Son and then we've decided to add yet another player whose best position is left wing in Steven Bergwijn, So;

Bergwijn - 27 million Left wing

That's a huge chunk of change on a position filled by one of our best players and a position we had already recruited a player who could potentially play there should Son be injured despite the fact that we have a glaring hole over on the right wing. Of course what we've tried to do is shoehorn Bergwijn over on the right wing where he has been completely ineffective compared to how good he was for his original club in his usual position.

Then on top of all that we then purchased two midfielders of the same ilk for over 100 million.

Ndombele - 50-55 million - CM
Lo Celso - 45 Million - CM

So these were signed for the famous diamond shape we were going to play which we never played with them in the team, despite the fact we didn't have a defensive midfielder to play at the bottom of the diamond. There's a fairly easy solution here which is to play the 4-3-3 and fit them both in, the problem with that is, the defensive midfielder we've signed isn't a traditional sitting defensive midfielder but more of a ball winning midfielder which would typically have another more defensive style of midfielder next to them as an example we used to have similar with Wanyama and Dembele who both were more known for their ability to win the ball than their attacking exploits.

The other issue is we haven't attempted to play the 4-3-3 yet, we've (despite the two expensive midfielders we've signed) gone for the 4-2-3-1. There's two issues with that, one is that we already had dele for that role though he is one player people would perhaps deem replaceable in our first 11 so that's fine so we're looking at it as well we could play either Ndombele and Lo Celso in that 10 role, despite neither have the skillset of say Eriksen who previously did that sort of role for us or say a Bruno Fernandes who we decided we didn't want - I think that one was the manager. The other issue also with playing these 2 players in the 4-2-3-1 is the aforementioned Hojbjerg problem to where he isn't the sitting midfielder which means when you pair him with the likes of Lo Celso or Ndombele, we are very often opened up in a big way. I know there will be those who will disagree with me on my Hojbjerg assessment on that front and to those I'll say, look who was next to him on the pitch at Southampton, It was Romeu.

In other words we have essentially bought 3 midfielders who seemingly do not click together whether it be diamond, 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. The one hope we have is having Skipp come in and save the day but he's actually a similar skillset to Hojbjerg and has been sitting next to Tettey all season.

What this means is, we have the same problem in midfield as we do on the left side of the pitch which is. We have multiple players who in the right system can shine and have huge potential. The problem is they're concentrated to a certain number of positions which means we've spent all our money recruiting players who can only fit a certain number of positions and will be tremendously difficult to put all of that money spent on the pitch at the same time instead of spending the money to where you build a coherent first 11 that all fits together.

Our recruitment is simply identifying players with great potential regardless of how they fit and then having no money remaining to fix the remainder of the problems in the team. At least we have 4 left backs though.

 

[McArchibald]

I originally posted this in summer transfers but it doesn't fit there, I looked at other threads, I can't see where it fits so I've made a new thread, admins if you think there's a better place for this, by all means move it.

I made a post in the Reguilon thread about being hopeful Sessegnon gives him a run for his money next season and a poster pointed out, they'd hope so for the money we spent on him. It's made me realise that despite the fact that we have signed some players with great potential over the last couple of seasons, we as a club despite having limited money have decided to lump so much money on players who are basically vying for one position. Let me preface this by saying, all the players I'm going to mention, as a fan I'm happy we signed them because they're great players but I'm analysing this in terms of the strategy employed by a football clubs recruitment team

Our recruitment seemingly has no plan for how to set the team up and has basically snapped up talents based on potential rather than a coherent line up.

Sessegnon - 25-30 million - Being developed to play LB
Reguilon - 27 million- a LB

So that's 55-60 million spent on a single position to where you can only fit one into the team at a time. On a glance you think well that's great having 2 potentially great players fighting for one spot. It is if your first 11 doesn't have any weaknesses across it to where you can then focus on beefing up the reinforcements but that is clearly not where we are in terms of building a team at the moment.

