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Mark Ashton On Summer Transfers


Smokey

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"I sat down with Lee, the board, and Steve Lansdown, and we talked through a debrief of the season and what had went well, what hadn't gone well, and what we'd learned from the season"

If there weren't at least five Post-It notes on a wall all saying "Lois Diony" I am totally finished with this club.

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4 minutes ago, Olé said:

"I sat down with Lee, the board, and Steve Lansdown, and we talked through a debrief of the season and what had went well, what hadn't gone well, and what we'd learned from the season"

If there weren't at least five Post-It notes on a wall all saying "Lois Diony" I am totally finished with this club.

No doubt along the lines of.

We took a punt, it failed, we won't do that again. 

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1 hour ago, Olé said:

"I sat down with Lee, the board, and Steve Lansdown, and we talked through a debrief of the season and what had went well, what hadn't gone well, and what we'd learned from the season"

If there weren't at least five Post-It notes on a wall all saying "Lois Diony" I am totally finished with this club.

Can't get it right all the time Olé. Admittedly, it is hard to comprehend why they went for Diony given what had gone before.

The biggest mistake they made, and I have said this over and over, is that they totally upset the dressing room and the momentum in bringing in players that made, to a man, negative impact; i.e. Doing nothing would have been by far the best move and its just hard to understand how so called experts at the club got it so blatantly and obviously wrong. We all questioned Diony before it happened. Kent was an utter disaster; his body language was in the wrong place about 5 minutes after his debut and the fella from Everton made zero impact. It will go down in history as probably the worst January window, ever.

I would just add that for Mark Ashton to come out and praise so highly everyone at the club is fine but he has to make an equally firm remark that some people royally screwed up. All very well working hard but if not smart as well what is the point. The biggest and fastest collapse from an auto promotion position i think City have ever managed to achieve and everyone at the club brushes it under the carpet. Somewhat disdainful way of treating the fans I would say. That, as much as Smith's winning goal v Man Utd, will live equally as long in the memory.

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2 hours ago, havanatopia said:

Can't get it right all the time Olé. Admittedly, it is hard to comprehend why they went for Diony given what had gone before.

The biggest mistake they made, and I have said this over and over, is that they totally upset the dressing room and the momentum in bringing in players that made, to a man, negative impact; i.e. Doing nothing would have been by far the best move and its just hard to understand how so called experts at the club got it so blatantly and obviously wrong. We all questioned Diony before it happened. Kent was an utter disaster; his body language was in the wrong place about 5 minutes after his debut and the fella from Everton made zero impact. It will go down in history as probably the worst January window, ever.

I would just add that for Mark Ashton to come out and praise so highly everyone at the club is fine but he has to make an equally firm remark that some people royally screwed up. All very well working hard but if not smart as well what is the point. The biggest and fastest collapse from an auto promotion position i think City have ever managed to achieve and everyone at the club brushes it under the carpet. Somewhat disdainful way of treating the fans I would say. That, as much as Smith's winning goal v Man Utd, will live equally as long in the memory.

Despite the awful loans of Diony and Kent (Walsh is ours and was bought for his potential, albeit to challenge too...but he has to oust Smith and Pack....and Brownhill first), if you listen to MA, there was a big challenge in January to keep hold of Flint and Bryan.

Maybe we should have let them go and tried to replace them?  Can you imagine the fans then?

Recruitment ain’t a simple job....just ask Aston Villa!

Most people on here thought the two loans were good at the time....they are only critical in hindsight.  I do accept that they still wanted a big player in, and we didn’t get one....and that may be a key reason why we couldn’t kick on.  However Mitrovic or Grabban would never have come here over Fulham or Villa.  Jerome didn’t do very well at Derby and neither did Madine at Cardiff.

It appears we made a £18.4m loss in 17/18 too....we didn’t have the clout to go and push the boat out.

We’ve tried to address this during the summer....but time will tell.  Personally I think we are a mid-table side based in our current squad.  Up to LJ and staff to make the sum of the parts stronger than the individuals.

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4 hours ago, havanatopia said:

Can't get it right all the time Olé. Admittedly, it is hard to comprehend why they went for Diony given what had gone before.

The biggest mistake they made, and I have said this over and over, is that they totally upset the dressing room and the momentum in bringing in players that made, to a man, negative impact; i.e. Doing nothing would have been by far the best move and its just hard to understand how so called experts at the club got it so blatantly and obviously wrong. We all questioned Diony before it happened. Kent was an utter disaster; his body language was in the wrong place about 5 minutes after his debut and the fella from Everton made zero impact. It will go down in history as probably the worst January window, ever.

