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Magnússon on his way


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15 hours ago, Davefevs said:

I still think we played good stuff with the more solid back 4 of BW, AF, NB and HM.  Was that a coincidence with playing Reid and Paterson up front, I don’t know.  Did it release Smith and Pack a little more knowing they always had 3 or 4 defenders “at home”, I don’t know.  Was it Bryan with licence to attack down the left, I don’t know.

But we looked solid, didn’t concede many chances, let alone goals in comparison to the second half of the season.

agree with you Dave, mags seemed to need 10 mins to get into match mode then pretty consistent for the next 80.only needed that sorting.

mags was one on my list I would have tried hard to keep.along with Korey,pack,brownhill,o dowda,frankie,,fammy and duric and baby lloyd.id also have given hegeler another run.i thought he was very composed.

as much as I like some of the others,i I don't see the desire to win in them,(flint and reid excluded but they are going to be looked at because of their achievements)

shouldn't be a problem replacing any of the others based on performance alone

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31 minutes ago, billywedlock said:

Overall, I think moving him on is correct if we can recover as much of the fee originally paid out. Before a bigger loss, as he clearly is not in LJ plans.

The real issue is another, what are BCFC thinking of paying multi million fees for players that have not come close to the breakthrough . We are BCFC not Man United. As SL quite rightly said, we need to sign these players much earlier, far before they are million plus players. When they cost that much, they need to be almost instant first team players. 

James Chester, Pontius Janssen , or Tommy Elphick all went for hundreds of k early career. 

Or even our own Aden Flint at 300k , or Richard Keogh who we gave away. 

The other route is our own academy, and then we need to see Vyner and Lloyd make more consistent appearances.

What has worked for us ? Well the only real fee is Kodja in reality, though maybe now we will see some return on Bryan, Reid, Flint, Pack and possibly Fielding. 

Generally , when we bring in hungry players with something to prove, we do better.  For where we are now. 

 Zak Vyner or Taylor Moore for example. Was the only spent on Engvall better than trying Freddie Hinds and Garita . One cost millions the others peanuts, all a out the same distance to the first team. I rather feel the lesser fees paid for Bakinson , Holden , and the signing of Edwards area the sort of gambles we need to be taking. 

The million plus fee for Engvall would have paid the wages for Gabbidon for 3 months and some , when we were trying to consolidate promotion.

There are a lot of Prem youth players released, we may have to work with ten to get 1 , so to speak, but that is surely more our market. 

We are not spending our already limited budget well , and with the right focus. 

Well actually I have no idea what our game plan is , so first step would be to decide that before we start signing players . But that is another story. 

Very well argued if I may say so.

However, the reference to multi millions needs to be seen in the context of the market in general. An inflated market in which League 1 sides like Posh and Pompey demand huge fees for players who have not played at a higher level or where the as yet unfulfilled potential of Grealish leads to talk of Villa demanding £40m - more than Liverpool paid for Salah.

In that context paying 1 or 2 million for a young player with talent who may or not make the grade is not outrageous, nor does it require them to be an instant success. Those players should be among the hungry with something to prove category, though one or two have turned out not to be very hungry it seems.

The likes of Bakinson are no real gamble at all financially and again if one or two of the many brought in for development purposes come good that will constitute success.

In all these cases the attrition rate will be high, as with the Academy. That's pretty normal and is not in itself failure but that is exactly how many fans see it. Presumably they would feel the same if we recruited released young PL players as you suggest and only 1 in 10 came off.

If our strategy is primarily financial, as I believe it to be, we don't need many to come off to generate a healthy profit. Add the likes of Fammy, Josh and Callum and the others you mention and the value of the squad is probably higher than it has ever been. What is clear is that SL expects some of that value to now be realised.

As to switching money from fees (capital spend) to wages (current spend), I'm not sure that makes sense from a a FFP perspective but I doubt Grabban would have chosen us over Villa anyway so it's probably academic.

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22 hours ago, The Bard said:

LJ has a cheek then.  He constantly undermined the bloke.  No wonder he wants to leave.  He's in and out of an average Championship side and has the chance to move to a side that could be in the Champions League next year.  Seems a no-brainer.

It sums up Johnson's muddle thinking. There is rarely consistency and a clear strategy. 

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1 minute ago, billywedlock said:

On the Peterborough thing, how can the apparent "clown" Barry Fry have done what we have not ... continually. Policy is to sign young hungry players who see club as a stepping stone . How much have they made in these last years, the club claim nearly 50 Million , papers say 30M . 