To further highlight what poor decision making this is, We supposedly also have a left back coming through with huge talent in Cirkin, we already had Ben Davies who is a adequate back up for a left back in terms of if you need to spend your money on strengthening your first team. You only need to replace Ben once your first 11 is at it's peak and you have the resources to begin boosting the bench.

If you're looking to defend the decision, I guess you analyse it and say well Sessegnon can also play left wing but wait a minute, we already have one of our top 2 players there in Son and then we've decided to add yet another player whose best position is left wing in Steven Bergwijn, So;

Bergwijn - 27 million Left wing

That's about huge chunk of change on a position filled by one of our best players and a position we had already recruited a player who could potentially play there should Son be injured despite the fact that we have a glaring hole over on the right wing. Of course what we've tried to do is shoehorn Bergwijn over on the right wing where he has been completely ineffective compared to how good he was for his original club in his usual position.

Then on top of all that we then purchased two midfielders of the same ilk for over 100 million.

Ndombele - 50-55 million - CM
Lo Celso - 45 Million - CM

So these were signed for the famous diamond shape we were going to play which we never played with them in the team, despite the fact we didn't have a defensive midfielder to play at the bottom of the diamond. There's a fairly easy solution here which is to play the 4-3-3 and fit them both in, the problem with that is, the defensive midfielder we've signed isn't a traditional sitting defensive midfielder but more of a ball winning midfielder which would typically have another more defensive style of midfielder next to them as an example we used to have similar with Wanyama and Dembele who both were more known for their ability to win the ball than their attacking exploits.

The other issue is we haven't attempted to play the 4-3-3 yet, we've (despite the two expensive midfielders we've signed) gone for the 4-2-3-1. There's two issues with that, one is that we already had dele for that role though he is one player people would perhaps deem replaceable in our first 11 so that's fine so we're looking at it as well we could play either Ndombele and Lo Celso in that 10 role, despite neither have the skillset of say Eriksen who previously did that sort of role for us or say a Bruno Fernandes who we decided we didn't want - I think that one was the manager. The other issue also with playing these 2 players in the 4-2-3-1 is the aforementioned Hojbjerg problem to where he isn't the sitting midfielder which means when you pair him with the likes of Lo Celso or Ndombele, we are very often opened up in a big way. I know there will be those who will disagree with me on my Hojbjerg assessment on that front and to those I'll say, look who was next to him on the pitch at Southampton, It was Romeu.

In other words we have essentially bought 3 midfielders who seemingly do not click together whether it be diamond, 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. The one hope we have is having Skipp come in and save the day but he's actually a similar skillset to Hojbjerg and has been sitting next to Tettey all season.

What this means is, we have the same problem in midfield as we do on the left side of the pitch which is. We have multiple players who in the right system can shine and have huge potential. The problem is they're concentrated to a certain number of positions which means we've spent all our money recruiting players who can only fit a certain number of positions and will be tremendously difficult to put all of that money spent on the pitch at the same time instead of spending the money to where you build a coherent first 11 that all fits together.

Our recruitment is simply identifying players with great potential regardless of how they fit and then having no money remaining to fix the remainder of the problems in the team. At least we have 4 left backs though.

That's what you get from not having a Director of Football who can apply some logic and long-term planning to the recruitment of players.

 

[Shadydan]

We definitely need a DOF and a new entire structure at the club.

 

[wrd]

That's what you get from not having a Director of Football who can apply some logic and long-term planning to the recruitment of players.

We definitely need a DOF and a new entire structure at the club.

Yep all this talk about how good our scouting is and we can identify talents is meaningless with the way we've gone about it. I mean I reckon people will say transitioning between managers can lead to some of this but the reality is aside from the midfield situation which I think yes you can attribute being down to changing managers as to why that isn't working but the rest didn't happen due to transition.

I mean even last summer we started with signing Doherty for Jose system and then decided to recruit Reguilon and Bale which pretty much ended any chance of Doherty being an effective transfer. He is a specialist fullback who has a particular skillset (the type of signing we should avoid) where he would have worked in the lopsided back 4 or even a back 3 but we don't have the CB's it seems for the back.