I would just add that for Mark Ashton to come out and praise so highly everyone at the club is fine but he has to make an equally firm remark that some people royally screwed up. All very well working hard but if not smart as well what is the point. The biggest and fastest collapse from an auto promotion position i think City have ever managed to achieve and everyone at the club brushes it under the carpet. Somewhat disdainful way of treating the fans I would say. That, as much as Smith's winning goal v Man Utd, will live equally as long in the memory.

Some fans also choose to brush it under the carpet and ignore that fact, preferring to believe we have now signed better replacement players. Mark and many fans put a lot of faith in Fammy stepping up this season, he will have to improve on last seasons 13goals and stay injury free to do so.

Milan could have been adequate cover but him and Maggers and Engvall have also slipped quietly away all could have been prominent this season given a chance.

As you say doing nothing in the last window would have been better than upsetting the applecart, lets hope our latest batch of recruits are better selected than our last effort was.

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2 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Despite the awful loans of Diony and Kent (Walsh is ours and was bought for his potential, albeit to challenge too...but he has to oust Smith and Pack....and Brownhill first), if you listen to MA, there was a big challenge in January to keep hold of Flint and Bryan.

Maybe we should have let them go and tried to replace them?  Can you imagine the fans then?

Recruitment ain’t a simple job....just ask Aston Villa!

Most people on here thought the two loans were good at the time....they are only critical in hindsight.  I do accept that they still wanted a big player in, and we didn’t get one....and that may be a key reason why we couldn’t kick on.  However Mitrovic or Grabban would never have come here over Fulham or Villa.  Jerome didn’t do very well at Derby and neither did Madine at Cardiff.

It appears we made a £18.4m loss in 17/18 too....we didn’t have the clout to go and push the boat out.

We’ve tried to address this during the summer....but time will tell.  Personally I think we are a mid-table side based in our current squad.  Up to LJ and staff to make the sum of the parts stronger than the individuals.

Agreed - I was one of them that thought they would be good loans. I even kept faith in Kent after his first few performances!

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16 minutes ago, Red Army 87 said:

Thought he spoke quite well. Less jargon, honesty around his feelings of outgoings and overall a pretty good assessment of where we are. Big change for him, obviously had some feedback! 

I’ve heard MA speak before and he’s a very skilled. operator and skilled in putting his message across. He always speaks well.

Good to hear that both Reid and Bryan both wanted to move to the PL and why they turned down the improved offers from City but Flint wanting to move to Boro...........:cool2:. Must have been financially motivated I guess - can blame him for that.

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10 minutes ago, Robbored said:

I’ve heard MA speak before and he’s a very skilled. operator and skilled in putting his message across. He always speaks well.

Good to hear that both Reid and Bryan both wanted to move to the PL and why they turned down the improved offers from City but Flint wanting to move to Boro...........:cool2:. Must have been financially motivated I guess - can blame him for that.

It was indeed very illuminating......I had no idea that those 3 players turned down new contracts and wanted to leave,  so good of MA to let us know.

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7 minutes ago, CodeRed said:

It was indeed very illuminating......I had no idea that those 3 players turned down new contracts and wanted to leave,  so good of MA to let us know.

You jest no doubt but it's amazing how many posters complain about us selling them, apparently completely unaware that they wanted to go.

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16 minutes ago, CodeRed said:

It was indeed very illuminating......I had no idea that those 3 players turned down new contracts and wanted to leave,  so good of MA to let us know.

Two wanted to progress their careers and both got moves to the PL but it would appear Flint wanted to move for the financial benefit.

Cant blame any of them for wanting that.

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2 minutes ago, awbb said:

I would have liked to have heard what the ‘lessons learned’ were regarding Magnússon, Duric and Engvall. 

That no club has a 100% success rate with transfers? ;)

Actually,  two lessons do seem to have been learned:

1. Don't let the CEO have too much influence over signings; and

2. Don't skew your strategy too much towards the European market on the assumption that it will always represent greater value.

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First 5 mins was good and less BS than usual. Second 5 mins was just a PR exercise for him blowing smoke up his employees arses, his own arse and the Lansdown's collective arse.   

Definitely detected in the first 5 mins he's only moderately satisfied with the business we've done, which I'd agree with to be honest. 