Bret Assombalonga

Lee Tomlin

Craig Maikel Smith

Aaron Mclean

Ryan Bennert

Conor Washington

Paul Taylor

George Boyd

Marcus Maddison 

Leo da silva Lopes 

 

Not saying that is for us, but it shows there are other approaches. 

 

 

 

Play them. 

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30 minutes ago, billywedlock said:

I understand what you are saying, but we need to have signed Marriot from Luton, not when he has scored 30 goals and is now millions from Peterborough . If it is indeed marriot you mean. Signing lower league for millions is still the preserve of teams with big budgets. Indeed ask why Peterborough continue to make money in this way, as do Brentford. I quote them as the type of clubs I assume we are trying to emulate. Cardiff spent a lot less, used the other approach of waifs and strays (Sol Bamba and our own Wilbs spring to mind), but equally hungry. Wolves of course was at the other spectrum. I think City will have to mix the trying of more players at higher risk (but low transfer cost) with loans or short term contracts . Few players warrant a big fee, possibly only forwards. Baker at 4 million or flint at 300k . That really is in essence what we are talking. The only real buy and sell has been Kodja, and he was before the current "DNA/Building for the future" mantra came though. I see the real challenge to day is getting Vyner and Kelly into first team regulars asap, as when Bobby, Joe leave , there is a huge gap through to the next youth academy graduate playing regular first team. (and hence profit potential) . 

As from switching from capital to wages, yes it is worth looking at short term. As it is a controlled limited risk, with, in that case an objective. You are probably right about Grabben ( but we were in prime position at the time, and really you never know) but compare Tomlin on loan with us , it worked, and was a controlled cost,  to Tomlin signed, a disaster. Generally, forwards have a better chance of return if you spend money, generally... indeed look at our history in that regard. It is the main source of our incoming transfer income over more than 10 years. 

 

Your point about getting players earlier is undeniable. As a club we have historically been a bit snobbish about league 2 players and about non league players especially. 

There have been contrary examples though, Albert and Bolasie for instance. If however we signed 2 equivalent players now there would be the usual uproar in some quarters and a demand for big name players.

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Where is the proof he is going?

Why is MA being criticised for rushing this through if indeed that is even happening?

We know nothing but still think it’s ok to moan about a player leaving who actually hasn’t !!

IF this is going ahead AND being pushed through ASAP - maybe there is a good reason e.g.

CSKA are offering a great price but want it confirmed quickly

We need the funds as we are close on bringing in an exciting signing ourselves etc

Why is this not in the transfer forum by the way? It is just another load of unfounded speculation after all :yawn:

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13 hours ago, BCFC_Dan said:

Lovely bloke, competent footballer, not a winner. I don’t think either GJ or Cotterill would have played him much.

I’ll be sad to see him go but if we have to sell players then he’s a good choice to move on.

Sell Wright...keep Magnússon.

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24 minutes ago, chinapig said:

the usual uproar in some quarters and a demand for big name players

Or just better execution of the strategy.

For all that has been said (including by me!) about the relative "value" of foreign signings (certainly in our own past record), Huddersfield went up after spending about £2m on 4-5 Germans and a Dutch bloke from Wolves reserves (most of the £2m on one player as well), all of them players who came in and made a difference straight away, several of whom have also just completed a season playing regularly in the Premiership!

Magnússon, Eliasson and possibly Engvall each individually each cost more than that entire outlay. Taylor Moore was 50% of that outlay and our gift to the defences of Bury and Cheltenham in the lower leagues! It's insane. Yes Wagner knew the market, but we make too many excuses about "not being able to shop" in the same places as other clubs, when in fact we have all the resources and just do completely daft things with it!

Huddersfield got promoted with first team players on loan from Chelsea, Man City and FC Ingostadt. We rave about Tammy but he was the exception relative to loans of Leko, Kent, Woodrow and (shudder) Diony. Huddersfield got 4 first team stalwarts from Germany for under £2m total. We got Giefer and Hegeler, and then spent £3-4m on Nordic players who haven't played. We're not unlucky. We're utter **** at transfers.

Mark Ashton is going to reprise this act again for us this summer with the money from all the players who are leaving. :ermm:

(Yes I know, we finished top half of the table and beat Man Utd - mostly with players that were here before he got here).

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1 hour ago, Olé said:

Or just better execution of the strategy.

For all that has been said (including by me!) about the relative "value" of foreign signings (certainly in our own past record), Huddersfield went up after spending about £2m on 4-5 Germans and a Dutch bloke from Wolves reserves (most of the £2m on one player as well), all of them players who came in and made a difference straight away, several of whom have also just completed a season playing regularly in the Premiership!