I mean that's just 1 window we made 3 signings which don't work in a system together. I've said in a thread before you can see the different names behind the transfers from a mile off. Jose wanted Doherty, Hitchen wanted Reguilon and Levy wanted Bale. It is a mess.

I think this is where either side of the arguments about the board clash. People say we don't spend enough money because we've been left with a team with glaring holes and they need to invest to fix them but those who wish to defend the board can easily point to the actual outlay being very significant but the reality is we have squandered that money on buying players who simply will not be able to fit into a clear system on a football pitch.

This is why I tend to disagree with those who keep saying well wait until the stadium generates the revenue and then we're off to the races because whilst yes the stadium looks like it's going to produce significant revenue for us to invest, if we don't fix the structure in place in our recruitment strategy then we will simply waste that money and waste all the hard work we did to put that infrastructure in place and also wasting the sacrifice we made by choosing to focus on the off pitch aspects instead of adding the finishes touches when we actually had a coherent squad that needed a bit extra to get over the line. It will all be for nothing if we don't resolve these issues at boardroom level.

 

[NEVILLEB]

I originally posted this in summer transfers but it doesn't fit there, I looked at other threads, I can't see where it fits so I've made a new thread, admins if you think there's a better place for this, by all means move it.

I made a post in the Reguilon thread about being hopeful Sessegnon gives him a run for his money next season and a poster pointed out, they'd hope so for the money we spent on him. It's made me realise that despite the fact that we have signed some players with great potential over the last couple of seasons, we as a club despite having limited money have decided to lump so much money on players who are basically vying for one position. Let me preface this by saying, all the players I'm going to mention, as a fan I'm happy we signed them because they're great players but I'm analysing this in terms of the strategy employed by a football clubs recruitment team

Our recruitment seemingly has no plan for how to set the team up and has basically snapped up talents based on potential rather than a coherent line up.

Sessegnon - 25-30 million - Being developed to play LB
Reguilon - 27 million- a LB

So that's 55-60 million spent on a single position to where you can only fit one into the team at a time. On a glance you think well that's great having 2 potentially great players fighting for one spot. It is if your first 11 doesn't have any weaknesses across it to where you can then focus on beefing up the reinforcements but that is clearly not where we are in terms of building a team at the moment.

To further highlight what poor decision making this is, We supposedly also have a left back coming through with huge talent in Cirkin, we already had Ben Davies who is a adequate back up for a left back in terms of if you need to spend your money on strengthening your first team. You only need to replace Ben once your first 11 is at it's peak and you have the resources to begin boosting the bench.

If you're looking to defend the decision, I guess you analyse it and say well Sessegnon can also play left wing but wait a minute, we already have one of our top 2 players there in Son and then we've decided to add yet another player whose best position is left wing in Steven Bergwijn, So;

Bergwijn - 27 million Left wing

That's a huge chunk of change on a position filled by one of our best players and a position we had already recruited a player who could potentially play there should Son be injured despite the fact that we have a glaring hole over on the right wing. Of course what we've tried to do is shoehorn Bergwijn over on the right wing where he has been completely ineffective compared to how good he was for his original club in his usual position.

Then on top of all that we then purchased two midfielders of the same ilk for over 100 million.

Ndombele - 50-55 million - CM
Lo Celso - 45 Million - CM

So these were signed for the famous diamond shape we were going to play which we never played with them in the team, despite the fact we didn't have a defensive midfielder to play at the bottom of the diamond. There's a fairly easy solution here which is to play the 4-3-3 and fit them both in, the problem with that is, the defensive midfielder we've signed isn't a traditional sitting defensive midfielder but more of a ball winning midfielder which would typically have another more defensive style of midfielder next to them as an example we used to have similar with Wanyama and Dembele who both were more known for their ability to win the ball than their attacking exploits.