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8 minutes ago, Robbored said:

Two wanted to progress their careers and both got moves to the PL but it would appear Flint wanted to move for the financial benefit.

Cant blame any of them for wanting that.

Don’t forget, Joe would of been quite happy to pick up a fat pay cheque from Villa before Fulham came knocking.

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41 minutes ago, Robbored said:

I’ve heard MA speak before and he’s a very skilled. operator and skilled in putting his message across. He always speaks well.

Good to hear that both Reid and Bryan both wanted to move to the PL and why they turned down the improved offers from City but Flint wanting to move to Boro...........:cool2:. Must have been financially motivated I guess - can blame him for that.

If a PL side don’t come in for you the next best thing is to sign for the favourites to get promotion from the Championship and probably double your income at the same time. I think Flint had his head screwed on as much as the other two. 

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6 minutes ago, chinapig said:

That no club has a 100% success rate with transfers? ;)

Actually,  two lessons do seem to have been learned:

1. Don't let the CEO have too much influence over signings; and

2. Don't skew your strategy too much towards the European market on the assumption that it will always represent greater value.

The evidence points to it, but would have liked to hear it from the horses mouth!

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15 minutes ago, Kid in the Riot said:

First 5 mins was good and less BS than usual. Second 5 mins was just a PR exercise for him blowing smoke up his employees arses, his own arse and the Lansdown's collective arse.   

Definitely detected in the first 5 mins he's only moderately satisfied with the business we've done, which I'd agree with to be honest. 

Why are you only moderately satisfied? 

Is that based on outgoings, rather than incomings?

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7 minutes ago, JonDolman said:

Don't see the point in him saying that. Actions speak louder than words, and we have not brought in one from overseas this summer. Plus it isn't as if signing foreign players is a bad strategy, we will be bringing in more of them in the future. Just need to bring in the right ones. More Eliasson's and less Engvall's. And maybe no more experienced players who have mainly played in European second tier like Pisano, Hegeler and Djuric. I think we now have a Head of International Scout, so no doubt Ashton realises we need to improve our foreign recruitment, as otherwise we would have stuck with Des Taylor from a couple of seasons ago, and would maybe have not brought in that international scout guy. However much we might improve with our foreign signings, we have to be realistic and accept that some are not going to work out. I'd like us to find them when they are a bit younger, and cheaper so little risk.

If the question had been asked and that had been his response, it would’ve been just what I was looking for.

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10 minutes ago, reddoh said:

Sorry but people not in positions of power also tend not to admit to mistakes.

Fair comment, though in my experience the higher their status the less likely they are to do so. It's seen as a sign of weakness when it's actually a strength.

 

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5 hours ago, Davefevs said:

.We’ve tried to address this during the summer....but time will tell.  Personally I think we are a mid-table side based in our current squad.  Up to LJ and staff to make the sum of the parts stronger than the individuals.

I have always thought that our ‘natural’ position is Middle second tier. When we were in Division four and even more recently, I always thought we were punching below our weight. The Division 1 seasons were great but felt somehow unnatural, this level feels about ‘right’ to me. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am, of course, hoping we make the Premier League and would be delighted if we did, but that would be a whole new paradigm. All my City career. Mid table, second-tier has felt like our ‘natural’ position. 

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1 hour ago, awbb said:

I would have liked to have heard what the ‘lessons learned’ were regarding Magnússon, Duric and Engvall. 

That's well under the carpet and gone....we move on to the latest ...........hopes.?

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I have always thought our decline last year was in part that certain players could have got very goods moves away in the January window and were denied the opportunity, so to a degree chucked the dummy out the pram and maybe did not quite give 85% let alone 100% effort. This sort of internal turmoil could have an overall very negative impact on the dressing room. Although there is no way the club could have sold them.

The January window seen some silly prices for average players, plus we had a number of key players due back from long term injury. So taking a punt on Diony could have been good given his previous goal scoring record, Kent was known to LJ, but when you have a player coming in that is guaranteed game time over existing players and not on merit then its a recipe for disaster and hope they have learnt on this one.

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2 hours ago, Red Army 87 said:

Thought he spoke quite well. Less jargon, honesty around his feelings of outgoings and overall a pretty good assessment of where we are. Big change for him, obviously had some feedback! 

MA maximised the value of 3 players and has brought in players who know this league as well as a couple with potential. Add in the LB from Chelsea then you can see the strategy change and lessons learned. Only question not asked is are we likely to see any loans?

Big season for O’dowda, Brownhill & Eliasson

Lets see how it goes 

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