Magnússon, Eliasson and possibly Engvall each individually each cost more than that entire outlay. Taylor Moore was 50% of that outlay and our gift to the defences of Bury and Cheltenham in the lower leagues! It's insane. Yes Wagner knew the market, but we make too many excuses about "not being able to shop" in the same places as other clubs, when in fact we have all the resources and just do completely daft things with it!

Huddersfield got promoted with first team players on loan from Chelsea, Man City and FC Ingostadt. We rave about Tammy but he was the exception relative to loans of Leko, Kent, Woodrow and (shudder) Diony. Huddersfield got 4 first team stalwarts from Germany for under £2m total. We got Giefer and Hegeler, and then spent £3-4m on Nordic players who haven't played. We're not unlucky. We're utter **** at transfers.

Mark Ashton is going to reprise this act again for us this summer with the money from all the players who are leaving. :ermm:

(Yes I know, we finished top half of the table and beat Man Utd - mostly with players that were here before he got here).

Agreed on execution, which is why I think we need a proper DoF, a role Ashton seems to be filling to all intents and purposes. That I believe is the real root of the issue and I am not convinced the head coach has as much say as is claimed.

The Huddersfield example is interesting in that the excellent Swiss Ramble site suggests their losses rose by an underlying £8m excluding promotion bonuses despite a £4.5m increase in revenue. Their pre-tax loss was one of the highest in the Championship and leaving aside the wage bill (up 73% including bonuses), their other expenses almost doubled to nearly £14m.

https://mobile.twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/983976629478285312

My point being that focusing only on fees may not give the full picture. We could cherry pick various clubs I suppose - Brighton and their huge debt, Bournemouth breaching FFP and so on. Burnley are the only truly remarkable ones with, I think, no debt at all.

Huddersfield's spending was of course bankrolled by the admirable Dean Hoyle but we know that SL is not prepared to do the same so whoever the head coach might be is going to have to emulate them while improving the financial position. 

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On 02/06/2018 at 10:58, BTRFTG said:

Talent, good attitude, woefully mismanaged. No wonder he wants out. Good luck to him.

Vynar a natural replacement ? Sheff U game, really?

WeeLee needs to pull some very good bunnies from hats real soon else what's already turning sour could become necrotic come Xmas.

 

I am assuming you meant Kelly, but I take (and tend to agree with) your point.

Football, like most sports and, indeed, many professions, is very much a 'confidence' thing and, if your boss (manager/head coach) is constantly criticising you or, worse, lambasting you in public, then it is no wonder that your confidence and, in direct consequence, your performances dip: if, as reports seem to suggest, LJ has been 'less than supportive' of HM, then it is not at all surprising that this talented young man, alone and away from his family and friends in a foreign country, has failed to produce the high levels of performances that were hoped of him when he signed - perhaps his defensive aberrations (of which there were, admittedly, quite a few) were due simply to nerves, i.e. that he thought if he just 'hoofed' it, he knew was going to get a bollocking (in private and/or in public) no matter what he did, so he tried to play to instructions, played it out and got caught.

Personally, I think he is a very elegant player, not in the mould of defenders such as Flint, Wright and Baker, but an excellent left back behind Joe Bryan, who, incidentally, is not a very good (defensive) left back, but an excellent wing back, who would have been part of a very strong left-sided attacking defence. 

 

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On 02/06/2018 at 09:09, Olé said:

No - I agree with you on minimising the loss, the failure is not letting him go too early, it is signing him and players like him in the first place.

Our strategy I think seeks to sign players with potential who we can develop into assets that are successful for us and/or generate a profit.

That has now not worked with Magnússon. It is fairly obviously not going to work with a few other players signed in similar circumstances.

That is what I mean by a poor return on signings. It will quickly turn into a false economy - we'd lose less by paying more for a proven player.

So my point was not at all about clinging onto Magnússon, my concern is only for the people who continue to execute this transfer strategy.

I would argue it has worked though. No he won’t net us a profit but he has not been a gigantic loss. Probably close to what we paid for him(signed pre brexit so exchange rates different euro stronger compared to gbp). If we had signed a 28 year old for similar fee and had the same impact as Magnússon we wouldn’t get half the 2.5m. I’d like us to do better in terms of recruiting for sure but signing young players protects the investment more than older ones. The philosophy is right the execution needs work

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9 minutes ago, JoeAman08 said:

I would argue it has worked though. No he won’t net us a profit but he has not been a gigantic loss. Probably close to what we paid for him(signed pre brexit so exchange rates different euro stronger compared to gbp). If we had signed a 28 year old for similar fee and had the same impact as Magnússon we wouldn’t get half the 2.5m. I’d like us to do better in terms of recruiting for sure but signing young players protects the investment more than older ones. The philosophy is right the execution needs work

Who are we executing ? 