The other issue is we haven't attempted to play the 4-3-3 yet, we've (despite the two expensive midfielders we've signed) gone for the 4-2-3-1. There's two issues with that, one is that we already had dele for that role though he is one player people would perhaps deem replaceable in our first 11 so that's fine so we're looking at it as well we could play either Ndombele and Lo Celso in that 10 role, despite neither have the skillset of say Eriksen who previously did that sort of role for us or say a Bruno Fernandes who we decided we didn't want - I think that one was the manager. The other issue also with playing these 2 players in the 4-2-3-1 is the aforementioned Hojbjerg problem to where he isn't the sitting midfielder which means when you pair him with the likes of Lo Celso or Ndombele, we are very often opened up in a big way. I know there will be those who will disagree with me on my Hojbjerg assessment on that front and to those I'll say, look who was next to him on the pitch at Southampton, It was Romeu.

In other words we have essentially bought 3 midfielders who seemingly do not click together whether it be diamond, 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. The one hope we have is having Skipp come in and save the day but he's actually a similar skillset to Hojbjerg and has been sitting next to Tettey all season.

What this means is, we have the same problem in midfield as we do on the left side of the pitch which is. We have multiple players who in the right system can shine and have huge potential. The problem is they're concentrated to a certain number of positions which means we've spent all our money recruiting players who can only fit a certain number of positions and will be tremendously difficult to put all of that money spent on the pitch at the same time instead of spending the money to where you build a coherent first 11 that all fits together.

Our recruitment is simply identifying players with great potential regardless of how they fit and then having no money remaining to fix the remainder of the problems in the team. At least we have 4 left backs though.

This has been the biggest problem since ENIC took over.

Haphazard player recruitment.

It's all about the deal unfortunately and while that is very important the MOST important thing is getting the right players in the positions you need them.

Watch the documentary and marvel at the lack of dynamism from our Chairman and his recruitment team. They are the type of characters who would run a small business not the brains we need to operate at the highest level.

 

[punkisback]

I originally posted this in summer transfers but it doesn't fit there, I looked at other threads, I can't see where it fits so I've made a new thread, admins if you think there's a better place for this, by all means move it.

I made a post in the Reguilon thread about being hopeful Sessegnon gives him a run for his money next season and a poster pointed out, they'd hope so for the money we spent on him. It's made me realise that despite the fact that we have signed some players with great potential over the last couple of seasons, we as a club despite having limited money have decided to lump so much money on players who are basically vying for one position. Let me preface this by saying, all the players I'm going to mention, as a fan I'm happy we signed them because they're great players but I'm analysing this in terms of the strategy employed by a football clubs recruitment team

Our recruitment seemingly has no plan for how to set the team up and has basically snapped up talents based on potential rather than a coherent line up.

Sessegnon - 25-30 million - Being developed to play LB
Reguilon - 27 million- a LB

So that's 55-60 million spent on a single position to where you can only fit one into the team at a time. On a glance you think well that's great having 2 potentially great players fighting for one spot. It is if your first 11 doesn't have any weaknesses across it to where you can then focus on beefing up the reinforcements but that is clearly not where we are in terms of building a team at the moment.

To further highlight what poor decision making this is, We supposedly also have a left back coming through with huge talent in Cirkin, we already had Ben Davies who is a adequate back up for a left back in terms of if you need to spend your money on strengthening your first team. You only need to replace Ben once your first 11 is at it's peak and you have the resources to begin boosting the bench.

If you're looking to defend the decision, I guess you analyse it and say well Sessegnon can also play left wing but wait a minute, we already have one of our top 2 players there in Son and then we've decided to add yet another player whose best position is left wing in Steven Bergwijn, So;

Bergwijn - 27 million Left wing

That's a huge chunk of change on a position filled by one of our best players and a position we had already recruited a player who could potentially play there should Son be injured despite the fact that we have a glaring hole over on the right wing. Of course what we've tried to do is shoehorn Bergwijn over on the right wing where he has been completely ineffective compared to how good he was for his original club in his usual position.