Is this the half time entertainment ? 

 

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On 02/06/2018 at 13:17, Olé said:

Snipped for space, but really good post.

Yes of course a strategy that recruits for "potential" with upside on valuation is speculative and carries risk, as it does with any growth investment. My point and my view is actually that we're taking more risk than is necessary. And under MA seem likely to continue to do so.

 

But first to attempt an answer to your question: as someone who enjoys the contribution of foreigners ;) I don't actually think coming from overseas is the significant issue here: as you yourself pointed out, we also recruited for "potential" lower down the leagues in the UK.

However I do think there is a far better chance to judge standard and readiness when looking at players playing in England. Other leagues overseas can be hugely misleading as they do not correlate to the English hierarchy, single divisions may reflect three levels of standard.

As such we seem to have repeatedly acquired players who we perceive to meet our standard or "are ready to go straight in", and then aren't. I don't want to turn this into another list of LJ/MA signings with grades, but even for a speculative process, the hit rate is pretty terrible.

Magnússon is interesting because apart from Tomlin he is the first LJ/MA era purchase to be sold for serious money and certainly the first foreign one, and we're going to make a small loss, yet probably a better return that we'll get for several other foreigners LJ/MA signed!?

That is an awful reflection of a strategy not working, and yes, when you consider that Brownhill and O'Dowda are literally the only 2 LJ/MA signings you could be confident of making a profit on versus purchase price, that does make the preference from the continent more odd.

LJ/MA signings out of the first team of English league sides: Brownhill, O'Dowda, Baker, Paterson, Wright, Taylor - I'd say that was a much higher return than any of our overseas transfer work and versus Magnússon and our Scandinavian recruitment there's no contest at all.

 

But, like I said, I don't think "overseas" is the whole issue. It's this "potential" - this is my point about us slipping into a false economy. We have a record both with managers and players of never recruiting people with experience of the task we want them to do. That is high risk.

I agree it's tough to buy proven English players, but to use an SL analogy - what proportion of Hargreaves Lansdown investments are in high risk "growth potential" stocks and what proportion in low risk, reliable "proven yield" stocks? Most portfolios weight heavily to the latter.

So why does SL allow MA to do the opposite with his football club? This is what I meant about more risk than necessary. As it stands using Magnússon as a yardstick and thinking of similar signings who have been even less successful, we're spending millions to make a loss. 

Combine all that money on 1 or 2 more expensive players proven at the standard we want them to play - low risk acquisition - and I'm sure as an asset we would be losing less in the long run. Easy to sit on a forum and say this as all deals are hard but we make mostly bad ones!

Am I the only one who is amazed that Brownhill and O'Dowda are literally the only "up and coming" League 1/2 players that MA has signed? The same approach also netted us Flint and Pack. It is baffling given the success with these type of deals that MA does so little of them.

Agree with this all, correct in principle, but much harder to actually do, I’m sure - I personally would like to see more UK based signings, money permitting. But there is still no guarantee, look at Taylor Moore, Hinds, Holden all taking their time, although only Moore commanded a sizeable fee.

I think you touched on what I was alluding to about foreign signings vs. UK signings:

Better value/greater risk

Less risk/worse value

So it leaves me thinking two more things:

Firstly, as you say, it takes longer for a foreign player to adapt, especially the younger ones, something we should all probably remember when we are calling for Eliasson to play more, or even writing signings off after one season. 

Secondly, why is the risk greater signing from abroad? Scouting. Are we not identifying the right players or not doing enough homework? Or both! I believe the scouts/contacts that provided Gustav might be gone now so perhaps this has started to happen. But as you could argue our % success rate of foreign signings isn’t high enough (I mean, who knows, what do we have to compare to?) I hope that the ground work for our scouting network has been worked on and that our assessment of foreign players is being reassessed.

Just a final point. I also think that the hidden cost fans always forget about plays a big part, wages. Although in theory, yes, you could sign one league 1 hot shot for the price of 3 foreign ‘gambles’ but I’d hazard a guess that the wages demanded by the former would be considerably greater than the foreign player, or even 2 of them. That’s if we can even compete to get the league one or championship hotshot in the first place when you think what could be available to them - Villa paying Hogan £30/40k per week was it? We’ve seen the major factor the squad depth element of our league is - in terms of the overall wage bill, that must be a major factor too. 

 

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On 02/06/2018 at 09:47, Badger08 said:

I know the lad is a nice guy and all that, but he literally, on his own, through his errors, cost us around 9 points.

He's far too lightweight and soft. 

Love the guy as a person, but take the money and run.

Absolute nonsense. You win and lose as a team only. If the midfielders had spotted a pass, had the striker made a run, had the goalkeeper taken another angle; the game is absolutely littered with mistakes in every single phase of play. Just because one is more prominent is irrelevant - you could even argue had the midfield had done it's job our defence should never have been in play.

He's a good player, probably too lightweight for the Championship but then I do wonder whether 'we tried'. We saw Luke Freeman increase mass significantly in his time here in the Championship, you wonder why it didn't happen with HM: his lack of effort, ours, case of thinking it made LF worse? 

Probably right to move him on. He alone would have been a lunatic to renew here given his slow development so take first offer and run makes sense. It might be a world cup windiw but his value will go down faster than it goes up with his contract term.  

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On 02/06/2018 at 12:55, Collis1 said:

What a move that is for the lad... Good luck to him! 

And CSKA with a brand new stadium, complete with hotel, being used for the World Cup, I believe,  very close to my sister-in-law's house, saw it being finished last year when visiting. Good luck to the lad!

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2 hours ago, Alessandro said:

Agree with this all, correct in principle, but much harder to actually do, I’m sure - I personally would like to see more UK based signings, money permitting. But there is still no guarantee, look at Taylor Moore, Hinds, Holden all taking their time, although only Moore commanded a sizeable fee.

I think you touched on what I was alluding to about foreign signings vs. UK signings:

Better value/greater risk

Less risk/worse value

So it leaves me thinking two more things:

Firstly, as you say, it takes longer for a foreign player to adapt, especially the younger ones, something we should all probably remember when we are calling for Eliasson to play more, or even writing signings off after one season. 

Secondly, why is the risk greater signing from abroad? Scouting. Are we not identifying the right players or not doing enough homework? Or both! I believe the scouts/contacts that provided Gustav might be gone now so perhaps this has started to happen. But as you could argue our % success rate of foreign signings isn’t high enough (I mean, who knows, what do we have to compare to?) I hope that the ground work for our scouting network has been worked on and that our assessment of foreign players is being reassessed.

Just a final point. I also think that the hidden cost fans always forget about plays a big part, wages. Although in theory, yes, you could sign one league 1 hot shot for the price of 3 foreign ‘gambles’ but I’d hazard a guess that the wages demanded by the former would be considerably greater than the foreign player, or even 2 of them. That’s if we can even compete to get the league one or championship hotshot in the first place when you think what could be available to them - Villa paying Hogan £30/40k per week was it? We’ve seen the major factor the squad depth element of our league is - in terms of the overall wage bill, that must be a major factor too. 

 

We shouldn't exclude any market . If we need an attacking full back , for example, we should just bring in the best we can get regardless.

 

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1 hour ago, EstoniaTallinnRed said:

And CSKA with a brand new stadium, complete with hotel, being used for the World Cup, I believe,  very close to my sister-in-law's house, saw it being finished last year when visiting. Good luck to the lad!

Pedantry alert: CSKA’s stadium isn’t one of the two Moscow stadiums being used in the World Cup (they’re using the Luzhniki Stadium, and Spartak Moscow’s ground). 

Otherwise agree, good luck to Hörður!

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Have to wonder what is going on at the gate and how much favourites figure in selection. 

LJ can’t see the advantages of Mags in the championship but CSKA see him as a player worth investing in!  

somewhere someone has got it wrong! will be sorry to see him go.

I can’t see LJ’s ability in man managing the future of our club, his choices don’t add up, selection is shit, team morale is questionable.

From Xmas on he he selected the same players over and over again, no motivation, unfit, injured and just pure crap - was that selection on ability or personality??

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15 hours ago, dave36 said:

Have to wonder what is going on at the gate and how much favourites figure in selection. 

LJ can’t see the advantages of Mags in the championship but CSKA see him as a player worth investing in!  

somewhere someone has got it wrong! will be sorry to see him go.

I can’t see LJ’s ability in man managing the future of our club, his choices don’t add up, selection is shit, team morale is questionable.

From Xmas on he he selected the same players over and over again, no motivation, unfit, injured and just pure crap - was that selection on ability or personality??

My "like" just isn't enough... Absolutely bang on... 

LJ's favourites let him down badly... 

If he does it again SL better grow a spine and get shot... 

 

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I'm annoyed that we're letting him go. By all accounts, the fee we're getting isn't much more than what we paid for him, so what's the point in having a policy where we recruit youngsters and sell on at a profit if we don't make a profit and we sell while they're still young?

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