Then on top of all that we then purchased two midfielders of the same ilk for over 100 million.

Ndombele - 50-55 million - CM
Lo Celso - 45 Million - CM

So these were signed for the famous diamond shape we were going to play which we never played with them in the team, despite the fact we didn't have a defensive midfielder to play at the bottom of the diamond. There's a fairly easy solution here which is to play the 4-3-3 and fit them both in, the problem with that is, the defensive midfielder we've signed isn't a traditional sitting defensive midfielder but more of a ball winning midfielder which would typically have another more defensive style of midfielder next to them as an example we used to have similar with Wanyama and Dembele who both were more known for their ability to win the ball than their attacking exploits.

The other issue is we haven't attempted to play the 4-3-3 yet, we've (despite the two expensive midfielders we've signed) gone for the 4-2-3-1. There's two issues with that, one is that we already had dele for that role though he is one player people would perhaps deem replaceable in our first 11 so that's fine so we're looking at it as well we could play either Ndombele and Lo Celso in that 10 role, despite neither have the skillset of say Eriksen who previously did that sort of role for us or say a Bruno Fernandes who we decided we didn't want - I think that one was the manager. The other issue also with playing these 2 players in the 4-2-3-1 is the aforementioned Hojbjerg problem to where he isn't the sitting midfielder which means when you pair him with the likes of Lo Celso or Ndombele, we are very often opened up in a big way. I know there will be those who will disagree with me on my Hojbjerg assessment on that front and to those I'll say, look who was next to him on the pitch at Southampton, It was Romeu.

In other words we have essentially bought 3 midfielders who seemingly do not click together whether it be diamond, 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. The one hope we have is having Skipp come in and save the day but he's actually a similar skillset to Hojbjerg and has been sitting next to Tettey all season.

What this means is, we have the same problem in midfield as we do on the left side of the pitch which is. We have multiple players who in the right system can shine and have huge potential. The problem is they're concentrated to a certain number of positions which means we've spent all our money recruiting players who can only fit a certain number of positions and will be tremendously difficult to put all of that money spent on the pitch at the same time instead of spending the money to where you build a coherent first 11 that all fits together.

Our recruitment is simply identifying players with great potential regardless of how they fit and then having no money remaining to fix the remainder of the problems in the team. At least we have 4 left backs though.

The recruitment team also decided Mane was too expensive and Sissoko was a good replacement...

 

[DFF]

It’s very simple. Our overall recruitment strategy is to view players as assets that are supposed to appreciate over time. Like investing in property. Rather than concentrate on building a quality, well rounded team for the here and now, we will speculate on young players who may (or may not) explode in value.

Sessegnon, Bergwijn, Clarke, Rodon. Money that could have made a real impact on the starting 11. But that maybe would’ve required spending a large chunk of money on fewer, slightly older players at the peak of their price/value.

 

[Karol]

We have a coherent strategy

Appoint manager, use a hat to pull names out of to decide which player we will buy
Laugh tits off at what clubs offer for our deadwood, deadwood remains at club stinking the place out, , sack said manager

Rinse and repeat

 

[NEVILLEB]

When they replaced Carrick with Zokora I knew they were clueless.

 

[Shadydan]

When they replaced Carrick with Zokora I knew they were clueless.

That was under a DOF - Comolli who actually recommended him, I thought Comolli was actually pretty good, at least we had some sort of strategy when he was there.

 

[curlacious]

If you’ve seen the All Or Nothing with Man City you’ll see how Txiki Begeristain strategises all the time about the squad in this way. Sees problems (age, contract, form, squad balance) before they arise and identifies and pushes through signings to solve those problems a year or two ahead of time. That’s what we need, clearly.

 

[rossdapep]

Some top posts in here

 

[bubble07]

What I don't get is in the long run having a DoF will save baldy money but he cares too much about control

 

[bubble07]

But Reguilon was an opportunistic signing that still maze sense despite having sessegnon

We are not in a position to turn our noses up when perceived quality players want to join us

 

[curlacious]

What I don't get is in the long run having a DoF will save baldy money but he cares too much about control

It’s purely ego. He wants a decisive say in the glamourous arm of the business, even at the expense of the business.

 

[danielneeds]

Recruitment is always gonna look a bit ropey when you've bought a load of players to play Poch's style of football and then Mourinho comes in. It's almost a completely different set of skills needed.

That's why the best clubs have their style of play as a non-negotiable, either governed by a Sporting Director there for the long-term or the club's culture and identity and you bring the coach and the players to slot into that.

We're kinda in a no man's land at the moment with feet in different ideas, all ending up in a murky mess.

 

[curlacious]

Recruitment is always gonna look a bit ropey when you've bought a load of players to play Poch's style of football and then Mourinho comes in. It's almost a completely different set of skills needed.

That's why the best clubs have their style of play as a non-negotiable, either governed by a Sporting Directory there for the long-term or the club's culture and identity and you bring the coach and the players to slot into that.

We're kinda in a no man's land at the moment with feet in different ideas, all ending up in a murky mess.

Agree. It’s particularly annoying because Poch carefully developed that culture and it suited us. Mourinho appointment was unwise on many levels.

 

[wrd]

But Reguilon was an opportunistic signing that still maze sense despite having sessegnon

We are not in a position to turn our noses up when perceived quality players want to join us

But equally we're not a team who can afford to outlay 30 or so million on a player when we've already spent 30 million on that particular position and still have glaring holes in our team.

We spent 30 million on a left back after already putting that amount of money into a left back the summer before and then we couldn't afford the CB we so desperately needed.

I'm a fan of Reguilon but we already had a player we could develop for that role and then chose to buy another of that ilk and let other positions suffer. If we could have still afforded that top quality CB then I think we'd be having a different conversation

 

[danielneeds]

But equally we're not a team who can afford to outlay 30 or so million on a player when we've already spent 30 million on that particular position and still have glaring holes in our team.

We spent 30 million on a left back after already putting that amount of money into a left back the summer before and then we couldn't afford the CB we so desperately needed.

I'm a fan of Reguilon but we already had a player we could develop for that role and then chose to buy another of that ilk and let other positions suffer. If we could have still afforded that top quality CB then I think we'd be having a different conversation

The Sessegnon and Clarke signings were baffling. £42m on players that we had no real plan for when we desperately needed a proper ball winner in midifeild.

 

[IamSpurtacus]

Our recruitment is simply a symptom of the broader issue at the club that won’t simply be remedied by a DoF or change in manager

As long as we have a property developer / accountant overseeing football team operations, we will continue to sign and sell players based on the accounting book value

Will Levy relinquish control to a DoF? Does a leopard change its spots?

The club needs an entire cultural shift, similar to the type wrought by the change in ownership at Chelsea, city and even Leicester

Levy’s management of the stadium build showed what a control freak he is. ITK indicates he had a hand in wanting the reintegration of winks and dele despite their poor form and behavior (at least in winks case)

We’ve had a DoF before - we still dallied in the transfer market and did deals late in the window, hamstringing the manager and his plans

Why will that change suddenly? Why will we start signing the best young players like The Red Bull and Dortmund teams when we haven’t in the past? Why will we start signing finished products?

I honestly think as long as we’re run by a property developer using the club to enhance the value of the stadium and surrounding property, who is not willing to make the type of investment required to compete, we will not seriously challenge or win because the psychology at he very top is wrong - and it all stems from there

Does that mean levy is terrible or hasn’t done good things to progress the club? No. But I question whether he has the desire or aptitude to do what it takes to get us over the line.

Poch was an aberration - not the norm. We got lucky with him and the gelling of signings made previously.

I may be wrong, but the sense we’re not a club serious about winning is one of the reasons I’m so ambivalent about who we appoint and what structure we have. Until there is a shift in culture - which likely requires a change in owner - I don’t see things changing